by Graham Evans (guest author) on 22 February, 2011
This is a song by Graham Evans, a resident of St Michael’s Home, Baulkham Hills, 1958 to 1962 and St Vincent’s Boys Home, Westmead, 1962 to 1966.
Cleanliness is Godliness
by Adele Chynoweth on 22 February, 2011
As a child, were you required to fulfil cleaning duties in your institution? The National Museum wishes to draw attention to this work in it pending exhibition Inside: Life in Children’s Homes. Can you help?
We are interested in learning, from former residents of Children’s Homes, about what cleaning products or objects you cleaned with.
Please feel free to post a response below or on the message board on this site.
You can also email me us at:
contact_us@forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au
if you don’t want your contribution to be published online.
We understand that writing about such incidents may mean reliving them so please don’t feel obliged to share, if this is too distressing for you because your wellbeing is more important than our list!
We also have included a list of links to advocacy, support, counselling and record-finding services on the right hand side of this website. If you would like further assistance you are most welcome to email us here at contact_us@forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au and we will endeavour to locate appropriate contact information for you.
Cuts to victims compensation NSW
by Adele Chynoweth on 22 February, 2011
Victim compensation schemes are important to those Forgotten Australians who suffered harm in Children’s Homes. The dedicated website Cuts to victims compensation details current changes to the NSW victim’s compensation scheme and associated campaign events for responsible victims compensation provisions.
Oh Scotland!
by William Nelson (guest author) on 22 February, 2011
William Nelson, a former Child Migrant from Scotland, shares his poem about the importance of the reunion with his family in the UK.
As a child, William Nelson travelled to Australia from Scotland in 1939 on HMS Jervis Bay, leaving his siblings who remained in Scotland. From the age of four, he had lived in the William Quarrier’s Home in Scotland. When he arrived in Australia, he was sent to the Burnside Homes in NSW. He did not see his family again until the age of 74 when he visited the UK.
Oh Scotland!
Oh Scotland! Why did ye forsake me?
Why send me from your shores?
To a land far down under
That I know nothing of
Yet still I have a yearning
To see my native land
And try to greet a family
I did nae know I had
At last the journey’s over
My family I did greet
I’ll now return to my adopted land
To live my life in peace.
William Nelson copyright, 2000
Escape and Blood Sisters
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 16 February, 2011
Rachael Romero shares two of her paintings which depict experiences at the Convent of the Good Shepherd, ‘The Pines’, Plympton, South Australia.
mixed media on rag paper (ink, watercolour) 22 x 30″, copy right Rachael Romero, 1984
Freddie tried to rush up the wall over the barbed wire one night. The dogs were barking on the other side. We were all wishing her up and over and out, but of course she got dragged back.
She would keep trying.
mixed media on rag paper (ink, watercolor) 22 x 30″, copyright Rachael Romero, 1984
Me and Lilly did this because we felt we had become sisters in horror. Lilly had been taken from her mother to a mission then The Pines. She didn’t remember where she was from. I didn’t want to be from where I remembered.
The examination room
by Wilma Robb (guest author) on 16 February, 2011
Girls who entered Children’s Homes were often subjected, without explanation, to harsh physical exmainations.
The above photo, shared by Wilma Robb, shows the table used for internal examinations at Parramatta Girls Home.
Those who never left
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 16 February, 2011
Rachael Romero remembers those women, admitted as children, to the Convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, ‘The Pines’, Plympton, who had stayed on in the institution well into their adulthood. Why didn’t they leave? What became of them?
Gaylis
copyright Rachael Romero, 1973
copyright Rachael Romero, 1973
Gaylis was a ‘lifer’, a sweet-hearted person left there by her family. She was made to slave in the kitchen with no idea how to be the cook, but she did her best.
I still remember the chunks of lard and the bubbles of powdery flour that had not been stirred together sufficiently before baking a crust for that terrible gravy pie with junks of leathery kidneys swimming in it. I want to retch.
Having once seen ‘Little Jo’ on Bonanza, Gaylis was forever besotted with him – it was all she spoke of. Oh Gaylis what became of you when the place closed and the nuns fled? Slaving was all you knew.
There was also a woman with Downs Syndrome who folded hankies in that thunderous laundry. She waited on a Sunday with her handbag for someone to take her out. No one ever did.
The Argonaut
by Graham Budd (guest author) on 16 February, 2011
Graham Budd arrived in Australia from England in 1939 and was sent to Northcote Farm School in Victoria. Here he recalls winning a national competition run by ABC Radio’s The Argonauts, and how his joy was tempered by the remarks of a cruel cottage mother.
I arrived in Australia in the Jervis Bay on 6/1/39 along with 28 boys and girls bound for Northcote farm school Bacchus Marsh Victoria. I was 11 years and 5 months old and not at all happy, although excited as I looked on the venture as an exciting experience. I was bitter at leaving my grandfather, my young half brother aged 3 years and still mourned the loss of my stepfather who had died March 1938. He was a TPI [totally and permanently incapacitated] from World War I, ex-Coldstream Guards. I was very much attached to him.
The 161 children of Northcote were scattered in about 8/9 cottages each with a cottage ‘mother’. These ‘mothers’ came in various grades of intelligence and attitudes. Looking back as an adult I realise some were close to being insane, which gave rise to the following:
In December the ABC Argonauts children’s session on the wireless launched a competition for the best original Christmas card. Our cottage were all avid listeners as their session coincided with our evening meal so we had time to listen to it. Our ‘mother’ got some of us to enter the competition, she paid for the postage stamps, and in due course I was amazed to be told I had won. An Australia-wide competition, that was quite something. The home gave me the prize, a fountain pen and pencil set, but as they opened all our mail in and out, they did not give me the letter that must have come with it. All I got was the opened box. The incident caused quite a lot of comment around the place. These ‘mothers’ carried on a sort of private war among themselves, a ‘m boys are better than yours’ attitude which gave rise to the following:
A few days later I was walking past one of the cottages when the ‘mother’ who was standing on the verandah stopped me and said, “Oh Budd, I suppose that it doesn’t matter how clever you are, the Australian government isn’t going to spend any money on you. When you finish 8th grade they won’t send the likes of you to high school. You are going to have to work for a living whether you like it or not”.
Of course the statement was true, but the tone of voice and her general manner have stayed with me all my life. I have often wondered whatever possessed her to employ such a person in such a job. I was lucky that my own ‘cottage mother’ was different. Although she could not alter the general thrust of the place, her treatment of us under her care was excellent. I stayed in contact with her until she died, aged 84 – an association that lasted 36 years. She was in fact the only person apart from my grandfather and the ex-soldier stepfather who gave a damn about me as a person until I married at age 23. It was a lonely life.
The Xmas card incidentally was a hand-drawn picture of a warship with guns blazing and a submarine no 1939 obviously sinking but another no 1940 just coming to the surface. The warship was of course named The Argonaut – very appropriate for the time.
Graham Budd
You can hear segments from ABC’s radio show The Argonauts below:
Don’t let me catch you back here
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011
A fellow resident gave Rachael this holy card on her leaving The Pines.
The message reads:
To dearest Rachael,
I am sorry to see you go.
I hope you make the most of everything, and that all goes well for you.
Wish things were a little better in the family situation, and for God’s sake don’t let me catch you back here.All the best,
your friend……… x
P.S. I hope you pass Inter[mediate], and go on to get good grades in Leaving.
As soon as I get out I will contact you, and I will come over and have some ‘Brandied Bananas’.
Art has always saved me
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011
Rachael Romero’s artistic talent enabled her to have time away from slaving in the laundry at The Pines. Here is one of the bookmarks that the Sisters of the Good Shepherd asked her to make.
Rachael recalls:
So here’s the rub. When the nuns found out I had talent I was asked to make book marks and cards for them to use.
This way I got out of the laundry for an hour or two a week. What relief they locked me in a room alone to paint!
Peace–quiet!
I feigned a religious conversion in order to escape their radar and plot my escape.
M’o’mento of slavery
The Sisters of the Good Shepherd ran commercial laundries which serviced many businesses, including hopsitals, hotels and wealthy households. Doing all the unpaid, hard labour in hot conditions were teenage girls who were sent the convent because they were considered to be in ‘moral danger’.
The Good Shepherd laundries operated at the Mt Maria Centre, Mitchelton, Brisbane; Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne; The Pines, Plympton; Leederville, Perth and Mount Saint Canice in Hobart.
Rachael Romero, in 1968, aged 15, was an unpaid labourer in the laundry while resident at The Pines. Below is a laundry slip she kept – one of those used by the Good Shepherd Sisters to charge for their laundry services.
For more information on the commercial laundry services run in Catholic Children’s Homes, see Allan Gill’s 2003 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Bad girls do the best sheets.
Map of The Pines
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011
Rachael Romero shares the map she drew at the age of 15 while living at the Convent of the Good Shepherd also known as “The Pines”. Rachael’s map includes the site of the laundry where the young female residents worked.
Interestingly, Senator Andrew Murray referred to The Pines in his speech to the federal Senate on 12 March 2008, in which he urged the Australian Government to make an apology to Forgotten Australians and former Child Migrants:
[There] were systemic floggings and beatings with a variety of weapons for the most minor misbehaviours. All these acts amounted to criminal assaults punishable by law at the time. And that is the important point. These things that were done to the children were not lawful at the time and yet there was a conspiracy of silence between churches, health authorities, police and others which mostly kept these incidences under cover.
This appalling treatment of vulnerable kids has its match in prisoner of war camps. Places like Bindoon in Western Australia; Goodwood and The Pines in South Australia; Westbrook in Queensland; Box Hill and Bayswater in Victoria; and Parramatta and Hay in New South Wales were akin to concentration camps that incarcerated and brutalised far too many young people in 20th century Australia. Some beatings even resulted in physical impairments later in life.
I am free
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011
Rachael Romero still has a drawing she made and a piece she wrote on freedom in 1968, aged 15, at the Convent of the Good Shepherd, alias The Pines, Plympton, South Australia.
Rachael wrote:
“I am free” : What does it mean to me?
Physically I am not free nor in some ways mentally. But on contemplating on this subject I have come to the conclusion that no-one is free. Some, however, are freer than others. But we must all conform to rules of society. Some have more rules and some less. Altho’ we may be forced to go here and there we cannot be forced to enjoy this, therefore in this small narrow way we have free will (in thinking).I find it difficult to say what freedom means to me as I have never been truly free. Altho’ now I have less freedom than ever before. I think in the hereafter we may look forward to perfect freedom as this can be coupled with happiness. Until then however we must be content with the little freedom we have. Freedom of the mind. We can expand our mind or it shrivels to nothingness. So I hope that I may expand my knowledge and in doing so, expand my freedom. While seeking our freedom, we remember the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” and know that we must use our freedom not in a bad way by being malicious, insidious or sadistic.
Connecting Kin
by Adele Chynoweth on 11 February, 2011
Connecting Kin is a publication produced by the NSW Department of Human and Community Services which assists people who have been separated from their birth families to find their records.
You can download a copy of Connecting Kin (PDF 1.5mb).
Canberra drop-in centre
by Rhonda Trivett (guest author) on 11 February, 2011
Forgotten Australian Rhonda Trivett helps to run the Fun Night at Havelock House, 85 Northbourne Ave, Turner, ACT, every Friday night at 7.30 pm until late. Tea, coffee, cordial and snacks are available. Come along, sings songs, watch a film, play table tennis, pool or board games. There is a free BBQ and karaoke. No drugs or alcohol. Forgotten Australians welcome.
Rhonda invites you:
I and my friend started it because there is a need out there for something to do. If you want to play pool or go to karaoke you have to go to a pub. There is nothing out there after hours. So that’s why I and my friend started this. There’s so many people hurting that need somewhere to go.
In the Shadow of Eden
by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 10 February, 2011
In her short film In the Shadow of Eden, filmmaker Rachael Romero comes to grips with the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her religion-fixated father while growing up in rural South Australia. The film includes Romero’s memories of her time in the Good Shepherd Sisters’ laundry at The Pines in Plympton, Adelaide.
In the Shadow of Eden premiered at the Yale Center for British Art in September 2003 where it won a Short Film Prize from Film Fest New Haven. Since then it has screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Santa Fe Film Festival, Moondance (where it won the Spirit Award for short documentary) Boulder, Colorado and The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina where, with the help of The New York Times and a board that includes Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ken Burns, and Barbara Kopple it was among six shorts chosen from over 100 ground-breaking documentaries available now on DVD – Full Frame Documentary Shorts, Volume 4, the best of the festival.
Ironically, given all these accolades in the United States, In the Shadow of Eden has been rejected for inclusion in the the Sydney, Adelaide and Victoria Film Festivals.
View In the Shadow of Eden on YouTube.
I’ve got the lot
by Garry Shooks (guest author) on 7 February, 2011
Poet Garry Shooks writes about the importance of marbles as currency in the Children’s Home in I’ve got the lot. In The House Without Keys, Garry writes about he and his fellow residents who don’t have access to the keys of the institution. Life’s a blur is a testimony to past experiences and what matters now.
I’ve Got The Lot
I never fudged or cheated, but I got the lot.
Tom bowlers, bird cages and cats eye’s are what we call em.
There marbles you know and they’re worth a lot.
For with em you are important and with out you are not.
I started with a couple and by golly I played till I had the lot.
The boys would moan cause I ended with the lot.
So I’d swap for what you got,
Weed draw a circle in the dirt, not to small and not to big, then throw in your lot.
You’d balance on the tips of your fingers at the circles edge and have a shot.
The birdcagess you’d swap the tom bowlers not, cats eyes not for they were worth a lot.
I filled a sack and was a great shot.
Till the day I lost the lot for sir cheated and took the lot.
I’ve never had another shot.
Garry Shooks
The House Without Keys
Halls are long, doors are many and all the doors have locks,
But we have not the keys to undo the locks.
We are young and scared standing in our lines in long straight rows,
Staring at our spot,
Wishing wishing we had the keys to the locks.
Sir would undo the locks.
Keys would jingle when he undid the locks,
Marched forward into the next spot till you hear the door close
And he’d lock the lock.
Line up beside your bed to kneel and say the Lord’s Prayer,
Into bed with out a whisper as trouble you did not want.
You’d hear the cries at times as we had been forgot,
In the end the tears you forgot as for love there was not.
The dreams were of the time that you could remember the family they said you had not.
Work was hard and the times you never forgot,
But the memories are painful and you try not to recall what you
Had not,
The birthdays came and went till the Key opened the lock,
Into the world that you had forgot, suitcase in hand, were are they now the brothers and sisters you had not forgot,
A life sentence in a place time had forgot, To this day I try to find my lot, the years have beaten me and the taste of sadness is with me a lot,
Cap in hand I go to the keepers who had the keys seeking the ones I had not forgot,
May the lord grant me time to get to find em as I have never forgot,
Forgotten Australians we are called, and yet I’m proud to be Australian, but the misery and pain has never been forgot,
Remember us as we fall for we were brother’s sister’s one and all.
We never ask for the life we got.
Garry Shooks
Life’s a blur
Scared and frightened I was as the policeman said listen hear you lot,
Mum will be back sooner then not,
The hours of the dark I cried a lot.
They called it a home but it was not.
Polish, sweat and spit was our lot,
Polish the floors on your knees with the rhythm of youth till your arms wanted to fall off.
Brass door knobs that you polished till they looked new,
You’d scrub the pots better then new to get out the burnt stew.
Nuggets the shoe’s, and polish, and rub with a bit of spit to clean the dirty spot.
Then if you were unlucky get to chop the wood for the boiler, and fill the coal bin like it or not.
The days were long, tears unheard for you were a ward of the state that was your lot.
Years came and went and I did grow.
I hate the bloody lot.
Old I am with tiredness of walking life’s path.
The years are shorter now and the memories hurt,
Tears of sadness have spoiled the lot.
Love your children they are worth a lot.
Garry Shooks
Child trafficking is cheap
by Oliver Cosgrove (guest author) on 7 February, 2011
In 1950, in the United Kingdom (UK), the House of Commons Select Committee on Estimates reported that on average it cost £5.51 to keep a child with a local authority and £1.81 to board him/her out. However, page 7 of the Western Australian Child Welfare Department Annual Report to Parliament for Year Ending 30 June 1952 shows that the UK Government paid a subsidy for each child migrant sent to Australia of only 12 shillings and 6 pence!
The Pacific Exchange Rate, which shows the shows the currency conversions for each year 1948 to 2009, states that the GBP was worth $2.52. Halve that to get 10 shillings and you get $AUS1.26. Quarter the 10 shillings to get 2 shillings and 6 pence = 32 cents. So, the equivalent today is $AUS1.26 + 32 cents. = $AUS1.58. So there! The Great British Government was paying $1.58 per week to board a kid out in the Great Brown. Never let it be said that the British loved its poor!
In June 1998, in a submission to the UK Health Committee Inquiry into Child Migration, Dr Barbara Kahn OBE stated:
In 1950, only about two years after the new Departments were set up, a Select Committee on Estimates report pointed out that they were costing more than anticipated.
It was also around 1951–52 (?) to the best of my recollection, that there was a debate in the House of Commons when certain MPs urged the Government to put pressure on “these sticky fingered Children’s Officers” who were reluctant to emigrate their children. These are the words that remain in my mind. My memory is that one MP told the House they should know that whereas it then cost £5 a week for a child to be in care in Britain, if they were emigrated the cost to Britain would only be 10 shillings.
(Dr Barbara Kahn’s full submission may be read here)
Built by the boys
by Oliver Cosgrove (guest author) on 7 February, 2011
This photograph kindly forwarded to the National Museum by Oliver Cosgrove shows the interior of the chapel at the former Clontarf Boys Town, now Clontarf Aboriginal College.
The interior bricks were rendered, the exterior stuccoed, and the roof timbers constructed from jarrah and karri. The parquetry floor was made from she-oak and jarrah, all securely laid in bitumen on a concrete base. The chapel was consecrated in 1941 by the Archbishop of Perth. The chapel was built in one year by the child residents at Clontarf.
This’ll hurt me more than it’ll hurt you
by Adele Chynoweth on 3 February, 2011
Can you help the National Museum compile a list of punishments in Children’s Homes? We are putting together a list of ‘punishments’ that children endured in institutions – a record to remind others of the cruelty and brutality within Homes. We acknowledge that not all Forgotten Australians may have endured such treatment. Nevertheless, it is important that historical abuse be recognised.
Please feel free to post a response below or on the message board on this site.
You can also email me us at:
contact_us@forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au
if you don’t want your contribution to be published online.
This is not a ‘competition’ to see who can come up with the most gruesome example. We know that to name some of the harsh treatment as mere ‘punishment’ covers up the fact that many incidents were nothing less than criminal assault. However, we are also interested in all kinds of disciplinary actions imposed by staff of Homes, even they seemed trivial. It is also OK if someone else has already posted the same punishment as you experienced. Repetition is OK because it is interesting for us to learn how widespread a particular penalty was.
It would helpful, too, if you could also let us know what year/s the punishment occurred and in which particular Home.
We understand that writing about such incidents may mean reliving them so please don’t feel obliged to share, if this is too distressing for you because your wellbeing is more important than our list!
We also have included a list of links to advocacy, support, counselling and record-finding services on the right hand side of this website. If you would like further assistance you are most welcome to email us here at contact_us@forgottenaustralianshistory.gov.au and we will endeavour to locate appropriate contact information for you.
We were excellent farmers
by Alick Robertson (guest author) on 2 February, 2011
ABC Open has published a video of former Child Migrant Alick Robertson recalling his experiences at Mowbray Park, a Dr Barnardo’s Farm Training School near Picton, New South Wales. The ‘now and then’ images are by Doreen Lyon, president of the Oaks Historical Society.
Home that is away from home?
by Adele on 2 February, 2011
An article from Pix, 31 May 1958, is based on the Church of England Boys and Girls Homes, Carlingford, New South Wales. Below is the half of the article that has been away from home’, subtitled ‘Love, companionship, for children who have lost them’, and reads:
Australia’s happiest – and biggest – family boasts 229 girls and boys. The family lives at the Church of England Homes, Carlingford, Sydney in an atmosphere that is really HOME. There is no air of the institution, only smiling faces and happy, healthy yells as the children romp and play in the spacious grounds.
Situated on the commanding heights near Parramatta, the environment is ideal. But much more impressive and significant than the view is the emotional atmosphere.
To anyone with experience of conditions often found in institutions, the difference is astounding.
This work began in 1884, when Canon Tress and a Dr Manning began caring for neglected girls at Woolloomooloo. About the turn of the century, the first of the four homes was purchased at The Glebe and in 1914 Minden, later called Strathmore, was bought at Carlingford. Minden eventually became the first Boys’ Home.
The present Boys’ Home was established in 1928 and the girls moved from The Glebe to Minden. Since then, many cottages have been added and Havilah, a home for little children, has been established.
This step-by-step building on a limited budget, coupled with the farsighted understanding of the various committees since the cottage idea was proposed in the 1920s, is responsible for the unique- [remaining text is missing]
It’s Bill’s turn to polish his ‘brothers” best shoes – 31 ready for inspection, Sir!
‘You are the spawn of the devil’
by Rhonda Wardman (guest author) on 1 February, 2011
Rhonda Wardman remembers her experiences at St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst:
I went to St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst when it was very new. I went from a loving Nanna in a homely old terrace full of love, food, photos, furniture and family to nothing but bare emptiness, starvation, bullying from a Nun.
There was a large playroom with a red laminex table and six chairs and an empty bookcase – nothing, nothing but emptiness (and my tears).
In my time there I saw no toys – no books – heard no radio, emptiness everywhere, quiet – pain and crying.
In the dining room there were six red laminex tables and chairs, that’s all. Empty – no sound. In the dormitories there were chrome beds with pink chenille bedspreads and some bedside tables that were empty – emptiness everywhere.
53 years later I can remember each stick of furniture and the pain of emptiness.
Sister B told me constantly, ‘You are the spawn of the devil, Rhonda Wardman, put here by God to be punished, born bad, never wanted. You are the spawn of the devil!’
The day the Mullighan Report was tabled
by Priscilla Taylor (guest author) on 21 January, 2011
On 1 April 2008, the South Australian Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry report was tabled in State Parliament. Commissioner Ted Mullighan QC led the associated inquiry which included 1592 allegations of sexual abuse and the investigation of the deaths of 924 children in state care.
Priscilla Taylor shares a photo of her (first on the left) on the steps of South Australia’s Parliament House, participating in protest organised by CLAN on the day that the Mullighan report was tabled.
Both the 2008 Mulligan (South Australia) and the 2004 (federal Senate) reports recommended that Forgotten Australians receive an apology.
Priscilla recalls:
Rightfully so others had received their apology.
We were the last, we needed our apology , we were waiting for this trauma to stop.
Apology from the Salvation Army
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.
