It was love at first sight the moment 15-year-old Dianne Westman set eyes on her baby daughter. She felt she was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen, with long black hair right down to the nape of her neck. “Hello, sweetheart!” she cooed when the baby was placed back in her arms after being bathed by the nurses. “I’m your mum. I’ll always be your mum, you hear me? We’ll never let anyone separate us.”
Back then, in 1962, Dianne was right to be so protective. Already the nurses at Sydney’s Crown Street Women’s Hospital had tried to persuade the single mum to sign adoption papers to give her child away to a “more respectable” married couple. But knowing how many other young unmarried women had already been tricked, pressured and sometimes even drugged into giving away their children (the forced adoption scandal was later uncovered officially by an Australian Government Senate Inquiry in 2011), Dianne had resolutely refused to sign anything – even if it meant she’d be denied pain relief during the birth.
“I was just very, very determined to keep my baby,” Dianne says today, on the eve of the release of her memoir, Daughter of the River Country. “She was my only family and I wanted to make sure I was always there for her. I wanted to make sure she’d never suffer in the way I’d suffered.”
For although Dianne was still two weeks shy of her 16th birthday, she’d already endured more hardship than most people four times her age. Her beloved mum had died when she was 14 and, suddenly, her father no longer wanted to know the couple’s only child. He went off with a series of women, leaving Dianne fending for herself, alone, in their house in Sydney’s western suburbs.
この記事は The Australian Women's Weekly の July 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は The Australian Women's Weekly の July 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes - could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
Take me to the river
With a slew of new schedules and excursions to explore, the latest river cruises promise to give you experiences and sights you won’t see on the ocean.
The last act
When family patriarch Tom Edwards passes away, his children must come together to build his coffin in four days, otherwise they will lose their inheritance. Can they put their sibling rivalry aside?
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Jenny Liddle-Bob.Lucy McDonald.Sasha Green - Why don't you know their names?
Indigenous women are being murdered at frightening rates, their deaths often left uninvestigated and widely unreported. Here The Weekly meets families who are battling grief and desperate for solutions.
Growing happiness
Through drought flood and heartbreak, Jenny Jennr's sunflowers bloom with hope, sunshine and joy
"Thank God we make each other laugh"
A shared sense of humour has seen Aussie comedy couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall conquer the world. But what does life look like when the cameras go down:
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of Australian apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the midwinter blues away.
Budget dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of low-cost recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
