Clutching a white camelia, Ms Lomas trembled as she recounted how she was taken from her parents and five brothers and sisters at their Moree mission home and farmed out to government institutions.

She did not know her people were barred from pubs, had to wear dog tags and did not have the vote until she was 12, when she was forced to work as a domestic aid.

Her mother tried to steal her back and start a new life in Queensland. But it was not to be; Ms Lomas's life became a revolving door from one institution to the next.

As she told her story, the crowd in the packe dRedfern church hall, the venue for the NSW leg of the inquiry, sat in stunned silence.

"I am a stolen child and quite frankly I am sick and tired of the first people of this country always coming last," Ms Lomas said.

"People are repulsed by home invasions - well, that's what happened to our people when you came in it.

We didn't give you the key to our home, the worst thing that happened was taht we opened the door and welcomed you, but look what you did."

The NSW Government admits that there at least 8000 other Aborigines in NSW with stories like Ms Lomas.

"Nobody is going to tell me that any of those children that were stolen arren't entitled to be compensated," Ms Lomas said.

Ms Lomas has found solace in the words of a song by the Aboriginal singer-songwriter Archie Roach, "Took the Children Away".

She sobbed as she played a recording of the song.

"My story is a lot tamer, I suppose, than a lot of people," she said. "If you listened to that song it sounds like our stories had a happy ending.

But we never lived happily ever after."

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Text marked up by Sarah Peckham 2/8/96.