From Sydney's Streets to Australia's Conscience in Song

Archie Roach was born on 8 January 1956 in Mooroopna, Victoria, to Bunjalung parents. As a toddler he was taken by government agencies and placed in orphanages and foster care. He was fostered in Melbourne by Scottish immigrants Alex and Dulcie Cox, who told him his parents had died in a fire. Their record collection introduced him to folk ballads, Nat King Cole, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday, Otis Redding and Hank Williams, and their eldest daughter, Mary, taught him guitar.

He learned the truth about his separation from a letter from a sister he had not known he had, Myrtle. As a young man he set out to find his blood relatives with only his guitar. The Telegraph's obituary records that he lived rough on the streets of Sydney and Adelaide, where he also struggled with alcohol and at one point was jailed as a vagrant.

At 17, in Adelaide, he met Ruby Hunter, another musician of the Stolen Generations who was also living on the streets. She became his musical partner and wife. He said she had a nurturing spirit and turned his life around. He stopped drinking, and the couple formed a band, the Altogethers, moved to Melbourne and played in small pubs. The singer-songwriter Paul Kelly invited them to open one of his shows.

Roach wrote Took the Children Away in a single day after talking with his uncle Henry Banjo Clarke, who described the day Roach was taken. Recorded in 1990 for his debut album Charcoal Lane, it won awards, including an international human rights prize, and confronted Australians with the policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families.

He toured internationally and later taught music and opened his home to troubled Aboriginal teenagers. Ruby Hunter died in 2010. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2015, published his memoir Tell Me Why in 2019, and died on 30 July 2022, aged 66. He said that music helped him heal, and that bitterness and anger will kill you.