British boys growing up in an Australian bush orphanage

These children were given little reliable identification, presumably to make tracing by their biological families very difficult. And presum­ably the officials within the Department of Immigration who dealt with the “orphans” had to have been corrupt – why else (historians have asked) would they have allowed young children to be shipped off, without the biological parents’ consent. Not for personal gain, of course, but to strengthen the Empire.

According to the book The Bush Orphanage (Port Campbell Press, 2011), John Hawkins’ Irish mother gave him to the Sisters of Nazareth as a baby, with the goal of putting him up for adoption with a stable English family. But it did not happen. When he was just starting primary school in 1953, John's world was thrown into confusion - he was about to be sent to Australia as a child migrant. He became seriously ill with a mental breakdown and spent a year, on and off, in a British hospital.

Finally removed from normal life in Britain in 1954, the little boy must have been very confused indeed when he landed up in a remote Western Australian orphanage. [I've spent most of my life in Australia and had never heard of Tardun, a sleepy town in the Mid West region of Western Australia].

Tardun Farm School had been established by the Christian Brothers in 1928 as St Mary's Agricultural School. After WW2, Tardun admitted wards of the state, child migrants, orphans and private admissions. Australian boys, and British and Maltese child mig­rants aged from 12-16 years lived at Tardun. In 1967, the Farm School became an agricultural boarding and day school which operated on the site until the end of 2008. Some children continued to be placed at Tardun by the state government child welfare departments.

What were the lives like for orphans such as John Hawkins? Loss of their biological families, hard labour, physical abuse from some of the Brothers, sexual abuse from some of the Brothers and endless neglect. At times there were inadequate meals, little water and only weekly showers.

But John Hawkins said for the most part he had good exp­eriences and close friends at the school. Some of the caring Brothers took them hunt­ing, bird nesting, to the Mullewa Agricultural Show, campfires and picnics on the beach.

The boys had to quickly learn who was to be feared and who was to be enjoyed. It was a tough and unpredictable childhood, but in some ways not far worse than many of my male school friends experienced in the 1950s. Except for the sexual abuse.

The book The Bush Orphanage could by itself have been the basis for the exhibition On Their Own – Britain’s Child Migrants. And the film Oranges and Sunshine, which starred Emily Watson as Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys  and was directed by Jim Loach. What started out as a programme of new and hopeful young lives ended up as one of Britain's and Australia’s shameful colonial secrets.

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Australia's forgotten children, including Britain's child migrants, in 2009. Then the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised to the victims of the scheme, which resulted in thousands of children being sent to Australia and other British countries.