The Forgotten Children (22 page)

The dairy was the boys’ toughest job, involving milking at 3 a.m. and again at 3 p.m., seven days a week.

Tony ‘Fishy’ Bates and Bob ‘Blob’ Wilson baking the village bread.

Old mutton: preparing lunch in the village kitchens.

Garden supervisor Kurt Boelter, a former German tank commander, working with a trainee boy.

Most of the Fairbridge boys loved the boy scouts and the chance to go camping in the bush.

Waiting to see the village nurse on the back verandah of the Fairbridge village hospital.

Some cherished free time on a Wednesday afternoon: boys from Blue Cottage and neighbouring Canary Cottage play marbles.

John Brookman spent thirty years trying to find his mother. When he finally tracked her down he discovered she had died the year before.

Malcolm ‘Flossy’ Field (second row, second from right). One of the few Fairbridge children who did not come from a deprived background. He migrated to Australia twice in the same year.

Sports afternoon. Some boys played rugby league in bare feet.

A junior Orange High School rugby league team of 1960. David Hill is in the back row, third from the right. His twin brother, Richard, is the first on the left in the back row.

The former World War II Fairbridge Farm School bus, which became a famous sight around the west of the state for several decades.