Alicia Adams and her brother were sent to Bomaderry Children's Home at the ages of fourteen months and three years respectively. In 1953, Adams was sent to the Cootamundra Girls' Home where she was not as happy. At fifteen she was sent to work on a dairy farm as a housekeeper and as a domestic for a Minister in Moss Vale. Adams was unhappy in these arrangements and was much happier to be sent back to Bomaderry at the age of sixteen. Alice Adams met her mother several times from the age of sixteen but the emotional bond had been broken. Adams began studies at Bible College the following year. She was an assistant at the United Aborigines Mission Home at Bomaderry, New South Wales, until 1988.
Adams' story was recorded and transcribed in The Lost Children: Thirteen Australians taken from their Aboriginal families tell of the struggle to find their natural parents (1989), edited by Coral Edwards and Peter Read.
