About Anton
I was adopted into a family of five children when I was a toddler. The family grew to ten children and I grew up with seven sisters and two brothers. As the family grew I went from being the second youngest to the middle child.
My family was warm and loving and never treated me differently because I was adopted, but I felt different and often wondered where I came from. A big part of the reason I felt different was because I didn’t look like my adoptive brothers and sisters or anybody I knew. I was told that I had a Black African dad and white Australian mum, but because I was light skinned most people saw me as the white kid with fuzzy hair, so that is how I saw myself too.
In primary school I loved reading and playing sport. I enjoyed reading adventure, mystery and war stories, even encyclopedias. I probably could have been a reading star if there was such a thing but there wasn’t so I set my sights on becoming a sports star. My favourite sports team was the West Indies Cricket Team and my favourite sports star was the boxer Muhammed Ali. I saw myself in the faces of these black athletes and other black people I saw in magazines and on TV.
When I was 13-years-old I got told that I was a Torres Strait Islander. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids in my high school welcomed me and I found myself a part of two groups: the non-Indigenous kids I hung out with daily and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student group I met up with once a week. I didn’t openly acknowledge my black identity among my non-Indigenous friends but embraced it when I was with my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peers.
Throughout high school I gradually became more comfortable embracing my black identity in different social groups. I continued to play sports, (now I aspired to be a champion middle distance runner like Joaquim Cruz and play basketball like Michael Jordan). Unfortunately I had to settle for being awarded the ‘Most Improved Player’ on my basketball team and a champion food runner in a Greek restaurant.
After high school, I completed an education degree at university and was part of a strong and active Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student community which made me feel comfortable and safe to be proud of my black identity.
But then my world and identity changed again. When I was a young man with three children I connected with my birth parents: a white Australian woman living in Brisbane and a Mosotho man from Lesotho.
I didn’t know anything about Lesotho but I learned that it is a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa within which the Basotho people have lived since the fifth century. Although I was shocked and surprised to discover that I was not a Torres Strait Islander, I was thrilled to finally meet my birth parents and siblings and know for sure where I come from.