Malcolm Kemp has always felt like there was something missing in his life.
The Armadale local grew up on farms all over the country, dragged here and there by a violent and erratic father and the woman he believed was his mother.
But when he was around 16-years-old, his whole universe came undone.
After being diagnosed with cancer, the woman who had raised him – Myra – confessed that she was not, in fact, his birth mother.
When Malcolm was five, she had conspired with his dad to take him and his younger brother from England, and bring them both to Australia, without their mother’s knowledge.
A forged signature on their Incoming Passenger Cards bears witness to this crime.
“My life was turned upside down with unanswered questions, and the pain of being stolen from the one person who should have been my safe haven,” he said.
“There’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember: I honestly don’t remember coming out here, and I don’t remember my mum.”
Malcolm’s dad, David, was abusive and a womaniser.
When he deserted Malcolm’s mother, Agnes, she had no choice but to put her two sons in an orphanage.
“Apparently, she came to visit me in the home every week. But I don’t remember that. There’s a lot from my childhood that I’ve blocked out, I think,” he said.
“My mother wasn’t aware we were taken to Australia, but I have no doubt she would have fought with everything she had to keep us by her side.
“Instead, I grew up in an environment I did not choose, under the control of an abusive father.”
He touched down at Sydney airport on 23 February, 1965, with Myra, David, his younger brother Jeremy (2) and his half-sister Janette.
Around two years after arriving in Australia, Jeremy drowned in a dam on a farm in Berwick, Victoria, while his dad watched on.
“I was there. I know what happened – it was murder. I tried to jump in to save him, but he stopped me,” Malcolm said, the images permanently seared into his brain.
“To this day, I don’t believe my mother was ever informed of his passing,’ he said.
“The thought of her living for decades without knowing where we were, without knowing what happened to her sons, is almost too much to bear.”
Soon after that, Myra gave birth to a son, Sean. But Malcolm has trouble recalling any memories of life with his half-brother, the trauma of losing Jeremy possibly erasing Sean from his past.
After stints up and down the east coast, the family settled on King Island.
“We had some good times there,” Malcolm said. “We had nothing, so we had to make our own entertainment. And I made plenty of entertainment.
“We used to ride down to the jetty, tie our bikes to it and fly over the edge with them. Then pull them back out and do it all over again – all those Evel Knievel tricks.
“And we never worried about sharks, we used to swim with them.”
But his dad deserted them all soon after Malcolm started high school.
“He got kicked off the island – he was a very bad person,” Malcolm said. “He was very, very abusive. And I took a lot of punishments for those kids. I copped it, as the eldest.”
But things didn’t improve after he left.
Malcolm was close with Myra; she was the only mother figure he knew.
“But whenever she got into a new relationship, I was the one who suffered,” he said.
“I remember we lived in a place on King Island – Myra paid for the rent with ‘favours’. I didn’t like that, but he used to slam me up against the wall if I said anything.
“Then she got married on King Island to a bloke and he was terrible to her. I got to the stage where I got fed up with the way she was being treated.
“In some ways I have some of my dad’s traits in me – I used to get to the point where my temper would build and build and then it would just blow. I’m lucky I’m not in jail.”
When Malcolm was 15, the family moved to WA, moving around between Laverton and Esperance.
After Myra’s cancer diagnosis and her earth-shattering confession, Malcolm made the choice to go it alone.
He moved to Manjimup where he met the love of his life, Marian.
And the pair eventually started a family of their own, blessed with two daughters.
“That’s one good thing about coming to Australia. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met this one. This girl straightened me out,” he said.
“I promised my kids that they’d never want for anything, that they’d never had the life that I had.”
And he’s held to that.
Marian and Malcolm have been inseparable for over 40 years, and together have nine grandkids, and two great grandsons.
But he’s never stopped thinking about the family that was taken from him.
“For most of my life, I didn’t know if my mother was dead or alive,” he said. “But I’ve spent my entire life longing to see her again.”
Unfortunately, his searches never bore fruit.
Then suddenly, during the midst of the pandemic, a phone call rocked his world again.
His half-sister Janette told him that someone had contacted her and Sean claiming to be related to them.
“But both of them were very dubious. They thought maybe it was a scam,” he said. “So, I said, give me the number I’ll ring up. I had to prove them wrong.
“On the other end of the line was Lateesha, telling me she thought she was my half-sister.
“Funnily enough, she used to live in Gosnells, just down the road. But now she’s in Brisbane. “I’m a truck driver, and I used to drive from Perth to Brisbane every week. So, I said ‘I’ll be in Brisbane on Friday, let’s catch up’.
“Well, it must have been about four or five hours we were stood there talking.
“And it kept happening – we met up more and more. She’d pick me up and take me home, wash all my clothes out and feed me – ‘that’s what sisters do’ she’d say.
“After about four or five weeks, her daughter said to her: ‘mum, you and uncle Malcolm look like you’ve known each other for years’. There was just that instant connection.”
Lateesha also put Malcolm in touch with Tina – another half-sister, and the youngest of the six known siblings. Tina and Lateesha had found each other through a DNA registry.
Tina grew up in Cornwall and had known she had three half-siblings living in Australia since the age of 14.
“It was the days before the internet. I searched and searched, but couldn’t find them anywhere,” she said.
After being inspired by two British TV identities who tracked down their family histories through DNA and genealogy, Tina gave it one last shot.
“One day during the pandemic, I got a message from this person I didn’t know – the sister I didn’t know about,” she said.
And it was then that Tina told Lateesha about her three half-siblings in Australia. Lateesha was then able to track down Malcolm, Sean and Janette “through the power of social media”.
Last September, Tina made the pilgrimage out to Australia for an emotional reunion with her family.
“I feel at peace, I feel whole again. I don’t feel so alone anymore,” she said.
“I don’t have any family in the UK any more, all my blood family are in Australia. It brings hope and joy.”
Both Marian and Malcolm were overjoyed to welcome two more sisters into their lives.
“Tina and Lateesha are both down-to-earth and family-oriented like me. It’s like we’ve known each other for donkeys’,” Malcolm said.
“I’m over the moon,” Marian said. “Now my kids have got extended family – more aunties and cousins.”
While she was in Australia, Tina used her considerable skills to make headway on Malcolm’s life-long search for his mum.
Then six weeks ago, Malcolm got the news he’d barely allowed himself to hope for.
“Tina helped find my mum,” he said. “She’s alive.
“She was going to drop a letter in her mailbox, but she stopped and thought ‘I can’t do that’. She reckoned she needed to do more. So, she went to the door.
“When she showed her a picture of us, she said ‘oh my boys! But where’s my daughter?
“Tina just about fell back on the chair, she reckons. Nobody knew about her. I have another full sister.”
Amusingly, her name is also Tina.
Malcolm said his traumatic childhood forced him to grow a very thick skin.
“I grew up tough,” he said. “Nothing makes me cry.”
But when Tina showed him a picture of his 87-year-old mother, Malcolm burst out sobbing.
“Seeing that photo was the first time I saw her face,” he said. “She kept onto all my toys from when I was a boy. She was looking for me – but she ran out of money. She had no idea that I was taken to Australia.”
Malcolm is now determined to find a way back to his mum.
“To be able to go and see her would be just like winning the lotto,” he said.
“I don’t care what happened back then. All I want is now, to see her, and grab her in a big bear hug.
“After 60 years, I finally have a chance to reunite with my mother. But time is slipping away. She is elderly and in fragile health; I don’t know how much longer I have to see her, to hold her, to tell her how much I’ve missed her. This may be my last chance.”
The couple has started a GoFundMe page to raise the $15,000 needed to travel to the UK for a couple of weeks, and cover two weeks’ worth of missed pay.
“I have always worked hard, provided for my family, and never imagined myself in a position where I would need to ask for help,” he said.
“But financial struggles and serious health challenges have made this journey even more difficult. I simply can’t afford the travel costs to reunite with my mother on my own.
“This GoFundMe campaign is about more than just a reunion; it’s about healing, closure, and reclaiming a life that was stolen from me.”
To donate to Malcolm’s journey, click here: ‘A Heartfelt Plea: help me reunite with my dear mother’.
