More than 75 years later, he has finally gained the legal right to seek compensation for beatings he endured for 14 years at the hands of the Sisters of Mercy, and for the lies they told to stop him from escaping.

"I've been fighting for more than 30 years," he told AAP on Tuesday.

"I intuitively knew I could not back off and that one day we would either be all dead, or we would win.

"We've won."

The Children's Department took Allan because his mother was single. She had rejected the sexual advances of a Catholic priest and he had retaliated by reporting her to authorities.

Allan was consigned to the infamous Neerkol Orphanage in Rockhampton where he was flogged and injured so badly he still bears the scars of an attack with a broken broom handle.

"We were living in 24/7 fear of when we were going to get the next flogging," he said.

"They used to say our parents came from the gutter and we will wind up in the gutter."

To Mr Allaway however, the physical scars are nothing compared with the psychological scars of being lied to by staff, who told him his parents were both dead, to deter him from running away.

In his late teens, Allan applied to join the Air Force which offered not only a job, but food and a place to live.

In an twist of fate, Allan's mother Evelyn-May Smith was working in the office that processed the applications. She recognised his name and found him.

Allan spent three months with his mother until she died suddenly.

In the precious time they were together, Mrs Smith showed Allan copies of dozens of letters she had written over 17 years begging the state government to let her know where her son was, so she could get him back.

"The Children's Department would never, ever tell her," he said.

This is when Mr Allaway became determined to seek vindication for his mother and himself.

By the 1980s Mr Allaway had started trying to call the government to account for cheating him of his mother and his education, giving evidence to the Ford Inquiry.

Lawyer after lawyer told him he was statute barred from even stepping in a court to seek compensation.

Mr Allaway mounted a long-running, one-man protest and eventually befriended Premier Annastasia Palaszczuk.

In 2016, when the premier announced reforms to child abuse laws and told parliament Mr Allaway was her inspiration, he thought he had won.

But his hopes were dashed upon reading the legislation, which stated only survivors of sexual abuse had access to courts to seek compensation for serious physical abuse and connected psychological abuse.

Undaunted, Mr Allaway, then 75, decided to fight on.

He said he was still in shock on Tuesday when he heard he'd finally won.

"They are going to include the physical and psychological abuse," he said after hearing about the development, which comes on the first anniversary of the National Apology.

Mr Allaway wore black to Parliament House in Brisbane on Tuesday to show that half of his heart was in mourning on his celebration day for the orphans who did not live to see it.

"I'm sending a non-verbal message, 'Hey, we're still here and we're not forgetting our people who have gone to their graves having been denied natural justice'."

Australian Associated Press