Saltwater Fella

Years later, when I found my mother, I asked, ‘Why did you let me go?’ My mother told me, in a very soft voice, ‘My son, you were going to school. I took you to school every day ... then I went to pick you up this day and you were gone.’ John Moriarty was born to his Yanyuwa mother Kathleen Murrmayibinya and Irish father John Moriarty in Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Northern Territory. At the age of four, as part of assimilationist policies, he was stolen from his family and placed in