John Cockatoo left Mapoon Mission when he was fifteen years old to work on a cattle station. Cockatoo never received all of his earned wages because they were withheld by the state. Husband of Doreen Cockatoo.
John Cockatoo's story was recorded by the National Library of Australia for the Bringing Them Home oral history project and appeared in the associated publication Many Voices: Reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation, edited by Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich (2002).
