There was barely a hotel room or an airline ticket available in the days leading up to 13 February 2008, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made their way to Canberra for the National Apology to the Stolen Generations. Boarding an afternoon flight the day before, a state Labor minister who was also travelling handed me an early version of the Apology that he had just received from a federal colleague. He was curious about what the Koories on board the flight would make of it. Just reading it, I didn't make much of it. It was not until the following nation-setting day, standing in the gallery of Parliament House only metres from then Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd, when I heard the Apology and in doing so witnessed an event that will be forever remembered in the oral history of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, that it had impact.I was there for my father, Geoffrey John Rose - a child stolen at the age of six who never saw his mother again - and I wondered what my dad would have thought on this day. The words of the Apology were well crafted and eloquent, capturing the soul of a nation willing to make non-litigious amends to a people whose horrifying experiences were now being formally recognised. Many people gathered, whether on the lawns outside Parliament, in the House itself, or at the multitude of gatherings across the nation, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people united in a symbolic outpouring of emotion.And what an emotional rollercoaster it was, as anticipation gave way to exhilaration, relief and celebration as the day progressed, all the time subduing the juxtaposed painful memories that haunt us. Standing there consumed by all that the National Apology was, and surrounded by an ocean of stories, my sensibilities were constantly distracted to just one story: the story of my father.Geoffrey John Rose was born to Emily Rose with the birth certificate recording only his mother's name; his father was possibly an American serviceman. An almost olive complexion and a good academic performance in school made him a strong candidate for removal under the Act : he had the possibility of living white, but to achieve this he had to be removed. With Emily working in Melbourne, six-year-old Geoff was left in the care of his Auntie Gracie on the Framlingham Mission. On that fateful day, Geoff was playing boats in a stream that ran close to the hut in which he was staying. The Elders reminisce how as children they all had their designated hiding places, which they practiced and rehearsed, should a trail of dust from a motor vehicle herald the dreaded welfare police. But Geoff was too preoccupied with the game he was playing, and didn't make it to his hiding spot in time. In the words of Critchett (1998), 'As far as I am concerned it was abduction'. My father paid a high price for this distraction: abduction followed by 11 years of institutionalisation as a stolen child where his screams, silenced by the regimentation of institutional life and emotional isolation, contributed to a distorted view of normality. In fact, his life was far from normal, including as it did beatings, sexual abuse and slavery. In his later years in the orphanage, he and the other boys were compelled to work for Gippsland farmers for no reward, carting hay from snake-infested fields. Part of the plan behind this was a forced systematic deconstruction of his Aboriginal self, which is often referred to by fellow Stolen Generations survivors as having the 'black beaten out of you' (Critchett, 1998).What was stolen was more than the physical person. Also abducted on that cold, windy day at Framlingham was his emotional, cultural and spiritual being. Geoff Rose was rendered a fringe dweller in both worlds; abandoned, confused, and isolated. My father's experience can be summed up in the words of John Williams-Mozley (1997) 'And although I was raised in what could only be termed a 'typical' white Australian family, white society will not accept me as white. I am neither black nor white. My identity resides somewhere in the hyphen in the middle of my name. In every respect, that is nowhere.'Geoff Rose was left without the basic support mechanisms of family and history that mainstream Australia takes for granted. He never had a chance to liberate himself from the chains that enslaved him when he was taken away. It was these psychological chains that he brought to his marriage to my mother Rhonda, a non-Indigenous woman from a strong and established family. Before too long the demons caught up with Geoff, as he was challenged by the day-to-day demands of both his immediate and extended family. Under pressure, his angst was often expressed through domestic violence, and when evidence of this seeped beyond the immediate family his sense of isolation and alienation was reinforced.A further complication surfaced; my mother was diagnosed with epilepsy in the early 1960s, a condition that was not well understo[cut]