MICK Kenny was six years old when nuns at his orphanage in Romsey, England, told him he was going on a holiday. Unaware of his destination, Mick joined an unaccompanied group of boys on the SS Ormonde, bound for Sydney and then the Murray Dwyer orphanage, which once stood on the hill behind Mayfield West Fire Station on Industrial Drive. It was not until six months later he realised they would not be going home. "I remember about six of us sitting on the side of the bank there looking over the Hunter River and trying to plan an escape route," he said. "We thought if we got across that river we'd be halfway home to England." Mr Kenny, now 67, has chronicled the ensuing abuse, neglect and the poignant meeting with his birth mother, in a self-published book, Not Just Another Pommy Bastard. "I didn't know much about my family history growing up, so I wanted to do it for my family, so my children and grandchildren know where they came from and what happened," he said. Mr Kenny's mother took him to the Romsey orphanage when he was one, telling the nuns she would collect him in six months when her brother returned from World War II. But when she did return more than a year later, she was falsely told her son had been adopted by a British family. In fact, he was still at the orphanage. The 32 English boys sent to Murray Dwyer found a home devoid of love and joy. Birthdays were not celebrated. "If you stepped out of line one of the nuns would sneak up behind you and hit you in the back of the head with a bunch of keys - it would draw blood," Mr Kenny said. "The head nun would pick you up with one arm and belt you with the other." Mr Kenny remembers a limited education, and chores including doing laundry. He shared clothes and almost never wore shoes. At 12 he was sent to live and attend high school at St Vincent's Boys Home at Westmead, where he was called a "Pommy bastard" and abused physically, emotionally and sexually, by three Marist brothers. He left before reaching the equivalent of year 9 still almost unable to read. "They found me a room in a boarding house in Cooks Hill and a job and sent me away with two quid, a train ticket and a new pair of shoes," Mr Kenny said. He was a "ruffian" teenager before meeting his future wife Susan at age 17. The couple had three children and six grandchildren and Mr Kenny established his own window installation business. At age 44 he received a phone call from Margaret Humphreys, who had brought to public attention the British government program of forcibly relocating children to other nations. "She told me she had found my birth mother and that I better get over there quick, because she was in hospital [following a stroke]." His mother was not told the identity of her guest before he walked into her room. "She pulled out her purse and still had a photo in there of me in a pram," Mr Kenny said. In recent years Mr Kenny mentioned his desire to share his life story to friends Helen Keevers and Catherine Mahony, and they helped him write his book. He said revisiting these experiences had been cathartic. "The more I talk about it the easier it got and the more memories I got," he said. "It made me dig out stuff that was buried in the back of my mind, but it made me feel better." Book sales ($10 each) 0407290761
