Everybody has a story
As a baby, weniki hensch was adopted into a whole new culture.
I was born in a Port Moresby hospital in Papua New Guinea in 1979. The week I was born, there was a strike at the hospital, and all the babies were packed off to different places. I was wrapped up and put in a taxi, and sent to the home of Adele and Hartmut Hensch. Adele was English and had been working at the hospital as a nurse. She and Hartmut had four school-aged children, and were living in Papua New Guinea because he was the international rep for a German company. One week with them turned into a few months, then, when they wanted to leave the country a year later, they decided to adopt me.
We went back to Germany for a couple of years, then moved to Brisbane when I was about three. Their children – my brothers and sisters – were all born in different places because of Dad’s job; two were born in Sierra Leone, one was born in England, and the other in Ethiopia. I grew up surrounded by a lot of artefacts and sculptures they’d collected on their travels. You don’t realise it’s unusual to have those things around until you go to other people’s houses. In hindsight, having that visual aspect of Papua New Guinean culture was probably quite important for me. Some of my very first memories were of sketching the marble female busts that flanked the front door, and the cowrie shell-encrusted Papua New Guinean masks that ran along the hallway.
Growing up Papua New Guinean in a Caucasian family never struck me as strange or different, because I didn’t know anything else. My siblings are all blonde and German-looking, so I don’t look like them at all. When we were out at the shops or markets, people would think I was there by myself. It came as a genuine surprise when I found out I was adopted. I remember Mum pulled me aside on my first day at preschool and said, “We just want you to know you’re loved very much and that you’re adopted.” Looking at it now, I guess she thought it was time I knew. It was sort of left at that. Other kids had questions, but there wasn’t any malice.
When I was about 11 or 12, I’d sit down with the artworks in the house and ask about Papua New Guinea, but my background wasn’t readily shared with me. Once, at 13, I was at the markets with my parents. I stopped at a stall and made up a name, Euralia. I called it out to my dad and he turned around and said, “That’s your birth mother’s name.” I get a bit teary thinking about that now. Little did I know, that was the first of some intrinsic internal stepping stones. At the time, I didn’t understand the importance. We never spoke about it again because he said, “Don’t tell your mum.” I guess they feared that telling me about it all would lead to me leaving them.
At 19, I was living in Melbourne, and one day while on the phone to my dad the conversation just opened up a bit more. It fired me up to explore this other side of myself. A while later, I did a Google search for Euralia and Papua New Guinea, and this woman popped up, with an email address. I sent her a very concise and forthright email, saying, “My name is Weniki Hensch, I was born on October 11, 1979, and my birth mother’s name is Euralia. If you’re not her, please disregard this email, but if you are and you want to contact me to discuss this further, please do.”
She got back to me a day or so later. All her email said was, “Hello Weniki, where are you located and what do you do?” We started emailing, without me really knowing who she was. There were lots of synchronicities – she was also involved in the arts, and turned out to be a really good friend of a contemporary Papua New Guinean artist whose husband was my boss at the time. A few months later, I decided I was going to go to Papua New Guinea at the end of
that year. I told Euralia I’d love to have lunch. I wanted to keep it really light and open, because having a daughter come out of the woodwork and start emailing you is one thing, but it’s something else to meet her face-to-face.
I flew out to Port Moresby with my then-boyfriend, and we met a woman on the plane who was so helpful – it turned out she knew Euralia. You have to do things the proper way in Papua New Guinea and respect the traditional family roles. I met one of my uncles first, and it was like we were catching up after a couple of months, not meeting for the first time. We were all in tears. The connection was very strong and I had this sense of coming home, both to the country and my family. I ended up meeting Euralia the following day at a local restaurant. We started talking about cricket, of all things. It only really hit me afterwards; I can’t really explain it. I went in open-hearted and didn’t attach too much to it – she was 14 or 15 when she had me; she did what she had to do. I’ve never had any anger towards her. If she wasn’t ready for anything other than lunch, that was OK. I wasn’t going to go in with 100 questions. We got along like she was an old friend.
Going to Papua New Guinea and meeting Euralia was part of connecting to something much broader than a family. A year later, I had a daughter of my own, Florizel. Since then, I’ve felt compelled to delve deeper into my adoption. It slipped into my art practice when I was introduced to Lisa Waup – an Indigenous artist based in Victoria. I can’t remember how we discovered we were both adopted, but Lisa showed me a gorgeous piece that represented both her mothers. We were in tears five minutes after we met. We stayed in contact, exchanged stories, and I asked her to join me at an artist residency I did at the beginning of 2018 in Darwin. I wanted to explore the journey through an Indigenous lens. I didn’t realise that connecting to the Country would be such a big thing; that I’d feel it on such a cellular level.
The residency, Unpeeling Perceptions, gave me an opportunity to explore and unpack my own feelings. I did a lot of research, visiting the Papua New Guinea collections at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, and the Melbourne Museum. I had the privilege of handling cultural pieces from the Oro Province, which is where my birth mother is from, and it reignited my interest in ancestral connection through traditional cultural practices. I also took a different path in my research by connecting with family members through an Indigenous medium. Going through the spiritual way just made more sense to me.
Communication with Euralia petered off after I visited, and I haven’t been back, though I’d love to go next year. I guess things are in limbo. Unpacking all that creatively is cathartic; a beautiful way to translate things emotionally. Everyone’s journey through adoption is different. For me, learning about art and cultural practices is a big part of knowing who my blood family is.
One day, Florizel and I were lying together on the couch watching Kung Fu Panda 2. The main character, a panda, is adopted and questioning his family connection to his father, a goose. Florizel asked what it meant to be adopted, because she’d also heard me talking about my own research. During the months that followed, several adopted characters came up in films – Superman being a significant one. Through Florizel’s eyes, Superman, Kung Fu Panda and my adoptions automatically meant we were superheroes. She’d ask others if they were adopted, and when the response was no, she’d pat them on the back and say, “It’s OK.”