‘It would make me feel like I belong’: Mick Combo’s lifelong quest for a home

Abstract

At 59, Mick Combo has never had a home to call his own.

The Stolen Generations survivor was taken from his mother in Western Australia as a two-year-old, and raised in state institutions to believe he was non-Indigenous.

“My first memory was standing up in a cot, looking at hundreds of other cots in a big dormitory,” he says.

It wasn’t until his 14th birthday that he learnt of his Aboriginal heritage.

“It was taboo to talk of Aboriginal people in those days,” Mick explains.

“I became confused and what not, because all of a sudden I was one of those people that were not to be spoken of — one of those dirty, good for nothing black people that didn’t belong in this country … That’s when my life went out of control, because I didn’t know who I was.”