A Melbourne office held vital records of Aboriginal children’s homes. How did they go missing?

Kath Travis has spent eight years trying to get access to her family records held by the United Aborigines Mission. She was able to find a few files about her mother, but much of the UAM’s information has disappeared. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian

Kath Apma Penangke Travis went to the United Aborigines Mission office day after day for months on end, in the hope of finding someone who could locate records about her mother. The “office” was a dingy ground-floor unit in an industrial area of the Melbourne suburb of Williamstown. It was the UAM’s only known location, but there was never anyone there.

Travis, an Arrernte woman, is the third generation of her family to have been forcibly removed during the stolen generations by UAM missionaries.