Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (36 page)

‘It is proposed that the Commonwealth seek out in Britain and Europe, in each of the first three post-war years, at least 17,000 children a year (ie about 50,000 in three years) suitable and available for migration to Australia …’

Fifty thousand? Unbelievable! That’s a lot of mothers and fathers without their children. Yet the details of this Pied Piper scheme were even more astonishing.

British children from six to fourteen years and ‘white alien children’ aged from six to twelve, were to be accommodated in converted military bases and airforce camps. After the first stage of ‘education, language mastery and assimilation’, they would graduate to hostels housing forty or fifty, based in Australian towns with populations of over 2,500 people.

‘The immigrant children should enter naturally and fully into the social and community life of the town. Civic pride and responsibility should be invoked; the townspeople and town authorities should be brought to look upon these immigrant children as a special and honourable responsibility of their town …’

The estimated cost of this scheme over eight years was 26.3 million pounds, shared between the State and Federal Governments.

In the minutes of the 1945 conference, it emerged that all the States had agreed to co-operate, but some delegates were unhappy with the plan. A Mr Pittard from Victoria said, ‘It savoured too much of the institutional type of treatment,’ while a Mr Baker of South Australia said, ‘It was better to place children in private homes.’

The possibility of adoption was also raised. NSW had a waiting-list of 500 adoptive families, Victoria 400, and South Australia 200. This was quickly dismissed because of the ‘substantial legal obstacles’ associated with adopting a British child, and the fact that most families wanted to adopt infants under three years of age.

I smiled ironically. Yes, I thought, it would have been extremely difficult to adopt child migrants legally because many of their parents had not, and would not, have given permission for their children to be sent overseas in the first place.

The scheme envisaged by Australia’s State Premiers in 1945 was too ambitious. They did find child migrants, but not the 50,000 in three years they wanted. The number was closer to 10,000 over many more years. But to my mind, even one child was one too many.

There could be no excuses – no cover-ups. The importing of children into Australia was a deliberate social policy. The honourable gentlemen who governed the nation gathered together and planned to populate their country, brazenly talking of acquiring children as if they were the spoils of war. Children made the ‘best migrants’. Children couldn’t complain.

Ever since the plight of Britain’s child migrants had first been revealed, the charities and agencies had accused me of not putting child migration into its historical context. They argued that I had never taken into account the deprivation, poverty and hardship that had existed in Britain following the war; that the children that they had sent abroad were given a new start in life with better prospects and opportunities.

Is this the historical context they referred to? Were the needs of children being fully met by pragmatically using them to boost Australia’s population?

Over the next few months, more brown envelopes arrived. Whoever was sending me these documents seemed to know my movements. The envelopes would arrive in Nottingham, in Melbourne or in Perth – wherever I was staying.

I had no idea who was sending them to me but I knew that he or she was definitely a friend of the child migrants; someone who wanted the truth to be fully revealed.

I spread the documents over my desk one afternoon trying to put them in chronological order to see what picture emerged. I particularly wanted to find out if there was any evidence that the authorities had had any idea what was happening inside the institutions in Australia.

The Secretary of the Child Welfare Department in Western Australia wrote a memo to his Minister on 3 July 1946.

‘I have been very disturbed in mind about some of the boys who have been brought into Western Australia from overseas … [in particular] I have been disappointed in the Roman Catholic Scheme … the interests of the boys who came to Western Australia in 1938 and 1939 were not safeguarded; instead of them being placed out in employment they have been retained in connection with building operations for which in the main no wages have been paid them, or if placed out they have rarely received a full wage …

‘Some of the boys concerned have complained most bitterly at the treatment meted out to them. The Department has a record of such cases. The list is not large but I should say that for each who has complained to the Department there must be a number of others who have not so complained. It has been common knowledge that a lot of the buildings erected at Clontarf, Bindoon and Tardun have been erected with the aid of migrant boys, that without the migrant boys the building operations would have been retarded …

‘I am of the opinion that something should be done to adequately protect the interests of other children coming to Western Australia whether in connection with the Fairbridge scheme, the Roman Catholic scheme or any other scheme which may arise in the future …’

There was a similar memo on 11 August 1947, from another public servant.

‘The 1938–39 scheme in many ways was disastrous. Children brought out under this scheme became antisocial, anti-Australian and anti-Christ, and some of them unfortunately have returned to the Old Country, not at all satisfied with the treatment received at the hands of the authorities here. This at all costs must be avoided in the future.’

Sadly, I suspect none of these complaints ever reached Britain. Even if they had, it is highly unlikely, in my view, that anybody would have listened or acted decisively.

Four days after this last memo was written, the
SS Asturias
set sail with 250 boys and girls destined to begin the new wave of child migration. This time it was the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations in Britain who signed the agreement, and again the three governments (British, Commonwealth and Western Australian) shared the cost, contributing eleven shillings a week towards the maintenance of each child and a grant of five pounds for a going-away outfit.

According to the documents, unaccompanied children arriving in Australia automatically came under the guardianship of the Federal Minister for Immigration, who delegated this responsibility, normally to the head of the Child Welfare Department in each State. The child migrants were then indentured to a particular child care institution until they were sixteen years old.

In Western Australia, the Under-secretary for Lands and Immigration became the ‘guardian’ of the children in the late 1940s, and this later passed to the Child Welfare Department.

Institutions such as those run by the Christian Brothers were initially supposed to be inspected every two months, and later quarterly. Unfortunately, these visits became the exception rather than the rule. A letter from the Director of the Child Welfare Department in October 1958 complained that there had been no inspection of Clontarf for more than three years.

A Commonwealth Migration Officer visited Bindoon Boys’ Town on 23 July 1948, and was shown around the school by Brother Keaney.

‘The most urgent need of this Institution would appear to be the necessity to complete their building programme to allow proper sleeping and ablution facilities for the students (at present a number of boys sleep on the verandas which in wet weather is not altogether desirable).

‘All of the buildings and proposed new buildings are to be of stone and brick and at present the only adults employed are an Italian bricklayer and a British carpenter. Trainee boys are employed on making bricks, plastering and cement work and certain forms of carpentering.’

The Christian Brothers divided the children according to age and ability. Infants went to Castledare Junior Orphanage; older boys who showed any academic bent went to Clontarf, 7 miles south-east of Perth, and boys interested in learning a trade were sent to either Bindoon or St Mary’s Farm School at Tardun.

A 1951 report by the Education Department gives this breakdown:

CASTLEDARE: Infant boys, migrants and local, are still being taught by Brothers whose training does not equip them for the work.

CLONTARF: The lowest and weakest grades are still taught by an untrained layman, the bandmaster, and the task is far beyond his capabilities.

BINDOON: The staffing has not been of a nature to handle effectively the serious problem of the junior grades.

In much the same tone, a 1954 Child Welfare Department report criticizes Clontarf for the failure to build a cement floor for the bed-wetters dormitory; to keep a punishment book; and to give migrant children enough writing materials and stamps to send more than one letter a month.

But by far the most damning report was reserved for Castledare Junior Orphanage. Boys as young as three, some migrants and others State wards, were denied even the basic decency of being put to sleep at night in a clean bed.

This is what the Child Welfare Department discovered on 5 July 1948: ‘Cubicles generally dingy and in no way bright or attractive; floors stained under the beds by liquid, which undoubtedly was urine which had dropped there through continually saturated mattresses. In several instances there was still a quantity of urine on the floor, which had not soaked away and no effort had been made to mop it up. Under one bed there appeared to be one area where the urine had dried out on the boards, leaving a salty crust. Many of the wire mattresses of these beds showed a rusty tarnish on the area of contact with urine. The mattresses were themselves in a deplorable state … dirt had become impregnated on the urine-affected area. The mattress covering was grimy and dirty. The mattresses themselves were torn and in the first right-hand cubicle off the courtyard of the first block, the mattress was nearly torn in half, exposing a mass of brown fibre filling. In this case the Manager, Brother McGee admitted that a boy was using this bed …

‘The blankets inspected were miserably thin, being, I believe, ex Army and American Forces stock; two and three blankets to a bed and totally inadequate both in quantity and quality to provide necessary warmth for children of tender years sleeping on these verandas subject to the chill conditions of winter …

‘Practically all pyjamas seen under the children’s pillows were grubby and dirty, damp with urine …

‘It must be remembered that this Home was built for an entirely different purpose from that for which it is now being utilized but its general deterioration must be of concern to the Roman Catholic Authorities. Castledare is catering for children who are still little more than babies, who need love, affection, care and attention which a child of such age would get from a mother …

‘There appears to be no organized medical parade nor any woman qualified to attend to the welfare of these young children. Epidemics have been experienced before in institutions and, in particular, Castledare some years ago had an outbreak of “Vincent’s Angina” [a type of trench mouth] which caused no end of expense to the authorities and suffering to the children, and it is possible that infantile paralysis would sweep through this Home with disastrous effect, and, in view of the present conditions mentioned in this report, would be difficult to control.

‘The children appeared to be quite healthy and it is hoped will remain so, but the fresh complexion may be the result of a new climate and fresh air in a new country. Lying in wet beds and dirty clothes will eventually take its toll.’

Is this the historical context that the charities and agencies claim I had ignored?

I have always accepted that, for whatever misguided reasons, governments and agencies did what they thought was right at the time. But what I can’t accept, is that they were warned. They knew what was happening to the child migrants – and apparently did nothing.

What began as a trickle of requests for help became a flood. By the end of 1992 the Child Migrants Trust had received more than 20,000 enquiries since its inception. We had two full-time family researchers, a social worker in Australia, another in the UK, and Yvonne.

We were working long hours, piecing together the histories of literally thousands of families. Thankfully, we no longer continually had to travel to London and sift through hefty volumes at St Catherine’s House. At great expense, the Trust had managed to buy the birth, death and marriage records on 12,000 microfiche. This saved us a tremendous amount of time and energy, and money in the long run.

Still, I was always conscious of the fact that I lived and worked on the opposite side of the world from the very people we were trying to help. My visits to Australia were always hectic affairs with no time to become a part of the migrants’ lives or to understand their way of life.

Similarly, there were some child migrants who I felt would never approach me for an interview in a Perth hotel room. These migrants had suffered more than most and despite my attempts to make my hotel room warm and welcoming, it was still daunting for these people to enter a large hotel.

I felt it was necessary to spend a longer period in Perth and establish myself in a house where child migrants would feel comfortable either just dropping in for a coffee or sitting down for a meaningful discussion.

On 4 December 1992, after months of preparation, I flew to Australia. The Trust team had been working until the early hours in the morning preparing me for the journey. Yvonne, in particular, had to ensure everything I would need was packed safely in the black boxes. Meanwhile, Joan Kerry, our social worker, was crisscrossing the UK, preparing families for the eventual reunions with their sons and daughters. These had been made possible by the work of John Myles and our new researcher Beverley Rutter, who had joined the team when John and Penny married and started a family.

I had to present my annual report to Nottinghamshire County Council in the morning; then catch an afternoon train to reach Heathrow by 8.00 p.m. Whatever happened, I couldn’t miss the flight.