My thoughts are so confused today. I had two fathers. I never knew my birth father as he died when I was two but I’d been adopted out at birth anyway as a result of an ultimatum made to my mother by her mother who knew that children shouldn’t be in her care. My adopted father was a stern frightening man who rarely showed me love.

He did, however, see that I had an education which is a wonderful gift and I thank him for that most sincerely. I feel no love towards him though and I’m so angry at him that he never told me I was adopted, leaving me to discover this when he and my adopted mum were both dead.

His father was a lovely old granddad with a sense of fun & we got on well. I saw quite a bit of him from my teens on as we lived close to them. We would go for tea on Sunday nights and sometimes I’d stay with them in school holidays as they lived near the beach at Maroochydore in Queensland. They migrated to Australia in 1921 when my dad was seven. Granddad had been a British soldier in France in WWI.

I didn’t know my adopted Mum’s father very well at all. He died when I was seven but they lived in Melbourne and I can only remember a couple of visits. Mum had been brought up in a very strict religious family and I remember receiving religious texts for my birthdays and Christmas.

I’d like to have met my birth Dad. He had two other children, older than me, and they tell me he was a good Dad. I get the impression he was a bit of a lad and the photos seem to support that feeling. He was sent to Australia from England in 1914 by his older brothers and told to “make a man of himself”. He enlisted in the army but his records show that he had flat feet (that’s where I must get them from), couldn’t march, was invalided of a ship in Perth on the way to war and then went absent without leave. I’ve yet to really delve into the details of his life but I do know that he ran many concerts for the Red Cross in Melbourne between the wars. So definitely an interesting story to follow. I think his Dad was an upstanding man and I have met and am very close to a granddaughter of one of my father’s brothers who lives in Canada.

I think my birth mother’s father had a very sad life and I’m currently researching his story. He was born and grew up in the Beechworth area of Victoria where his grandfathers were both miners. He fought in the trenches in France and his brother was killed there. I think that has to have affected his whole life. How anyone could return to a ‘normal’ life after that, is beyond me.

So, I have more fathers and grandfathers than most. They are a motley crew. What an interesting evening we would have if I could have any one of them to dinner.

I have so many questions!