Bluestone and Beyond

In April 1964, a four-year-old boy was handed over at the gates of a bluestone institution and left behind by his father without a backward glance. What followed were ten years inside walls that demanded silence, obedience and invisibility — and a childhood taken piece by piece in the dark.But between the walls there were holidays. A farm. A woman named Ethel who took his hand without being asked. A man named Arthur who handed him the keys to a tractor and walked away. A pocket knife in a woolshed that waited for him every time he came back. Small things. The kind that hold a child together when everything else is trying to pull him apart.There was no release. He was in one minute and out the next — with no money, no food, and only the clothes on his back. And that was that.Bluestone and Beyond is the story of everything that followed. The apprenticeship. The Army. Thirty years caring for people the world had largely forgotten, in rooms where he understood — from the inside — exactly what it meant to be seen. And at the centre of all of it, the family he built from love alone. Not the family he was born into. The one he chose, and who chose him back.He didn't look back. This is what he found when he looked forward.Greg Spiteri grew up in institutional care. This is his story. Read more