by Adele on 19 January, 2011
On 7 December, 2010, at Old Parliament House, Canberra, the international leader of The Salvation Army, General Shaw Clifton issued a national apology to former residents of Salvation Army Homes. The National Museum of Australia photographed some of those who attended the apology.
Click on photos to enlarge.
by Adele on 17 January, 2011
Oranges and Sunshine, a film produced in 2010 and directed by Jim Loach, tells the story of Margaret Humphreys who brought public awareness to the British child migration scheme and who later established the Child Migrants Trust.
Director Jim Loach and lead actor Emily Watson talk about their involvement in the film:
by Cath on 12 January, 2011
ABC Open’s Now and Then project links old and new photographs. In one example Alex Smee used an image of Broome’s Holy Child Orphanage in 1941 to link with a new photograph of Ida Kelly, a former resident of the Children’s Home.
by Adele on 11 January, 2011
Building 105 within the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct is currently the subject of an application for conversion into an information technology facility. Parramatta Girls Home was also located within the Precinct. The Female Factory Action Group wants the Precinct to be declared a National Heritage Site. Information about the Group’s campaign can be found here.
by Al ‘Crow’ Fletcher (guest author) on 10 January, 2011
Al Fletcher’s horrifying but sadly true story as told to Cheryl Jorgensen, Brutal: Surviving Westbrook Boys Home was re-released in 2010. With a foreword by former Senator Andrew Murray, this book can be purchased from New Holland Publishers.
by Garry Shooks (guest author) on 10 January, 2011
Garry Shooks writes about visiting day at Royalstone Boys’ Home in Glebe, Sydney.
I’ll be your mate
Its Sunday the bell rings, we all take our positions on our lines.
They are numbered the lines,
It is the same lines you stand on for lunch or when ever the bell tolls,
But its visitors as you know that today at 10am hey give it a blast so they can read out the visitors list,
Every Sunday I’d line up for months that ran into years, but only ever once did my name get on that list.
See I say to the others I do have a mum or I do have a dad and they are coming to see me.
All the other Sundays your name never got read out so you were dismissed to go back to what ever you were doing but all the while hoping that the ones or one name that was read out was your mate, course he would come back into the yard from up the top house with his lollies or a toy he was aloud to have.
All the kids would gather round hoping and reminding them that there your mate and can ya have a lolie or play with em so maybe you get a lolie.
Yeah well after forever my name was read out and I ran up to be showered and put on the suit that we all had to wear from that huge cupboard of suits, the long wait out the front sitting on the bench out side the superintendence office, me feet could not reach the floor so I’d swing em back and forward just looking out the closed 6 foot gate,
A long time I sat there like that till the super came out and said I’m sorry Garry your visitor is not coming today,
The shame, they were ya lolies, you have not got a mother or father have ya or they would have come, true, I’d say to myself but out a loud I’d yell I have but they got lost and they be here next week you see,
In all my years I think I got one visitor from me dad but he was turned back at the gate because he was drunk,
Ha who wants a visitor I know I got a mum and dad and one day they come get me,
The weeks turned into months and then years, I never got a visitor, but I did have me a couple of mates, they were true blue, gave me lolie or two and we were the best of mates all those years.
by Lynn Meyers (guest author) on 16 December, 2010
Lynn Meyers shares her photo of her with Beryl, taken at a gathering to remember the first anniversary of the National Apology at Queensland State Library on November 16, 2010.
by Adele on 16 December, 2010
On Friday 10th December the memorial to Western Australian Forgotten Australians was unveiled on the grassed area in front of the Western Australian Museum’s Jubilee Building, Perth Cultural Centre, James Street, Perth. A Forgotten Australian pauses at the memorial to share her memories.
by Adele on 14 December, 2010
This leather strap was made by William ‘Bill’ Brennan when he was aged in his 50s as a copy of the ones he made as a boy in the leather workshop of Clontarf Christian Brothers Home. Bill made the strap as a ‘witness’ to his experience in the Homes and gave it to Bruce Blyth, who was an early researcher of the history and advocate for former inmates of the Western Australian Christian Brothers Homes.
Bill Brennan, along with his brother Anthony, spent most of his childhood in the Christian Brothers Homes. He was in Clontarf from 1945 to 1952. Unlike most of the other inmates, these boys were not former Child Migrants but local Australians. His parents suffered mental illness and were unable to care for their children.
At the age of about 12, Bill’s schooling finished and he was set to work in the leather workshop of Clontarf. One day one of the Brothers asked to make him a strap. He had detailed instructions for it, including that it should contain a section of band saw and a lead pellet. Other orders followed, each with their own instructions. Bill remembers having made about 20 straps, of which 12 were accepted. Bill then had to watch his fellows being beaten with the straps he had made.
The task ended when a lay staff member arrived at Clontarf and was appalled that a boy should be required to make these items.
by Bill Brennan (guest author) on 14 December, 2010
Bill Brennan, a former resident of Clontarf Boys’ Town, and maker of this leather strap, wrote about his experience of being cast a “child lover”.
by Cath on 14 December, 2010
On Tuesday 16 November, to mark the first anniversary of the National Apology to Forgotten Australians and former Child Migrants, ACT Forgotten Australians and Women and Prisons (WAP) marched across Commonwealth Avenue Bridge in Canberra. Here are the photographs of the event taken by George Serras, the senior photographer at the National Museum of Australia.
Click on photos to enlarge.
by Adele on 6 December, 2010
This is a piece of concrete, not much bigger in size than a hand. It was rescued from the demolition of the swimming pool at the former Clontarf Boys Town Christian Brothers Home in Western Australia.
The photo of the boys building the pool was taken by Michael O’Donoghue, who used his Box Brownie camera to take not only this, but many photos around the Boys Town.
Clontarf, like Bindoon, another Christian Brothers institution located outside Perth, used the labour of the boys to build the institutional infrastructure. Michael has vivid memories of building the pool. They laboured before and after school and at weekends to complete it, using picks and shovels. Boys who did not work hard enough risked being beaten. Michael still suffers the effects of an injury he received from a blow across the chest by one particular Brother.
Violence, both physical and sexual, was part of the life of boys at the Boys Town. Some boys suffered more. ‘I was this Brother’s ‘punching bag,’ ’ remembers Michael. Later in life, a doctor asked him if he had ever been in a major traffic accident, because his body bore all the signs of such a major trauma.
These traumatic injuries were gained not only at Clontarf but at the Home in England where Michael was before he came to Australia as a Child Migrant. His mother had placed him in the Home as a young child, after the loss of Michael’s French-Canadian soldier father. Michael was chosen to come out to Australia as part of the Child Migrant scheme, although his mother had never given permission for him to be taken out of the country. He left England on his 11th birthday and arrived in Perth in August 1953. He went straight to Clontarf and remembers the shock of seeing poorly-clad boys, who to him seemed clearly neglected. He was sent from Clontarf just on 16, having been forced to leave school a year earlier, although he had asked to continue.
Michael gave evidence to the Senate Inquiry which led to the ‘Lost Innocents’ Report. He felt compelled to talk about it, to release ‘all that history inside me’, that ‘terrible repression’ of memories he had not been able tell because he had felt nobody would believe. Reliving it is painful, and brings back the memories and the nightmares. ‘I peel off a straitjacket every time I remember’ says Michael. But he feels a powerful obligation to tell, not only for himself but for others, because he can remember what some others have blocked out or have lost through trauma.
by Adele on 6 December, 2010
Can anyone help the National Museum with our query? Arthur Stace is well-known for writing the word Eternity on the footpaths of Sydney from 1930 to 1967. Arthur was a Forgotten Australian, having been declared a ward of the state at the age of twelve.
Does any one know if he was placed in a Children’s Home? If so, do you know which one? If you can help, please feel free to post a response to this site.
by Adele on 4 December, 2010
The Salvation Army apology for survivors of Salvation Army Girls and Boys Homes of Australia will take place on Tuesday 7 December at Old Parliament House in Canberra. An article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald discusses the significance of the apology.
by Gabrielle Short (guest author) on 2 December, 2010
Gabrielle Short shares her photographs from the unveiling of the permanent memorial to Victorian Forgotten Australians on Southbank Promenade in the City of Melbourne.
by Kathryn Lucas (guest author) on 26 November, 2010
Kathryn Lucas would like to find more information about the Royal Park Depot in Melbourne. Can anyone help?
Kathryn Lucas, while researching her family history, discovered the death certificate of Edna Muriel Holmes, the daughter of her great grandfather.
by Adele on 18 November, 2010
This soft toy was donated to the National Museum by Jeanette Blick.
Jeanette was a resident of Orana Methodist Home for Children, Burwood Victoria. The toy was made by prisoners at Pentridge Gaol:
A Pentridge prisoner with a propensity for, say, woodcraft or textiles might have found himself encouraged to join the ‘Pentridge Toy Makers’, a group founded in 1961 to produce toys for ‘needy’ and ‘destitute’ children. Products of the Toy Makers’ labours (upwards of 6,000 toys and hobbies annually, at their peak) were ceremonially displayed and distributed at lavish Christmas events held in the jail, to which groups of children from refugee communities, orphanages, and so on, were invited.[1]
The teddy bear was given to Jeanette circa 1962. She recalls receiving the gift:
I can remember receiving the teddy one Christmas as I did not have a family to go to for the holidays, so I had to remain in Orana over Christmas. Christmas day, I remember finding the teddy on the bottom of my bed. I did not know where it had come from as it was not wrapped and there was no tag/card on it.
I took it to the cottage mother and told her someone had left this on my bed and she said it was for me. She also told me that the prisoners in Pentridge Gaol had made the teddy.
I think I cried most of the day. This was the first gift I had received in years.
In the New Year a family came and took me for the rest of the holidays. I left the teddy on my bed as I was instructed to do (I wanted to take it with me but was not allowed) and when I came back it was gone.
I never saw it again until I opened my suitcase when I arrived in Cobram at my mother’s house. Someone must have put it in the case with the toothbrush, pyjamas and knickers that were there as well. I do not know who had done this or why.
[1] Wilson, Jacqueline Zara (2004) ‘Dark tourism and the celebrity prisoner: Front and back regions in representations of an Australian historical prison’ in Journal of Australian Studies 82: 1–13. The activities of the Pentridge Toy Makers ended in 1976 as a result of fire in their storage shed. (ibid., p. 172).
by Adele on 16 November, 2010
The National Museum of Australia honours the first anniversary of the National Apology to Forgotten Australians and former Child Migrants by sharing a series of video interviews recorded at Parliament House, Canberra on Monday 16 November 2009:
by Adele on 15 November, 2010
In the year since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the National Apology, the National Library of Australia has begun recording interviews with people who were in institutional and out of home care as children. The interviews are being made available online in consultation with the people who have told their stories. Preserving the voices of Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants will ensure these experiences will be remembered. You can access their interviews here.
by David Mulholland (guest author) on 15 November, 2010
In this song, David Mulholland provides a child’s perspective of being made a ward of the state in children’s court and being sent to a Children’s Home.
[2020 note: audio file no longer available]
by Adele on 12 November, 2010
Today is Forget-me-knot Day in which Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA) asks all Australians to unite in support of the more than 2 million Australian adults surviving child abuse. More information can be found on their website.
by Maureen and Pauline McDonogh (guest author) on 12 November, 2010
Forgotten Australians Maureen and Pauline McDonogh write in today’s Sydney Morning Herald about what last year’s National Apology to Forgotten Australians and former Child Migrants means to them.
[2020 note] This article is no longer available on the Sydney Morning Herald website.
11 November, 2010
Coral shares a photograph from her 2004 reunion at St Brigid’s Girls Home.
Coral and her sister were sent to St Brigid’s Girls Home, Ryde, NSW for five years when their mother had a break down after their father was killed in Malaya at the Parit Sulong Massacre.
Coral says, “I have some good memories and some bad ones but don’t carry any regrets only for the reason we were placed in there”.
by Adele on 8 November, 2010
On Tuesday November 16, 8.30 pm, SBSONE will be screening the documentary Forgotten Australians – the story of over 500,000 children placed in Australian institutional homes.
By Women’s Centre for Health Matters (guest author) on 4 November, 2010
Women’s Centre for Health Matters is working with the Alliance for Forgotten Australians (AFA), the Women and Prisons Group (WAP)and others individuals from across the ACT to gather information about the current needs and circumstances of ACT women who are Care Leavers/Forgotten Australians, and their access to services in the ACT.
It is now nearly a year since the National Apology was issued on 16 November 2009, on behalf of the Australian Government, by the (then) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. He delivered an unqualified apology to Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants who suffered abuse or neglect in care. He was supported by the (then) Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull.
The Women’s Centre for Health Matters will be collecting responses from Tuesday 1st November to Tuesday 15th November. The more responses that we receive in this time, the more useful the results will be in helping WCHM to develop policy positions and advocacy strategies to address the unmet needs of these ACT women.
The survey can be accessed here or by telephoning WCHM on (02) 6290 2166 to request a hard copy of the survey by post.
