Kintsugi Heroes
BONUS: Preview from "Connecting Seniors (Kintsugi Heroes)"
BONUS Preview Connect Seniors
A lawyer turned broadcaster gives voice to the fathers' stories the court system silenced, including his own.
Kintsugi Studio
Kintsugi Heroes
BONUS Preview Connect Seniors
A lawyer turned broadcaster gives voice to the fathers' stories the court system silenced, including his own.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Bill Cable is a lawyer who has spent fifty years in practice and, more recently, given his voice to stories the court system silenced. A fifth-generation Australian whose ancestor Henry Cable arrived on the First Fleet, Bill discovered thirty years after making a sperm donation that he had fathered two children. A man he'd never met called to say thank you for his existence. Later, Bill met the woman who carried both children and learned he had a daughter as well. The connection with his son is warm but uncomplicated by the intensity of parental relationship, since Bill did not raise him.
Bill's own children from his marriage faced a different path. He fought in family court for seven years, limited to four days every fourteen days with them, until he gave up trying altogether. Ten years of silence followed, broken only when his teenage children called him out of the blue wanting to reconnect. The court system, he explains, is fundamentally broken: judges ignore precedent, treat every case as entirely unique, and rarely enforce their own orders when mothers breach them. The child support agency added another layer of bureaucratic punishment. These experiences led Bill to join Dads on the Air in 2009, a community radio program created by fathers to address what family law had taken from them. Since then, he has interviewed nearly 250 people, from parents who survived priest abuse to those rebuilding after unimaginable loss.
Now in his senior years, Bill sees the privilege of his role: drawing on decades of experience to ask better questions and make real connections. He believes modern Australian fathers are far more involved in their children's daily lives than his own father was, and that this makes separation harder because mothers become gatekeepers to that relationship. For young Australians, he sees cause for optimism. His advice is simple: stay healthy, keep your mind active, and stay connected to people who have lived through something.
Every story here belongs to the person who lived it. They said yes to sharing it, and we sat with it carefully before it went up. Nothing here is exaggerated and nothing is used without permission. Read how we handle these stories ↗
Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗