Hard As: My Life as an Orphan Boy

Bryan Hartas was only seven when he saw his father beat his moth so badly that she was taken away in a Ambulance. He never saw her again. He thought things couldn't get much worse, but then he and his brothers were sent to Neerkol, an infamous Queensland orphanage west of Rockhampton. He knew he was in trouble when on his first day he saw kids digging in the dirt and eating the roots of small weeds.

Bryan is just one of the many Forgotten Australians who suffered horrific ongoing abuse as children in state care. What they lived through should never be repeated.

Bryan's story is a testament to the human spirit, to a child's love for his mother, and the capacity of the heart to rise, and rise again.