In 1959 Richard Hill's mother, Kathleen, a poverty-stricken single mother who tried to raise four boys on a domestic servant's income, reluctantly decided to send her three sons, Malcolm, Richard and David, to Fairbridge Farm School in New South Wales where, she was led to believe, they would have a good education and a better life.

Hill and his twin brother, David, were the last of Kathleen Hill's five boys. The twins were born in 1946. They never knew for sure the identity of their father and were living in poverty with their mum and half-brother Dudley on a council estate outside Eastbourne when two "ladies from the Fairbridge Society" came calling one day in 1959.

Kathleen decided to make the sacrifice of surrendering her boys to a better future and soon the trio was on the P&O luxury liner Strathaird bound for Pyrmont's pier 13. She arrived in Australia two years later and in late 1961 her boys left Molong to join her in Sydney.

Richard Hill became a high-profile banker and lives in Sydney, Australia.