Lyn Austin was taken from her childhood home at age 10 to live with a white family for seven years where she was beaten, starved and sexually abused.
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She briefly saw her mother and younger siblings twice during that time but never regained the freedom to stay with them.
Her mother died aged 36 when Ms Austin was 17 and her foster mother forbade her from attending the funeral.
"I never got over that," she says.
Now in her 50s, the Wotjobaluk woman from western Victoria wants redress for her and others' state-enforced removal from their families in the form of financial compensation from the state government.
All other Australian states have established redress schemes for members of the stolen generations - which are defined as Aboriginal children taken from their parents between 1910 and 1970 as part of a government-run assimilation regime.
Victoria is the only state not to have one.
The Victorian Greens on Friday announced a policy ahead of the November 24 state election to compensate members of the stolen generation.
A $110 million package would give $200,000 to each of the approximately 1000 surviving victims and create memorials, healing places and other services.
Greens MP Lidia Thorpe says it's appalling the Labor government has no plans to compensate the stolen generation, especially while it attempts Treaty legislation.
"It's deeply shameful that we continue to re-traumatise these people by failing to act on this unfinished business," she says.
"Members of the stolen generation deserve to finally get some peace and comfort through the provision of a reparations scheme."
The government, under premier Daniel Andrews, has maintained that a national redress scheme is needed.
"We know that the past policies and practices of forcible removal of Aboriginal children have been devastating - that's why we continue to push for a national redress scheme in line with the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report," according to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Natalie Hutchins.
The government says it has taken action for stolen generations with a formal apology in the Victorian Parliament and broader efforts to address Aboriginal disadvantage and dispossession.
Ms Austin, who has campaigned on the issue for 21 years, doesn't understand the government's rationale.
"The other states have done their reparations and redress so I don't know why (Andrews) is going with that line," she says.
"I would only hope that Daniel Andrews and his government would come to the party and support this."
Meanwhile Ms Austin and others live with trauma and broken family ties they feel are being ignored.
"We were beaten regularly," she says.
"I used to take the blame because I couldn't stand seeing the younger children get flogged.
"She (the foster mother) would flog them naked.
"One of the little boys there, when he was little, he'd wet the bed.
"She just kept kicking him in the legs. She broke his leg in three places.
"But she told the hospital that he was playing with chairs. She was very cruel.
"It makes me ill just talking about her and thinking about what we went through."
Australian Associated Press
