REMEMBERWHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday May 15, 1982

AN Oxenford man, 63, cried when he learned of three brothers and two sisters he didn’t know he had.

“It’s really unbelievable,” said Doug Broomfield, who left for England to see his siblings for the first time.

“When I found out about it I just sat down and cried.”

His lifelong separation from his family began when he was born to James and Dorothy Phelps in London in 1918.

He was their first child but because both were in the military service during World War I, it was impossible to keep him.

Mr Broomfield was placed in a foster home and was adopted when he was two.

His birth parents settled about 10km from his adopted home and raised five children.

They named their eldest child Douglas in honour of the son they had been forced to give up but told none of the children about the adoption.

Mr Broomfield, a retired public servant, was his adopted parents’ only child and found out he was adopted at age 12.

“I always assumed my parents were separated or died,” said Mr Broomfield, who moved to Australia in 1955.

Mr Broomfield wrote a letter to a newspaper in Kingston, England seeking details of his family.

A cousin saw the letter and alerted other relatives who quickly sent him long letters, tapes with voice messages and photos of his late father and mother.

“I still can’t believe I have a brother I never knew existed,” said his sister Madeline.

“We were so overwhelmed we could not believe what we were reading.”