The Forgotten Children (7 page)

In 1948 Princess (later Queen) Elizabeth donated £2000 to start a fund to help former Fairbridge children establish themselves in life. A very grateful Fairbridge Society in London proposed to rename the Molong farm school the Princess Elizabeth Fairbridge Farm School. After all, the Prince of Wales had allowed his name to be used for the Fairbridge farm school that had been opened in Canada in 1936.

The princess declined with a very diplomatic ‘deferral’ of a decision, as noted in the society’s minutes:

The school was never to be renamed after Elizabeth. When Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia in 1954, Her Royal Highness declined an invitation to visit Fairbridge when she was touring the west of New South Wales.

More buildings were constructed at Molong after the war, including cottages for the farm supervisors and their families, a laundry and a garage for an old World War II bus that Fairbridge bought in 1948.

In that same year the giant pastoral company Goldsbrough Mort donated £15,000 for the building of four new children’s cottages as part of the commemoration of its centenary celebrations. Goldsbrough Mort was a great beneficiary of the Fairbridge scheme. Many of the unskilled farm labourers produced by Fairbridge were employed on the company’s sheep stations in the most remote areas of the west and north-west of the state.

The building of the four new cottages – named Corinda, Canonbar, Goldsbrough and Mort – was controversial. Fairbridge began construction without consulting the New South Wales Government or the Australian Government, who were still committed to providing financial assistance under an earlier capital funding agreement. Building materials were in short supply after the war, construction costs escalated and it would take almost four years for the cottages to be completed. Nor could it be established that Fairbridge needed the additional accommodation, and at no stage in the future did it ever use all of the cottages in the village.

In the early 1950s Fairbridge abandoned its earlier plans for a much larger village capable of housing and supporting 300 children; it was decided that the number of children living in the village was never to exceed 200 at any one time. In 1952 the Sydney Fairbridge Council said:

The final layout of the village was similar to other Fairbridge farm schools. Each of the cottages was designed to house about fifteen children and they were built around the centre of the village: the large communal dining hall, Nuffield Hall. The hall, built in 1939 with money donated by Lord Nuffield, the founder of Morris Motors, was designed to seat more than 300 children and staff. Next to Nuffield Hall were the village kitchens and bakery. The village had its own school, hospital, the big two-storey principal’s house, a number of other staff residences, and a number of other buildings and facilities including garages, laundry, workshops, school, chapel and sports fields. The vegetable gardens and the orchards were planted below the village down toward Molong Creek and up behind the village was the dairy, poultry farm, piggery, slaughterhouse, shearing sheds, grain silos and four houses for the farm supervisory staff and their families.

In the late 1950s Fairbridge opened Tresca House in the Tamar Valley of Tasmania and Drapers Hall in Adelaide, South Australia, but the single dwellings each housed only fifteen children and operated for only a few years.
⁴⁰

By the late 1940s there were already a number of changes occurring in child welfare in Britain that would make it more difficult for Fairbridge to attract children to its scheme. In 1946 the Curtis Report into child welfare became the foundation of the Children Act of 1948, which gave responsibility for child welfare to local government in Britain and placed greater emphasis on foster care rather than institutions.
⁴¹
The childcare professional was replacing the philanthropic amateur and the inherent failures of children’s institutions were being recognised. Child migration and children’s institutions such as Fairbridge were rapidly falling out of favour. Fairbridge resisted change and rejected the growing criticism of its schemes. In 1957 it changed its rules to allow a single parent to follow their children out to Australia. And that is how I came to find myself at Molong, so very far from home.

It was still dark when we arrived at the farm school on our first winter’s morning in Molong. We got out of the truck and were ushered into the kitchen of the principal’s house, where we were given a welcome mug of hot cocoa. Nobody spoke as we stood in a circle wondering what was to happen next.

The first bell of the day had been rung and, unknown to us, out there in the darkness the village had begun to stir. One after another a child arrived to escort a boy or girl from our party to the cottage we had each been assigned. The sight of these Fairbridge kids appearing on the back porch of the house was frightening. They were mostly barefoot, wore rough, old clothing and had awful haircuts that, as we found out later, had been done by other Fairbridge children.

Gradually our little group that had been together for the past two months since coming together at Knockholt was broken up, until only my brothers and I were left standing silently in the kitchen of the principal’s house.

Woods was angry that no one from our assigned cottage, Canonbar, had come for us. The cottage mother was away on leave and the boys, left unsupervised, had slept through the first bell. Woods grabbed a big cane and, sternly ordering us to follow him, strode down from the house and across the lawn to Canonbar Cottage, which we couldn’t see properly in the dark. He led us through the back and ordered us to stand in the locker room – I noticed a lot of dirty clothing hanging out of shelves and lying on the floor – while he went into the dormitory and closed the door.

Next we heard yelps and screams as he went around the dormitory whacking the sleeping boys in their beds. It was a serious offence to be in bed after the bell. The children scurried out to the locker room in ill-fitting and un-matching pyjamas, rubbing their eyes and the places where Woods had hit them. The big man was shouting at them to get under the shower, get dressed and get to work.

A short time later a bell rang and we were told this was the signal for the children to finish their work, make their beds and prepare for breakfast. About fifteen minutes later another bell rang and we went across to Nuffield Hall, where the whole village breakfasted each day. We saw the other children from the
Strathaird
. We stood out because we were wearing different clothing to the khaki, blue and grey shirts and shorts worn by everyone else. Later we were to be issued with the same clothing as the other Fairbridge children and we never again saw our London wardrobe. Those beautiful clothes all disappeared after coming out with us on the back of the truck that morning from Molong train station.

In Nuffield Hall each cottage had its own long wooden dining table. There were no tablecloths; instead, each table was covered with a strip of lino. All the bowls and plates were made of steel. We sat on long wooden benches, seven or eight children down each side, ranging from the biggest at the top of the table to the smallest at the other end. One of the children went into the kitchen and brought out a big steel bowl of porridge, which was doled out into individual bowls from the end of the table. The porridge was followed by a piece of bread with honey and a mug of milk.

We weren’t sent to school that first day. I was instructed to work in the village vegetable garden with a fifteen-year-old boy called Max. My first impression of the countryside was how drab and unappealing it looked. It was still recovering from a severe drought, which had left the grass dried out and brown – very different to the deep green of the English countryside. I spent most of my first day with Max shovelling chicken manure that we hauled from the village poultry farm to the garden by horse and cart. Max was wiry and tough, like most of the Fairbridge kids, and was unimpressed with my work, making no allowance for the fact that I was only twelve years old and had never done a day’s labouring before.

We had lunch back at Nuffield Hall and at the end of the day returned to Canonbar Cottage for a shower and our evening meal. In addition to me and my brothers there were a dozen kids in Canonbar, who displayed little curiosity about us new boys. I remember being frightened and lonely, and missing my mother. I was also drained and physically exhausted from my first full day of manual labour.

Billy King, who came with us to Fairbridge on the
Strathaird
, remembers his first days at Fairbridge:

Derek Moriarty has similar recollections. He had been in institutions in England since he was three years old and has no memory of family life. But he still recalls being frightened when he first arrived at Fairbridge in 1951 as an eight-year-old, with his six-year-old brother, Paul.

Despite being tired, I did not want to go to bed that first night. There was no way I could talk to either of my brothers because there was no privacy and, besides, I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, deeply sad and very frightened, I went into the dormitory to the bed I’d been allocated, the second along on the right, with strangers either side – my brothers were across the room and up the other end. Much as I tried not to, I sobbed myself to sleep – but I was as quiet as possible for fear one of the other children would hear me.

On cold winter’s mornings after the breakfast bell rang we sat or lay on the big wooden cottage verandah, warming ourselves in the early morning sun. Sometimes up to a dozen boys were there, having worked in the cottage or around the village for the best part of the past hour before coming back after the second bell to wash up and make the beds.

All the other children in the village were already lined up outside the big dining hall, which was across the lawns, waiting for the principal to come down and let them in. But as our cottage was close to Nuffield Hall we could see the boss leaving his big two-storey house up on the other side of the village and we could race across before he strode down to let everyone in for breakfast and closed the doors on latecomers.

The wake-up bell went at six a.m. when, in winter, it was still dark. As soon as we got up we were expected to have a shower, which was always cold because the fire in the ‘donkey’ water heater had petered out the evening before. In Canonbar we usually managed to avoid the cold shower because our cottage mother was not an early riser: we would quickly dress and go off to work before she came down to our end of the cottage. We dressed in the locker room. The cottages had no heating and in the winter we learnt to take off our shirt and pullover together at night so that in the cold the next morning we’d be able to quickly pull both over our heads in one movement and be dressed in a matter of seconds. In other cottages, where the early-morning shower rule was enforced, most kids learnt to dance in and dance out of the freezing water, but some cottage mothers were particularly nasty and forced them to stand under it for longer.

Each child was allowed four shelves and a small area of hanging space for clothes in the locker room. Shoes and socks were not to be worn inside the cottages and were stacked inside the back-door porch, but most kids went around the village barefoot anyway and we were actively discouraged from wearing shoes. The bathroom had two toilet cubicles, two sinks, two showers and a bath, which was never used. We each had a numbered hook on which to hang our towel, and a numbered slot on the shelf above the sinks for our toothbrushes. There was no personal privacy in the cottage, which didn’t bother most of us boys once we got used to it, but upset many of the girls.

Each cottage had a kitchen with a wood-fuelled stove, on which our evening meals were cooked, and a dining room with a long table where we would eat them. There was no lounge room, no lounge furniture and no floor coverings anywhere in the cottage. A door at the end of the cottage led into separate quarters for the cottage mother, which contained a lounge, bedroom and bathroom.

The cottage mother, who for some strange reason we called ‘Sister’, was a key figure in the lives of children at Fairbridge. She was the closest thing to a parent many would ever see again. Michael Walker, who arrived at Fairbridge as a six-year-old with his five-year-old brother, Jimmy, in 1950, believes the title ‘Sister’ had some religious origins:

All the children between four and fourteen were assigned work around the village or farm before breakfast every day except Sunday. The smaller children usually worked inside their cottages, cleaning, sweeping, scrubbing and polishing under the supervision of the cottage mother.

For a while I had the job of chopping wood for the girls’ Lilac Cottage. I’d join other boys on one of the two village woodpiles, swinging our axes in the pre-dawn light, racing to fill our wheelbarrows, often in bare feet, before the bell rang to tell us to get back to the cottages. There we’d stack the chopped wood under the water tank, then wash up, make our beds and go to breakfast when the next bell rang.

For a while, my twin brother, Richard, was assigned to the milk run, which involved going up to the dairy, harnessing the horse and cart, and, with one of the boys who had finished the morning milking, bringing down the milk and delivering it around the village. Other jobs included setting fires for heating and cooking, and cleaning a number of staff houses, the tiny Fairbridge Hospital and the village guesthouse.

Another job I had was to make the sandwich lunches for the children going to secondary school. Two of us would be assigned to make two sandwiches each for about sixty children. Making two sandwiches for each kid was relatively straightforward – if the bread had been properly baked. Our bread at Fairbridge was cooked in a bakehouse behind the village kitchens by fifteen-and sixteen-year-old boys, who were rotated on different jobs each month around the village and farm. Some of the boys had a natural talent for baking, but on many occasions the dough was close to being uncooked, and on others it was almost burnt to charcoal. Whatever the standard, there was no choice but to try to slice it, and put some butter and filling in each sandwich. We were told only to butter one of the slices of bread and use whatever fillings the cook gave us, which on the whole were very limited and lacking in nutrition. Sometimes they’d be pickles – not cheese and pickles, or ham and pickles, just pickles. At other times we’d get cucumber, or devon, or Vegemite or, occasionally, lambs’ brains.

Most of the children at Fairbridge left school at the minimum school-leaving age, which was fifteen, or a little before. For the next two years they became what were called ‘trainees’ and worked on twenty-eight-day rosters, rotated through different jobs around the farm. When they turned seventeen they were found farm jobs, and left Fairbridge.

The boy trainees worked on rotation in the dairy, slaughterhouse, poultry farm and piggery; the vegetable gardens and orchards; the village kitchens, bakery, laundry and principal’s house; and on general village maintenance. For the last few months at the farm school they usually worked up on the wheat and sheep farm, learning to use farm equipment.

The girl trainees worked in the village kitchen and as serving staff at mealtimes, helped in the laundry, or worked as domestic servants in the principal’s house or one of the other larger staff quarters.

Breakfast was the same almost every day I was at Fairbridge. The principal would open the door of the hall and we would all march in single file as he inspected us to make sure our hands were clean and our shoes polished – if we were wearing shoes. When prayers had been read and grace sung and we were all seated, one child from each cottage would go into the kitchen and bring out the big bowl of porridge, which the cottage mother would ladle out into each child’s metal bowl. David Eva, aged ten when he arrived at Fairbridge, recalls:

The porridge was often too watery or thick – ‘splodge’ we called it – and frequently it was contaminated with weevils. But we still had to eat it. The porridge was followed by a slice of Fairbridge bread with a small pat of butter and a small spoonful of honey, which we mixed together before spreading it on the bread, so none would be wasted. Finally, we had a metal mug of milk, which in winter was heated and had cocoa added to it.

The trainee boys – but not the trainee girls – were also given a ‘cooked’ breakfast, which usually meant simply a single mutton chop, a boiled egg or some of the previous day’s leftovers from dinner reheated. Each cottage mother, who sat in a straight-backed chair at the head of her children’s table, ate a full English breakfast – a choice of cereals, eggs, bacon, tea, coffee, toast and jams, set on a little tablecloth by a trainee girl acting as a waitress.

The other village staff members sat at a long table up on the stage at the end of the dining hall, with the boss at the head, and were also served a full English breakfast by the trainee girls.

During my first eighteen months at Fairbridge I was one of a few children sent to the high school in Orange, some thirty-four kilometres away. The handful of us who were sent to Orange High School had to leave breakfast early and walk hurriedly about a kilometre down the Amaroo Road to the Mitchell Highway to catch the overcrowded school bus. The bus came from Molong and carried children going to Orange High and an assortment of private schools, including the Catholic De La Salle School and the exclusive Wolaroi Boys College. By the time the bus picked us up it was already full so we usually spent almost an hour standing on the trip to Orange.