The Cherbourg Viking

Big Mike Salbro is Swedish, Aboriginal and Aussie.

Mike Salbro didn’t learn he was an Aboriginal Australian until he was ten or eleven. And being raised in northern Europe.

Mike’s adopted Swedish home was half a world away from where he was born and it took him years to engineer a return to his Cherbourg roots.

What happened to Mike shouldn’t happen to any child but it produced a giant of a man — in both frame and character.

Mike says his biological mother was only about 16 when he was born — that’s half the age he is now. At about three months, he was adopted by a Swedish couple living in Australia and spent five or six years living in Ipswich and Goodna. At that point his parents split and Mike, his adoptive mother and adopted brother headed to Sweden.

He was raised as a Swedish child and considers himself as “Swedish first”. He says the country was quite accepting. “Sweden is a multicultural country,” he said. “I was seen as an African. My closest friends (were) Africans.”

It was a few years before Mike learned about his Aboriginal heritage. “I think I was ten or eleven. That’s when I was told,” he said. “It was a shock, but it was not a bad thing. It made me curious.” That curiosity led him to research his culture, and he produced assignments on it during his high school years.

When he was 11, Mike’s adoptive mother passed away and he went to live with her sister in northern Sweden. “That’s when I started playing up. I couldn’t deal with Mum’s passing,” he said.

He got involved in “drugs, alcohol, criminal activity” which inevitably led to a rehabilitation centre. He was incarcerated for four or five years – most of his high school years, he recalls with a hint of bitterness.

Ironically, it was the start of what has been Mike’s life’s calling. “I completed my time … and started working with kids,” he said. These were children who were in similar situations to his own. “(When I was) a kid, those youth workers (in the rehabilitation centre) changed my life,” he said. “(I thought:) if they can help me, I can help someone else.”

Mike also discovered music. “After my rehabilitation time, I joined a band,” he said. “Music was the perfect tool for me. (Before that,) I didn’t know how to express myself; that’s why I ended up in trouble. I started to write songs and started performing. People listened to me.”

The circle completed itself when Mike was hired to work at the same rehabilitation centre in which he’d stayed as a teenager.

Youth work was also Mike’s key to returning to Australia. He said he had dreamed of doing it for years but, without the financial means, his only connection was his high school research and the hazy, childhood memories of living in Goodna.

Then he received an offer to help set up a rehabilitation centre at Port Macquarie in NSW. He returned to Australia in 2000 – a move that allowed him to renew his relationship with his adoptive father.

One day “I got a phone call from my foster dad, saying my biological mother was looking for me,” Mike said. It was a shock. “I thought she didn’t want me; I thought she was probably dead.”

Even after these years, Mike says their relationship is still evolving. “She will never be the mother (to me that) my adoptive mother was, but I love and respect my biological mother for who she is and for what she has done in past and present,” he said.

The reunion opened up Mike’s connection with Cherbourg. He finally returned in 2000, accompanied by a Swedish film crew which heard of his story. “We all met at Nan and Pop’s house, all the aunties and uncles and cousins,” he said. “They all gathered around and sussed me out – ‘who’s this fellow, all dressed up?’”

Mike moved to Cherbourg, working for a while as a community police officer. However, the calling of youth work was strong and he returned to it.

Mike now lives in Brisbane, and continues working with young people. He has two boys, Michael Junior, 4, and Demario, aged six months.

His partner is Joyce Taylor, from Liberia in Africa. “She’s got a story, too – getting shot at, hiding in the bush to get away from guerrillas,” he said.

Mike says he is not bitter about his early life. “It allowed me to grow up in another country and speak another language. It’s a beautiful cou country with beautiful people.”