Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (7 page)

To date I have gathered a lot of information about my friend including a newspaper photograph of these children when they arrived in Australia. My friend’s main reason for this letter is to see if it is possible to trace any of her relatives in England
.

Since her arrival in Australia she has spent the greater part of her life in institutions and, as a result of this, she has been able to make few real friends
.

If you can help please write to me and I’ll pass it on
.

During the next week a dozen more letters came through the door, and I grew more and more alarmed. I told Annabel that the response was confirming my worst fears. I couldn’t say what was in the letters because of confidentiality, she simply had to trust me that the contents were very disturbing.

At the same time, Merv had managed to unearth some interesting information from the University library and the Public Record Office at Kew in London.

‘They were known as child migration schemes,’ he told me. ‘And they involved most of the major charities. It’s not just Australia. Children were sent to Canada, New Zealand and Rhodesia – most before the war but thousands afterwards as well.’

Merv showed me his notes.

Child migration had operated periodically since the seventeenth century. The first shipment involved 100 children sent to colonize Virginia in 1618. Most of them were the equivalent of today’s street kids.

The schemes were also popular towards the end of the nineteenth century but, unfortunately, the references were brief and short on detail. We needed more. Merv suggested we look at the histories of several of the charities that appeared to be involved: Dr Barnardo’s, the Catholic Church and an organization called the Fairbridge Society.

Annabel Ferriman came to see me in Nottingham and I showed her this background information and gave her a general summary of the letters from Australia. She went back to talk to her editors, and several days later she called me to say that the
Observer
had decided to send her to Australia to research the story.

‘We can give you the air fare,’ she said. ‘We leave in a fortnight.’

Although I still had reservations about working with a journalist, at least I now had the chance to meet Harold and get answers to my questions. The problem was, of course, that Harold was somewhere in the bush and unlikely to break his self-imposed exile for a social worker from England.

I needed Marie. When she heard of my plans, she knew that the challenge had been issued. A week before I was due to leave, the Triangle group had another meeting in the attic room. Marie arrived, looking far more confident than I’d ever seen her.

‘I’ve booked my annual leave,’ she said. ‘I’ve paid for my ticket. I’m going.’

The Australian Customs Department has an unusual ritual for overseas visitors. After the 747 had touched down, several uniformed men came aboard and began walking down the aisles with an aerosol spray-can in each hand. I coughed into my handkerchief as the fine mist of insect repellent, or some such poison, permeated the aircraft. I was told it was something to do with quarantine regulations, which made me feel as welcome as a dose of foot and mouth disease. I had visions of arriving at the baggage hall and watching my suitcases submerged in sheep dip before they’d allow me through.

It was early in the morning and the immigration hall was crowded. Somebody had sandpapered my eyes. I knew I looked frightful but I was too tired to care. But even lack of sleep could not diminish my first impressions of Sydney. Taking a taxi from the airport, we headed north, passing several golf courses with sprinklers spinning on the fairways. Slowly the red-tiled roofs and houses of suburbia gave way to terrace cottages which reminded me at times of Nottingham – except for the bougainvillaea growing in the gardens, and the beach towels draped from the window sills.

Our driver gave us a running commentary in fluent Australian. I was barely listening as we turned into William Street and first saw the skyscrapers. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of New York, and Manhattan’s impenetrable skyline. Regardless of how much I dislike large cities, I could not help admire such handiwork. There was something dynamic and exciting about it, the pulsing heart of the city.

There wasn’t time to waste and I set about contacting people who had responded to the newspaper ad and arranging times when I could see them. Meanwhile, Annabel started her own investigations, calling charities and government departments which might shed some light on the child migration schemes.

Early next morning Annabel and I took a taxi to the nearby Paddington District and knocked on the door of a tall, smartly dressed woman in her forties who held out her hand in greeting.

Sandra Bennett explained how she had lived in the Nazareth Children’s Home in Coleshill, near Birmingham, until she was sent to St Joseph’s Orphanage at Rockhampton in Queensland when she was eleven years old.

‘The culture shock could not have been greater,’ she told me. ‘In England, we were in a town. We saw people on our way to school; we could go out and buy Granny Smiths – five for a penny. But in Australia we were surrounded by scrub, bushland, the wild. There was just the orphanage in the middle of nowhere. Everything was self-contained. There was the school, the church and the convent. That was considered all that was necessary.’

Sandra sat on the edge of a chair with her hands in her lap, rarely raising her eyes. Now a nurse, she described the conditions of her childhood as ‘like something out of Dickens’. ‘We wore unbleached calico and ate peas and mince every day,’ she said. ‘We were allowed potatoes at Christmas. I used to steal roast potatoes from the convent. The nuns had better food.

‘We slept in a huge dormitory with thirty-two people. The “wets” – those who wet their beds – slept on the outside and the rest on the inside. We had to clean up the wet beds first thing in the morning and then scrub the floors. We had to draw our own water from the pump, which was full of frogs and snakes. It would have been all right if you had a sense of adventure and had been prepared for it, but we didn’t come from that sort of environment. Everything was absolutely and completely different.’

‘Did you ever marry?’ I asked.

‘No. And I think that can be put down to a loveless upbringing. It made me unable to trust anybody.’

Sandra said that to compensate for her loneliness she would like to find out if she had any family remaining in Britain – though she thought that her mother was almost certainly dead. ‘I know she was forty-four when she had me.’

‘Not having a family makes you feel as if you don’t belong to the human race,’ she went on. ‘I never told anyone about my past until I was forty. I would love to discover that I have a family. It would make me feel I was not alone in the world.’

As I listened, I found myself growing increasingly uncomfortable.

For the first time I was hearing about the conditions and experiences of these British children. Sandra was telling me far more than she could have imagined. For one thing, she remembered that she didn’t come on her own. There were other children on the boat. She also recalled coming from an orphanage in the Midlands, which suggested that the local authorities must have organized, or at least known of, her departure.

My mind couldn’t grasp this. It seemed totally unreal. I couldn’t understand why anybody would send a child from one institution in England to another in Australia.

‘Were any of you adopted or fostered?’ I asked Sandra. ‘Did you ever live with a family? Did anybody tell you why you were being sent to Australia? Did they ask you if you wanted to come? What did you know about Australia?’

Sandra shook her head. She had no answers. In truth, she hoped I would be able to provide them.

Before I said goodbye, I made a commitment to her that if she wanted me to find her family or investigate her background, I’d do this. I would piece together her past and try to give it a meaning.

Syd Stephenson was another who had answered the advertisement. He ran a lawnmower shop in Sydney and remembered being ten years old when he left a children’s home in Birmingham and voyaged to Australia. He and his brother were sent to the Fairbridge Farm School, at Molong, near Orange, in western New South Wales.

Unlike Sandra, Syd remembered his childhood with a degree of fondness, calling Molong tough but fair, but he could not forgive Britain for deserting him. Also unlike Sandra, he knew something about his family. His brother had gone back to Britain and to Manchester where they both remembered spending part of their childhood. He discovered their mother had died of cancer at the age of 54.

Syd didn’t blame her for what had happened. She was a single mother trying to feed and clothe two boys. When she couldn’t cope, she gave the boys to their father who placed them in the children’s home.

‘He didn’t know we were going to be sent to Australia,’ Syd told me. ‘They did it without telling anybody. I’ll never forgive them for that.’

While I continued the interviews, Annabel dug through newspaper archives and began collating a list of the various charities and agencies that had links with the child migration schemes. Some organizations no longer existed, or had been merged and renamed.

Finally she found somebody who might be able to explain the child migration schemes to us and invited me along to the interview.

Monsignor George Crennan was a former director of the Australian Federal Catholic Immigration Committee, who became involved with immigration schemes in 1949.

When we arrived at his office he immediately asked to see our credentials, and I gave him an introductory letter from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW).

Annabel began asking a series of questions. How many children were brought out to Australia? What was the reasoning? Have you kept in touch with these people? Did they come out with their parents’ consent?

I could see Monsignor Crennan suddenly realize that this was no soft interview and that Annabel wasn’t about to be fobbed off with waffle and hot air.

In general, the Monsignor said the child migration schemes were a legacy of poverty and overflowing children’s homes in Britain. The opportunities for children were thought to be better in Australia.

Annabel explained that we’d talked to some of these migrants who didn’t appreciate the ‘opportunities’ of which he spoke. They had described being very poorly treated and were now desperate to learn about their families.

Monsignor Crennan admitted that he had received enquiries from people trying to trace their families. He normally referred them to the Crusade of Rescue Agency, which had sent them out.

‘Do you feel you have a responsibility towards these people?’ Annabel asked him bluntly.

I was surprised at her directness but even more surprised at his answer.

‘Most certainly not.’

‘I’d like to put that to you again,’ Annabel said, pen poised over her pad. ‘Do you feel you have any responsibility for these people who were brought out here as young children?’

‘Certainly not. I don’t feel any responsibility for them at all. We didn’t arrange for them to come. We were nominated by the Children’s Department to find places for them. I have no information about them. On the whole, it was a positive experience for the children. I would venture to suggest that if these people had remained in England, they might not have made such progress. They would have become bell boys and other such things. It was eventually stopped because people felt it was wrong for a country to export its children. Now let me ask you: what kind of country is it that sends its children 12,000 miles away? You want to ask yourselves that.’

Thankfully, not all of the charities we approached felt this way. Annabel and I arranged to see Louise Voigt, Executive Director of Barnardo’s, Australia, who admitted quite openly that the child migration schemes had led to massive problems. ‘These people lost touch with their roots, with their siblings, and their social milieux. There were many human tragedies.’

On my last afternoon in Sydney, I left the hotel and went looking for a place to sit and think by myself. I had no thoughts of sight-seeing; time was too precious, but there was one particular place I had to visit. I began walking through the Botanical Gardens, enjoying the sunshine. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, or listen to tour guides, or write postcards. This was my time for peace and reflection.

I walked for a long while, until I came to a rise, and almost unexpectedly I found myself looking across Sydney harbour. My spirits immediately lifted. The Opera House, with its graceful sails, looked ready to break away from the shore and sweep up the harbour in the breeze. This was what I’d come to see. Whether it was the love of music instilled in me by my mother or simply an image from a long-forgotten postcard pinned to my kitchen wall, there was something that had made me want to see the Opera House.

I found my way to the forecourt and walked around it slowly, leaning on the railings above the lapping tide. Then I sat down on the steps and watched the Japanese tourists, laden with cameras, feeding the seagulls. Periodically, green-liveried ferries pulled away from Circular Quay, some of them heading for Manly, others for Mosman and Taronga Park Zoo or for Balmain further up the harbour.

Closing my eyes I imagined that I could hear the great operas and orchestras playing inside. For a while it made me forget. It wasn’t long, but it was long enough.

Melbourne reminded me more of England. The parks and gardens were full of deciduous trees and, in places, the architecture was quite Victorian. Perhaps the city founders had been homesick and had sought to create a slice of the familiar in a distant corner of the Empire.

There were more people to see – in particular, Harold Haig who had come in from the wilderness to see Marie. In the meantime, I arranged to see George Wilkins, whose letter had arrived on the day I left England.

George agreed to pick us up from the Travelodge Hotel in Parkville.

‘I’ll bet George owns a motor bike and sidecar,’ joked Annabel, as we waited in reception. ‘Or a battered old Land Rover.’