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21. Boomtiki : Hello, my name is Mark James Davies, I don’t know what name I might have been given (if any) before I was adopted, all I know is that I was born at the “Scott Memorial Hospital” in Scone, N.S.W. on the 21/1/1974 & was adopted at some stage soon after.
As I write this letter, I have no idea whether anyone will ever read this or who that person would be if it does, from what I’m told it could be my birth Mother, Father, siblings, Aunts, Uncles etc, it’s all a bit confusing & don’t know if I should go on about myself or keep it as a basic overview.
I am assuming the most likely person to read this would be my birth Mother & instead of making this letter impersonal & general I will continue writing as if it is written to you, my birth Mother from here on.
I have written & re-written this so many times now as I’m unsure how I should write this, what I should put in, what I should leave out etc but have decided that I may as well put all this down, I don’t know what’s relevant or not but its all part of who I am & how I got here so thought it may be worth mentioning.
Here goes.
I was adopted by Keith who was a factory foreman & Jennifer a Nurse, who were living in Greystanes Sydney at the time & I now had a brother Scott who was 2 years older & was also adopted.
Mum & Dad couldn’t have kids the old-fashioned way so was happy Scott & I came along.
Soon after we moved to a small farm near Kiama on the NSW South coast, over the next 10 years we moved around a bit in Kiama & lived on 2 farms & other locations around some beautiful beaches, it was the best upbringing you could hope for as a small child.
Over that 10 years we adopted Peter who is 5 years younger than me & unfortunately had mild cerebral palsy, he’s doing fine regardless of the Doctors negative prognosis all his life that he wouldn’t reach 10, then he wouldn’t reach 16, then 25 & so on. He’s now 40 & happily married to his lovely wife & has a beautiful daughter.
We also adopted a girl named Sarah who is 2 years younger than Peter, she has 2 daughters India & Amelia.
As life sometimes can do it threw a few curve balls at us & Mum & Dad split up when I was around 11, it was tough for everyone & on top of it all Mum packed us up & we moved up to Wollongong to be closer to her work as she now had to work fulltime nightshift to make ends meet with all us kids.
& then Along came Russell the youngest who was also adopted & is about 12 years younger than me, Russell was affected by foetal drug & alcohol abuse before he was born so was doing it tough for his first few years, he’s since had a couple of relationships with 3 children between them.
My oldest brother Scott is my best friend.
Although he lives in Wollongong & I live in Karratha in the remote North West of W.A distance has done nothing to change our relationship.
Scott & I sort of became Russell’s Father figure as Dad had left before he was adopted into our family so he never really knew Dad.
Scott & I were out earning a living when he was still quite young & it gave Mum a break when we looked after our little brother for the weekends & to take him to see the Zoo or movies & things.
When I was around 15-16, I moved to Bomaderry on the South Coast of NSW to live & work with Dad. I had to do something as it was pretty cramped in the 3 bedroom town house we were all living in & we had begun foster caring 2 children whose Mother had gone into rehab & was sort of a friend of the family.
It was supposed to be for a few weeks but ended up being a few years, the house was too cramped for me & was an opportunity to reconnect with Dad.
He’d been floating around for a few years from job to job, alcohol was an issue & was the reason Mum & Dad had split up I learnt later.
12 months after starting work with Dad in his trophy shop, he died.
I moved back up to Wollongong to live with Mum again & by now had a girlfriend, Deborah who is my Wife now of 24 years with a further 7 years together before getting married.
She’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me & be the rock of our relationship, without her I have no idea where I would have ended up but it certainly wouldn’t be in as good a place as we are today.
I was accepted into the Army with a Carpentry apprenticeship however they took over 9 months to give me a start date & in the meantime I had done a Pre-Apprenticeship course in Refrigeration /Air Conditioning to pass that time.
So, after I was offered an Apprenticeship with Schweppes & as Deborah & I had been together for nearly 12 months I decided to turn down the Carpentry Apprenticeship.
Life moved on & after 7 years I couldn’t keep Deborah waiting any longer, so she said yes & we got married.
Over the next few years, we work hard & getting better & better jobs until we could finally buy our own house in Figtree, a suburb of Wollongong.
It was the worst house in a great area & we worked to make the house as comfortable as possible so we could raise a family.
Luck was not on our side & after years of trying had to go down the path of IVF.
It was heartbreaking & tough, but we eventually were blessed with my wonderful son Samuel Anthony.
Around the time of Samuels second birthday there was an opportunity to move out to W.A to try & get ahead as IVF had taken its toll on our savings & overtime was starting to dry up with the downturn of the Port Kembla Steel works where I worked so we packed up & went into the unknown, not knowing anyone over there & being so distant from the rest of the country, Family & friends, what an adventure that turned into.
We thought we would come for 1-3 years, make some quick money & get out, after being in town 2 weeks I didn’t think Deborah would last 6 months, but she’s battled on & we’ve now been here for 12 years.
I have a good job working on the Karratha Gas Plant & it’s a good feeling to be a part of such a big & important piece of Australia’s infrastructure.
I spent 6 or so years also working on the offshore oil & gas Rigs & loved the excitement of the work we did.
After a few years of getting ourselves back on track financially we were able to start travelling & have been lucky to take our son to some wonderful places & is the main reason we continue to live in Karratha so this lifestyle can continue.
My son wants for nothing, but I try very hard not to spoil him, it’s difficult sometimes being a single child.
He’s now 14 & now I’m starting to remember all the times I gave my Mum grief at about the same age thank goodness he’s much better behaved than I was at that point in life.
He has a gorgeous, loving, caring spirit & were regularly complimented on his behaviour, manners & the way he cares & looks out for others.
So that’s about where we are at right now in life, I think soon there will be a new chapter where we may move down to Perth or back over East, Deborah keeps wanting us to do a stint overseas in Vietnam, Singapore or Bali for a couple of years but Covids put an end to all that, maybe somewhere closer like Tasmania, or the South Coast of NSW, a cool change could be a nice change after 12 years of being in the hottest part of the country.
I really hope this finds you well & would be excited to talk to you more & if things go well perhaps, we could meet if that’s not too scary a proposition.
I have so many questions & gaps in my life I have always ached to know the answers to.
Yours sincerely,
Mark.
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