Transcript
our third child was a little girl who was very sick and died, okay, when she was four and a half months old. While I was at Point Cook, learning to fly, she died. And so, we had our two sons. Anyhow, before I went to Vietnam we'd had our third son. Okay. He was born in Toowoomba.
And anyhow, but we still missed the fact that we'd lost a little daughter and between my wife and I, we decided, "Well, I wonder whether we could possibly adopt." If I'd known what I was in for I might not have gone ahead with it but it was very, very difficult. Anyhow, with letters to and from Lizzy - and I wrote her a letter every day I was away and the postman even and had a special whistle for her. I'd like to thank that guy, actually, whoever he is.
So anyhow, we decided I'd give it a go and so on one of my rare days off, I got a, still no idea what I was going to do, I got a ride in a Caribou aeroplane to Bien Hoa and I somehow met up with a couple of American military police guys and I said, "Look, I'm trying to see what I can do about adoption." They said, "Well, come with us, and we'll show you."
Well, they took me to this place where they had all these babes, and it would have you in tears, it was a large room, there would have to have been 20 kids in there, in cots. They were half Vietnamese, half American. Half Negro, half American. Half Latino, half American. They had boils. The whole place smelt of urine because there was one attendant and you'd have tears in your eyes, you just could not but have tears in your eyes.
And these are the leftovers, the waifs. And after seeing that, I was very intent on adopting a kid. Now, the Australian troops had, on rare days off, they had quite a connection to the Catholic school in Baria. There were nuns there and it was a place of where you could feel a little bit at ease and mix with kids. So, I mentioned to the senior nun there, sister Augustine, who spoke a little bit of English, that I'd like to adopt. And to cut the story short, she eventually got me a child.
They found this child in Vung Tau, dumped in the streets, probably a week old. My guess is that the mother or even both of the parents, if there were two, was watching from a distance and had placed the child in an area where they knew the nuns went past. And anyhow, I end up with this little girl. No name, no paperwork, probably no more than 10 days old and they kept her at Baria for me and when I got the rare day off I'd go and visit her but then I had to get through all this process of paperwork, which was horrendous.
Firstly, she had to have a name. She had to get a birth certificate. So two of the nuns went to the Baria courthouse and they gave her a name. They gave a Vietnamese name, Nuyen, which is like Smith, Thi which means she's a girl, Thu H??ng, which means autumn fragrance and they added Mari Xian we call it Marie Jeanne. Okay. And, in Vietnam they always lose the last name.
So she was known as Xian and my name, I'm known as John, but it's really Michael John. Anyhow, I had to leave by the 1st of November. I had to get a presidential dispensation from the South Vietnamese president because I hadn't been married for 10 years and I had other children. So I didn't fit their rules. I had to get a lawyer bloke in Saigon to help me and it went through.
