Award-winning author and journalist, Maree Giles was born in Penrith, NSW on September 16th, 1953. Maree spent time separated from her family for periods of time in a boarding school and was sent to the infamous Parramatta Girls’ Home (PGH) as a teenager.

My experience of being made a ward of state for seven months in 1970 was brief, but a huge shock. I’m uncomfortable calling myself a Forgotten Australian because many children were in care for years, some from birth until they were young adults. The Forgotten Australians refers to an estimated half a million individuals who grew up in orphanages, children’s homes, and foster care in Australia during the 20th century. The intergenerational effects of this history will be felt for generations to come.

Maree had a happy childhood, but the first year was difficult for her and her mother. They had to survive without support from her father who had left them. Her mother and grandmother became very important figures in her life. Her mother was a qualified hairdresser, so she went back to work. But this didn’t happen immediately. After she had Maree, she was seriously ill for several months in hospital.

With financial help from my grandmother, she eventually opened her first hairdressing salon, above a shop on Cronulla’s main street. She named it the Maree Michel, after me. Success was immediate and her confidence returned. Despite the challenges of my mother returning to work, I was a happy child. My grandmother became my full-time carer and made sure I was healthy and loved.

In 1959 Maree moved with her mother to West Virginia in the U.S. to start a new life with her mother’s American fiancé, but she remembers this being a stressful time both because of the racial tensions and the distance from the rest of her family in Australia. Maree’s mother ended the engagement and returned to Australia. In the early 1960s her mother bought a home at North Narrabeen, on the edge of the lake, and they lived there with Maree’s grandmother, not far from her godparents, who also played an important role in Maree’s upbringing. When Maree’s grandmother’s health deteriorated, Maree was sent to board at St Catherine’s Girls’ School in Waverley.

It toughened me up, but naturally I missed my grandmother and my mother, and the freedom I enjoyed at home to explore the bush surrounding our home on the edge of the Garigal National Park. Every day was an Australian adventure. Adapting to the strict rules at St Catherine’s was difficult and I often ran into trouble for climbing trees or being out of bounds. But I enjoyed an excellent education at St Cath’s and felt incredibly lucky..

Maree’s mother remarried in 1965, a few months after her grandmother’s death. When Maree came home from boarding school for holidays, she found it hard to get along with her stepfather.

The atmosphere at home became tense. My stepfather imposed new rules and wanted to curtail my freedom. I found myself caught between two worlds: the lingering conservatism of post-war Australia and the merging hippie movement with its new music, freedoms, and rejection of authority. What adults celebrated as the Swinging Sixties often stopped short when it came to their daughters. Of course, I wasn’t aware of that value system then. I simply wanted the same freedoms my friends were experiencing. My parents found it impossible to accept this new worldview. I’d grown up in an unusually free household while my mother worked. My grandmother wasn’t always well enough to entertain me. Everything changed when she died.

I was labelled rebellious by family and friends and became a pariah. That drew me further away from them into the company of friends, some of whom were not good for me. By the end of 1968 life at home had become unbearable.

In the summer of 1970 Maree met a young man at Australia’s first outdoor music festival in Ourimbah, NSW, who asked her to move in with him at his room in Earl’s Court, a cheap and cheerful boarding house in Manly, overlooking the ferry terminal.

I misjudged his intentions, and thought we were in love. I was afraid to go home after the festival because I’d been forbidden to attend. I knew I’d be in trouble. Three months later, there was a knock at our room in Manly. Standing before me were two armed police officers. The policewoman read me my rights, handcuffed me, and marched me outside to the police car. At Manly police station I was formally charged with being exposed to moral danger and uncontrollable. The policewoman also wanted to charge me with vagrancy, but I was due to start working the following week. The police took me to Minda Remand Centre in Lidcombe. I was terrified.

The two years between the age of consent, 16, and ‘legal’ adulthood at 18, were a grey area. Institutions like PGH were the perfect place for so-called ‘wayward’ girls to be controlled and punished.

Maree’s mother tried to convince the court to release Maree from custody. A month earlier her stepfather had left the family home. But the magistrate decided to sentence Maree to six to nine months detention at Parramatta Girls’ Home.

After the sentencing, a moment of deep trauma, my mother was given five minutes with me in the holding cell. There was nothing she could do to reverse the sentencing. The magistrate was already dealing with other cases. It’s the hardest truth when your own mother cannot save you.

Maree describes her time at Parramatta as a “living nightmare”.

The officers took full advantage of the hidden opportunities to be violent behind the high stone walls. We now know that the authorities outside the home – clergy, social workers, police, doctors and nurses, politicians, teachers – were fully aware of what was happening there. Parramatta Girls’ Home had a notorious reputation in Australia for detaining girls who were considered ‘bad.’ In fact the girls were often victims of domestic and/or sexual abuse or neglect. They weren’t criminals. The irony of being locked up in a high security, brutal institution like PGH for your own protection is laughable.

When she was released from Parramatta, Maree felt that she was still being targeted by the local policewoman who had arrested her. She asked her mother to buy her a one-way ticket to New Zealand. She was only 17. In the 1970s it was rare for a young woman to travel alone in a foreign country. But she was determined to make a new life and escape the risk of being sent back to Parramatta. She found a room at the YMCA in Wellington and immediately found work with the Inland Revenue. A few weeks later she began a live-in position at Porirua Psychiatric Hospital as a student nurse. This was the beginning of eight years in New Zealand which she recalls warmly. But she resigned from the hospital a year into her training after witnessing the violent treatment of a patient by the sister on her ward. By then Maree was all too familiar with high-security institutions that harboured sadists. She went on to study journalism at Massey University and marine biology at Otago University. Two friends in NZ had a huge impact on her life, artist Dame Robin White and the poet Sam Hunt, whose self-determination and work inspired the possibility of a creative career as a writer.

In 1977 Maree joined her mother in the UK and they enjoyed some travelling together. At the end of that year, she returned home to Sydney, and two years later, in 1980, moved permanently to the UK.

In 1997 Maree won a prestigious Short Story prize in London which opened many opportunities, including a pathway to publishing her first novel, Invisible Thread, which is based on her time at Parramatta.

Over the years Maree returned to Australia many times to see her mother, but it wasn’t until Maree’s daughter was born in 1988 that she had an urge to find her biological father – a journey which led to the discovery of a half-sister, and a meeting with her father.

She has always been devoted to her two children and now has five grandchildren whom she adores.

Maree reflects on the lifelong consequences of her time in Parramatta as “challenging.” She has sometimes struggled with depression and low self-worth but believes:

Many things, including my time in Parramatta, shaped my yearning to live a creative and meaningful life. I’m thankful for all the opportunities that continue to present themselves, which I always try to take full advantage of. And I’m grateful to all the people who support and encourage my work, especially my family and my husband. I’m deeply proud of my children.

I’m grateful to have three novels published by Virago Press, London, who believed in my writing. Invisible Thread was republished by Hachette Australia as Girl 43, with a special Author’s Note about the National Apologies. It was encouraging that the editors at Hachette recognised the importance of the story after the two National Apologies.

Invisible Thread aka Girl 43 is a story that all Australians should read.

I’m now working on my fifth book and two poetry collections and continue to enjoy mentoring other writers.

Maree hopes her writing has resonated with readers affected by the issues explored in her books, and that those working within the care sector may learn from the failures and harms of the past to better protect vulnerable children and young people today.

I hope the historical and emotional weight within my books has illuminated the personal trauma of all the girls who went through hell behind the high walls surrounding Parramatta Girls’ Home and more than 800 similar homes. I’m in awe of their courage and resilience, and how they lived to tell their stories, and survived to live good lives.

Although I wasn’t directly affected by forced adoption, I felt a strong sense of responsibility to write about my Parra friend Carol’s personal tragedy, because she didn’t survive to tell the story herself.

At the time of writing Invisible Thread/Girl 43, there was little public understanding of how girls like me had been institutionalised under the guise of welfare and moral protection. Australia had not yet apologised, let alone acknowledged that these homes were dangerous places.

You can read Maree’s life story in her own words here: Maree Giles Life Story

Paramatta Girls Home Memorial (C) Maree Giles, 2022

All images supplied by Maree Giles.