Family
Originally from the town of Aberdeen in New South Wales' Hunter Valley, Barbara Roughan (Née Thorley) was forced to move to Moree after beginning a relationship with Ken Knight, a co-worker of her husband Jack Roughan. The Roughan and Knight families were both well known in the conservative rural town and the affair was a major scandal. Two of Roughan’s four children remained with their father while the two youngest were sent to live with an aunt in Sydney.
Katherine Knight was the younger of twins born to Barbara and her de facto partner Ken on 24 October 1955, in Tenterfield, New South Wales. Jack Roughan died in 1959 and the two children who had lived with him moved in with the Knight family. Barbara’s grandmother was apparently an Indigenous Australian from the Moree area who had married an Irishman. She was proud of this fact and liked to think of her own family as Aboriginal. This was kept a family secret, as there was considerable racism in the area at the time, and this was a source of tension for the children. Apart from her twin, the only person Knight was close to was her uncle, Oscar Knight, who was a champion horseman. She was devastated when he committed suicide in 1969, and continues to maintain that his ghost visits her. The family moved back to Aberdeen the same year.
Read more about this topic: Katherine Knight
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