Mother & children reunited after 40 years

In PNG the Post Courier reports that a mother who lost her babies to an Australian father 40 years ago met them for the first time on Friday at Sigmil outside Minj in the Western Highlands.

Kopan Amb Opo’s twins were taken to Australia in the late 1960s by their father, who lived in Kundiawa. She says her husband, a teacher, left without saying a word.

The reunion was held in Highlands fashion with a thousand people mourning the lost children returning home. Kopon Amb said she had fulfilled the dreams she had to one day meet her children before she died.

The ABC’s PNG correspondent Steve Marshall organised the reunion. Mr Marshall had broadcast Kopon Amb’s story of searching for her children in an ABC program which one of the children, Anne Marie, heard. When Anne Marie told her twin brother, Steven, they arranged to meet their mother immediately.

Steven said they did not get visas before traveling as they were desperate to meet their mother. When asked if he had any memory of his mother, Steve said he could only remember the day his father took them away. “We could sense something was wrong but you would not know where to start as a three year old,” he said.