Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

by Margaret Humphreys

  I was deeply upset. It was not the child migrants’ fault. The Trust’s lack of funds had ensured that we had to work twelve hours a day, most days of the week.

  I had missed Rachel’s birthday almost every year except one – her eighteenth – in the previous five years. I had missed anniversaries, school concerts, fêtes, football games … the list was shamefully long.

  And no matter how hard I tried to acknowledge that failure when I returned home, it was never the same. You can’t make up for missing a birthday – that special day is gone for ever.

  On the other hand, I was working with people who sometimes had never known, with any certainty, on what day they should be celebrating their birthday, or even their correct age. I’ve often sent people their first birthday card. It is my way of letting them know how important they are to me.

  My children have grown up in the real world. Thankfully, they understand the sacrifices our family has made. And they know that I would never let the child migrants down. I couldn’t live with myself.

  Soon after I returned to the UK, I was surprised to hear that Dr Barry Coldrey had finally revealed limited details of his ‘investigation’ on behalf of the Christian Brothers. He admitted to the West Australian newspaper that he had uncovered evidence that some brothers may have sexually abused children at Bindoon Boys’ Town. Whether his wider findings were made public, he said, would depend upon his ‘employer’.

  ‘I am prepared to say that the lines of evidence against certain staff members are strong, but I’m not, at the moment, prepared to go further than that.’

  He went on to comment on one brother whose name had cropped up often in the Bindoon old boys’ stories, saying, ‘There are strong allegations against this chap [Brother] Angus but all I would say at this stage is that if he was living, well, he would have a lot to answer for.’

  As far as I knew, this was the first time the Christian Brothers had admitted that there might, after all, be some truth in the allegations of sexual abuse. Dr Coldrey went on to name another brother and a priest, Father William Giminez, against whom there had been ‘constant but never precise’ allegations.

  Playing the fair-minded academic, Coldrey conceded some points and appeared both reasonable and balanced. However, having accepted that the allegations might be true, he then attacked other claims made by old boys.

  But research can work both ways.

  Perth social psychologist, Juanita Miller, was writing a doctoral thesis on the treatment of child migrants in Western Australia. Ms Miller interviewed 180 former child migrants from Bindoon, Clontarf, Tardun and Castledare and eventually claimed that in a given year at Clontarf Boys’ Home, as many as 50 of the 250 boys were being sexually abused. She collected the names of sixteen Christian Brothers alleged to have been involved.

  Meanwhile, the Christian Brothers and many other charities maintained that the child migration schemes were inspired, subsidized and monitored by governments. They had merely picked up the pieces.

  I knew this wasn’t entirely true, but, inevitably, governments must have been involved. You cannot move thousands of children from one side of the world to the other without it being sanctioned by the government of the day.

  33

  The plain brown envelope that had arrived at my hotel in Perth sat in a pile of mail for almost a week before I had time to open it.

  I was in the office, working my way through the backlog when I picked it up and examined it carefully, looking for an address or some indication of the sender. Since the death threats I’d become very cautious of unmarked packages or unfamiliar handwriting.

  As I cut through the tightly sealed flap, it was obvious that whoever was responsible didn’t want the envelope to open accidentally.

  I soon knew why. Dozens of photocopied Australian documents spilled out across my lap. I took one look at the letterheads and realized that I was holding some very unusual material. There were letters, reports and memos dating from the 1940s, and addressed to senior officials from the Department of Immigration, the Attorney General’s Office, the Education Department and the Child Welfare Office.

  I burrowed through them, looking for some note of explanation. There was nothing. Whoever sent me this information didn’t want to be identified.

  As I leafed through the pages, pictures of the origins of child migration schemes began to emerge. Sometimes I laughed out loud, or groaned in disbelief.

  An early indication that Australia wished to recruit large numbers of children came in 1922 when the Western Australian State Premier suggested that the nation’s war dead should be replaced by 6,000 children from Britain, the mother country.

  Some ‘private organizations’ were already operating their own schemes, such as Dr Barnardo’s and the Fairbridge Society and these were encouraged to expand their operations.

  The Big Brother Movement and Northcote Children’s Emigration Fund were specifically established to meet the need, but many organizations simply transferred existing resources to face the new social challenge. These included the Catholic Child Welfare Council, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, National Children’s Homes and the Salvation Army.

  Among the documents was a 1938 letter from the Prime Minister’s Office in Canberra to Downing Street, London. It accompanied copies of three agreements. The first was to provide for the cost of establishing a farm school at Molong, NSW; the second to provide maintenance for not more than 300 children at the school; and the third to jointly sponsor the 110 boys about to be handed into the welcoming arms of the Christian Brothers in Western Australia.

  The child migrants were to be funded not only by the British government but also by the Australian Federal and State Governments. Together they would contribute 7 shillings a week towards maintenance of each child until he or she reached fourteen.

  To qualify for the money, the receiving organizations, like the Catholic Emigration Association and the Fairbridge Society, would provide quarterly reports on each child and, when satisfied, the Treasury would transfer the payments into the association’s bank account.

  There were more letters – each more damning than the next. There was one document that stood out, perhaps because of its jingoistic language. This, I quickly realized, was a key piece of evidence that identified some of the architects of Australia’s post-war migration policy.

  In January 1945, the Prime Minister called a conference of State Premiers in Canberra to discuss child migration. The briefing paper, no more than six pages, outlined the problem. Australia had seven million people – a population that increased naturally by only 55,000 to 56,000 a year. To achieve a population of ten million within twenty years, it was necessary to bring in up to 70,000 immigrants a year.

  The paper revealed, ‘There are special and urgent reasons why a major effort should be made immediately in the field of child migration. The peculiar circumstances of the war have created in Europe a greater number of orphans, stray children, “war babies” et cetera, than ever before. This makes the present a time of potentially unparalleled opportunity for Australia to build up her population with child migrants who, on account of their easier assimilation, adaptability, long working-life ahead and easier housing, constitute a particularly attractive category of migrant for the first post-war years … The opportunity must be seized immediately and exploited for two or three years ahead, or lost for ever.’

  Conference delegates were told that voluntary organizations like the Fairbridge Society and Barnardo’s were to be encouraged to continue their work, but their efforts were essentially small scale. From all the schemes combined, Western Australia had received only 1,255 child migrants between 1924 and 1940.

  ‘Children have apparently not always been well selected; they have often been given inadequate opportunities in life (due to an understanding, in part, that earlier Governments wanted them to be trained as agricultural labourers and domestic servants only); and in the cases of some organizations, have been afforded quite
inadequate after-care. Part of the deficiencies can be traced to unqualified and/or under-paid staff. A closer supervision by Governments of their standards of performance should ensure that within their numerically limited scope, they should do good work in the post-war years.’

  I read this passage aloud and paused. If the existing schemes were considered small scale, what did the Australian government have in mind? It was soon made clear.

  ‘The present proposal, approved in principle by the Commonwealth Government and now put forward to State Governments on whose full co-operation its success depends, is for an official child migration scheme …

  ‘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 weat
her 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 …