THE Telstra AFL Community Camps are renowned for providing a final opportunity for teams to bond on the eve of the season proper. For emerging forward Jarrod Harbrow, the Bulldogs' 2008 trip to Darwin offered the chance to share something very personal with his teammates.

The Dogs' time in the Territory coincided with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's official apology to the indigenous community for past injustices.

It touched a raw nerve within the 19-year-old. Harbrow's maternal grandmother was part of the "stolen generation”. She was taken from her far north Queensland community of Chinacamp as a teenager, and forced to accept the assigned identity of Betty Singleton in Yarrabah, near Cairns.

The young Bulldog said the Prime Minister's historic apology meant "a fair bit" to both him and his family given what his grandmother endured all those years ago.

“It's a part of who I am, it's a part of my family, and it got carried down from my grandmother,” Harbrow said. “That's why my family was all pretty passionate about Wednesday and what it means.

“The story started when she was living up in a community in far north Queensland. One day the white people came in carriages and on horseback and they were singling out the half-caste kids. My grandmother, as well as her brothers and her sisters, were half-castes, which is what the white people wanted. So they came through and grabbed them and took them away, and relocated them to another community.

“My grandmother was half-caste was because her mother was raped, and so that was carried down. What my grandmother's mother used to do was find charcoal and rub it into my grandmother and her brothers and sisters so they looked like they were blacker.

“It didn't work enough, so the white people picked up who they needed to, which was the lighter brown kids on that day. They went to another community where they were given a new life, and new names. It wasn't necessarily the life they wanted; it was the life they were told would be better for them.”

Harbrow said Betty found it hard to listen to Aboriginal musician Archie Roach's song, "Took the Children Away", as it "reminded her too much" of what happened. He added that Prime Minister Rudd's apology would have "meant a great deal to her", had she been alive to hear it.

"She passed away last year, but it would have meant a great deal, as well to all of my family," he said. "We were definitely paying attention to the TV and what went on. For the Prime Minister to say that, just recognising and acknowledging what went on, is something that John Howard couldn't do.”

Harbrow shared his tale with his teammates on Wednesday evening at a team dinner held in downtown Darwin.

“I was at the airport with Will Minson and Wayne Campbell on Tuesday, and Wayne was talking about the apology and I happened to walk past," he said. "I told them a brief story about my family, and Wayne was interested and asked if I wouldn't mind telling it to the group at dinner.

"I wanted to do it. A few guys came up to me and said they hadn't heard that side of the story before, because in schools I think they only teach about Captain Cook discovering Australia, and not about who was there in the first place.”