THE BLAINE FAMILY GOSPEL

Stalked by a would-be prophet and threatened with kidnapping, Lech and Hannah Blaine's family saga is stranger than fiction. But their siblings and the love of devoted foster parents saw them through.

- WORDS by GENEVIEVE GANNON

Hannah Blaine was born in a bath, in a motel in New Zealand, to the ex-wife of a pop singer who appeared on the cover of The Weekly and a Christian fanatic who believed he was a modern-day Jesus Christ.

Hannah's birth mother, Mary Shelley, was 47 when Hannah entered the world. She'd had a hard life, following her self-proclaimed prophet husband up and down Australia's eastern flank as he harassed politicians and breathed fire and brimstone at anyone who challenged his narrow world view.

Hannah's birth father, Michael Shelley, had spent time in prison for kidnapping the couple's firstborn son, Elijah. He lived by a personal manifesto that was “a bewildering mixture of environmentalism and Old Testament misogyny”, according to Hannah's youngest brother, Lech, who would later recount the whole dramatic family saga in a book, Australian Gospel.

It was an explosive start to life. After Hannah was born, the Shelleys wound up in a psychiatric hospital. They were released but social workers intervened when baby Hannah failed to thrive. Michael agreed to sign a guardianship order to reunite Hannah with her brothers, who had been fostered by a Queensland couple, Lenore and Tom Blaine. Unbeknown to the Blaines, Michael had agreed only because he believed it would be easier to track down his children if they were all together.

Tom Blaine was a sport-loving, wisecracking pub owner. Lenore was gentle and bighearted, bookish and nurturing. The Blaines had been unable to have children of their own, so had opened their hearts and home to foster kids. They were raising a boy named Trent when they took in the sons of Michael and Mary Shelley. Saul and Joshua Shelley were later legally renamed Steven and John Blaine, and Lenore knitted jumpers for the boys with their new names on them.