As the rest of the audience hurried away after the lecture, a young American asked Billy's opinion on a few things. Billy soon spoke of his youth.

He had grown up at a time when the Australian government had thought children of mixed race would be better raised in white households.

He and many other children had been forcibly removed from their families, split apart from siblings and raised in foster care. They had been denied information about their biological families.

Since the welfare department had snatched children from camps when the parents were out gathering food, the information probably had not even been recorded.

After a life spent between two worlds, Billy had traced his family back to the Alice. His brothers and mother had already regrouped but Billy had rejoined his family just two weeks after his father had died.

The Australian government had not repealed laws against the Aboriginal population until after World War II and had not lifted its restrictions on non-white immigration until 1973. From 1918 through the late 1960s those with dark skin were officially considered incapable of raising a family.

The charming aura of 1950s innocence and naiveté in daily Australian life which had so bemused me included that decade's hidden underbelly of oppression.