The Forgotten Children (33 page)
Read The Forgotten Children Online
Authors: David Hill
L
EGACY
Every childhood lasts a lifetime. For many who spent their childhood at Fairbridge the experience has had an enduring impact throughout their adult lives. But despite the difficulties they have faced there are a number of inspiring stories of former Fairbridge children who have turned their lives around.
Typical Fairbridge children had no one. They arrived in Australia alone, and later left to go out into the world still completely on their own. When these kids left the farm school at around seventeen they were likely to be poorly educated, socially and emotionally incomplete, lost, alienated, poor. Some went on to suffer mental illness, spend time in prison or commit suicide.
When I embarked on compiling the histories of former Fairbridge children, I had no idea of the extent to which so many of them had suffered from the experience, and how they have carried the pain and the memories all their lives. Even though I had been at Fairbridge at the same time as many of the people I interviewed, I had little comprehension of what they were going through. I was a boy at the time, and I had a far more fortunate experience than most of the other Fairbridge children. I was older when I arrived and came with a twin and an older brother, and we did not suffer the abuse that many of the other younger children did. My brothers and I spent less than three years there, whereas the majority spent their entire childhood at Fairbridge. Most importantly, we belonged to a family who had temporarily been split up in the process of migration and would get back together later. We had a mum. Consequently my story is in no way comparable with the awful childhoods experienced by typical Fairbridge children.
I asked one of the former Fairbridge girls why it had taken more than forty years for her to be prepared to tell her story; why she hadn’t spoken out about the awful things she experienced as a child. ‘To who?’ she replied angrily. ‘I never had anyone to speak to about this.’
I went on to ask her if she had talked it over with her family. She said that while she’d wanted to, it had always proved to be too difficult, which means that her husband, children and grandchildren will first learn of her story from reading this book. She found it easier to talk to me – and through me the whole world – rather than tell those closest to her about her experiences at the school.
I hope those who have found the courage to tell their stories will find strength in the stories of others. Many of the former Fairbridge children thought their horrible experiences were unique. A number expressed surprise that others had also been sexually abused. Many didn’t know that other Fairbridge kids have struggled through life with unresolved issues similar to their own.
Gwen Miller, who arrived at Fairbridge as a ten-year-old in 1952, feels that Fairbridge robbed her and her sister and brothers of their childhood, and that the experience has affected her throughout adult life.
My children missed out on the most important thing in a child’s life. I didn’t know how to show them that I loved them, apart from when they were babies. I didn’t kiss them and cuddle them enough as they were growing up. I didn’t show any real emotion … I don’t think they ever saw me cry.
I wish I had been able to tell them that they were the most important people in my life. I don’t know, maybe it was that I don’t trust or get too close because it makes one vulnerable, then you might get hurt.
[At Fairbridge] no one ever put their arm around you or touched your arm or your hand. The word ‘love’ was never mentioned. Fairbridge taught us to work hard from the time the six a.m. bell went until after tea. You don’t show any emotion and you never let anyone know you were upset about anything.
The worst thing is there was sort of no love or attention and I don’t think anybody would ever have put their arm around a child out there; even my little brother probably never had anyone’s arm around him. I don’t recall hearing anyone ever say to a child ‘You did very well. That was very good what you did.’
Janet Ellis arrived at Fairbridge as a seven-year-old in 1954 with her ten-year-old brother, Mickey, and her eight-year-old brother, Paul, and spent ten years at the farm school. Janet also feels her childhood at Fairbridge has affected her all her life.
I can’t shake it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it; I know I won’t.
I had a pretty unhappy childhood there. There wasn’t anyone to pick you up and give you a cuddle and say it was all right. They called me scum; they said I was dirty. They said I was the lowest form of life. I don’t remember anyone ever saying to me ‘You did a good job, Jan. Well done.’ I remember a lot of people hitting me around the head and belting me with whatever they could lay their hands on.
While at Fairbridge she was given no help with growing up.
I didn’t know anything. Absolutely nothing. I remember the first time I got my periods and I thought, Oh God. I’m bleeding to death. And I went to bed. The cottage mother came in and I said, ‘I can’t get out of bed, I’m bleeding to death.’ And then one day the cottage mother threw this huge old lady’s bra at me. I didn’t know what it was. It was as big as a tent and I was told I had to wear it.
Janet is one of a number of former Fairbridge girls who say they were sexually abused by Jack Newberry.
I was eleven or twelve. I still find it hard to talk about. He used to grab you and run his hands all over you. It was disgusting. He was a creep. He just thought he had a God-given right to do what he wanted. And what could you do? He used to say no one would believe you.
I was angry and then you tell your cottage mother and she accuses you of telling lies. The adults didn’t want to believe you. So I went to Woods and he said the same as the cottage mother: ‘You’re telling lies.’
After leaving Fairbridge, Janet, like so many other girls, was sent to work as a domestic servant on a remote farm out in the west of the state, where she was lonely and felt socially inept.
Every time a visitor came I used to run and hide somewhere. We had never socialised with anyone at Fairbridge. We were unimportant. My biggest fear was fear. There was nobody. You were alone and lonely. I got married. I think it was just escape, actually. I think it was the worst thing I ever did. So violent it was unbelievable. I ended up escaping through the bathroom window. He used to flog the hell out of me.
I spent so much time in counselling and I tried to commit suicide and I’ve also lost babies. I suddenly wake up after so many years and think, ‘If you commit suicide you’re giving in to these bastards.’ And it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.
Life began to turn around for her when she married a second time and, in her thirties, gave birth to her daughter, Kim. But she still has trouble talking about her childhood experiences, even to her family.
It’s not a thing I talked about. I don’t even tell my family. You can’t let people get too close to you. I still can’t, to a certain degree. You just don’t want to continue to be hurt for the rest of your life.
Robert Stephens went to Fairbridge as an eight-year-old and spent his entire childhood there. He believes that lack of affection when they were young is a big issue for Fairbridge children in adult life.
A huge factor. Particularly later in life. I mean, in my case … I never had it as a child, affection of a parent, having been in an orphanage from day one … I never knew how to cuddle; I never knew how to love someone, or things like that.
Now, that had huge implications further down the track … There was an incredible lack of affection … There was just a theme right through the place: you were a sook if emotions came into it.
Vivian Bingham is pleased that Fairbridge children are now speaking out, even though it is painful:
I just kept it to myself … now it’s all coming out … like, the floodgates are opening. The can of worms is just opening and … you know you’ve bottled it up so long and it’s started to come out … And when you start to relive it, the pain … comes back. It’s the best thing that could happen … to get it out … It really wrecked a lot of people’s lives, that place.
Billy King, who sailed to Australia on the same ship as me, never experienced any family life as a child and grew up unable to express love and affection.
Well, I had lots of problems with my kids. It’s only now the kids have grown up I give them a cuddle when they come over. But it took me a lot of years to be able to do it. When the kids were growing up I couldn’t do any of that … [As a child] I missed having a family. At Fairbridge, if you had a problem there was nobody you could sit with – all the years I was at Fairbridge … there was no one to turn to [who would] put their arms around me and give me a bloody cuddle and say, ‘It will be right, Billy. It will be right.’ There was no one there you could sort of talk to. There was no love in the place at all. It was just absolutely stone cold.
I had a lot of trouble when I left Fairbridge, like, as a matter of fact, I was under a psychiatrist for quite a while, and I remember him saying to me: ‘Look Bill, the problem is, if you’ve never been shown love, how the hell could you give it? These things have to be taught.’ I remember him saying that.
Billy still holds the social worker who arranged for him to be sent to Fairbridge partly responsible for what he went through:
She’s dead now, and you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but … with what she has done to my life, if she was still alive, I just would have loved to have fronted up to her and said, ‘Well, look, here’s me. This is what I’ve gone through. This is what you’ve done.’
A number of those who have unpleasant recollections of Fairbridge nevertheless managed to salvage something of value from the experience. John Wolvey has many awful memories, but says Fairbridge had some benefit: ‘It prepared me for the hard times I had later.’ Derek Moriarty is bitter about being sent out to Fairbridge – recalling stories of brutality, sexual abuse and running away and being pursued by police – but says he still has positive feelings about the place.
David Wilson was five when he arrived at Fairbridge and lived there for ten years. David was a wild young fellow and ran away from Fairbridge on a number of occasions, eventually ending up in a boys’ prison.
Honestly, I can’t really put Fairbridge down. Because we got three feeds a day; we always had a bed to sleep in; and now, when I think about it, you know like, when I was in England, it would have been a lot worse.
Very few speak with unqualified support of the place. John Harris is unusual not only for his strong support of Fairbridge but also for his belief that all children should be forced to spend two years in an institution like Fairbridge when they reach ten years of age.
I would like to see every kid go through an institutional experience like that – not in Sydney but a place like Molong, or Orange or Pinjarra or somewhere. It would equip them better for life …
But John admits Fairbridge has left him emotionally insular and short on personal and social skills.
Quoting others, including my wife, Fairbridge, in her opinion, has made me too self-sufficient. I rely on no one – if I can’t do it myself, it doesn’t get done or I’ll call someone in [and pay them] to do it. I will not ask anyone for help.
Fairbridge didn’t allow us to go to Molong to mix with the kids other than [at] school time … [If they had] I’d say we’d be better for it in terms of our skills in dealing with people outside an institution. Coming from such a disciplined background – and remember, I’d been in institutions from the age of about six – I didn’t know much else.
Those who are more generous about Fairbridge were mostly older when they arrived at the farm school, so spent less time there. Laurie Field arrived as a fourteen-year-old in 1952 and stayed barely two years. He thought the Fairbridge scheme to be a ‘good idea’, but would not like to see his children go through the same experience.
Most of Fairbridge children have overwhelmingly negative memories of the farm school. As Lennie Magee says:
So, if somebody tries to tell me what a wonderful experience Fairbridge was, I say, well that’s good for you. I’m not going to knock your good memories but don’t tell me that I’m exaggerating the situation when I tell you I had a dreadful time there.
Many years after all the child-migrant centres had closed the parliaments of Britain and Australia conducted inquiries that condemned the child migrant schemes for what they did to children.
In Britain, the House of Commons Select Committee for Health conducted an inquiry into the welfare of former British child migrants and its report was published in 1998.
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It concluded that:
Child migration was a bad and, in human terms, costly mistake … In many cases child migrants suffered emotional and physical hardship and abuse, of a kind which has had damaging consequences for their health and well-being for the remainder of their lives.
The committee also concluded that the former child-migrant organisations had responsibility for addressing the damage they caused to children.
Blame must be distributed amongst all the governments and agencies who involved themselves with child migration. This imposes on them a responsibility to offer help to the surviving human casualties of the child migration schemes.
Two organisations that had been involved with child migration agreed with the House of Commons inquiry and accepted some responsibility for the damage it caused to children. The Children’s Society ran a child-migrant scheme principally to Canada and later to Australia from the late nineteenth century till the 1950s. Its social work director, David Lovell, told the House of Commons inquiry that the organisation accepted responsibility for what happened to the children and had established an after-care service for former child migrants. ‘We accept the responsibility for the past in the organisation and the responsibility to look at what we are doing to try to do our best to heal that’. When giving oral evidence, Roger Singleton CBE, chief executive of Barnardo’s, which also ran child-migrant schemes to Canada and Australia, told the inquiry: ‘It was barbaric; it was dreadful. We look back on it in our organisation with shock and horror.’
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