No One Was Watching is a work of fiction. These stories, although informed by factual events, do not intend to speak for people who endured living in out-of-home ‘care’ during part or all of their childhood but instead provide an alternative, imaginative entrée into this once-hidden Australian history. No One Was Watching is a creative response to a seminal Senate report of 2004 entitled Forgotten Australians. Just as earlier reports had revealed serious abuses perpetrated against Indigenous children and the unaccompanied children sent as migrants from Britain and Malta, this report found that the same types of violations were committed against institutionalised Australian-born, non-Indigenous children. The men and women who experienced such childhoods self-identify as ‘forgotten Australians’, ‘care-leavers’, ‘care-survivors’, ‘Homies’ or ‘Wardies’.
