At the age of five, Donna Meehan was taken away from her Aboriginal parents in Coonamble and put on a train with her four brothers for a sixteen hour trip to Newcastle. Meehan's mother lost seven of her children within three months and Donna was sent to a white foster family in Newcastle who later adopted her. She was was not reunited with her mother until twenty three years later. Meehan, a community programs officer with the Department of Community Services, writes autobiographical narratives.
Meehan'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).