Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Fairbridge Village

Just a brief history on Fairbridge.  First Fairbridge Farm established in the world.  Kingsley Fairbridge arrived in Australia from Brittain 1912 and set up the fam in 1913.  From 1913 until 1982 3,580 children where assisted by Fairbridge under the child emigration scheme. There is 52 buildings on the farm and now is let out to school and organisation groups.  I think his original plan was probably very noble but it wasn't always that way.  A film was made not long ago "Oranges and Sunshine" describing it as the most significant scandal of recent times, the deportation of thousands of children from the UK to Australia, a miscarriage of Justice.
 one of the dormitories where the children would have slept, probably 3 to a bed, I don't see anywhere for storage of clothes.  One can imagine how frightening this must have been for the children, a dark dismal space.



 beautiful flame tree flowers fallen on the decking




 One just knows the church had to be somewhere behind all this.  A grand and imposing building, no money spared here.




each building that housed the children, (not this one above) had a house mother.  Some of these house mothers where very bitter women and took out their rage on the children.  The life of the children on the farm was of hardship and in a lot of cases cruelty.  I wonder if the children where eventually better of by this as they did learn skills but lacked the love of a family that they had been taken from in the UK.  Their lives in their homeland was one of squalor, poverty and hardship.  I would guess that there would be negative and some positive experiences.  The film was about a social worker that helped the children reunite with their families in the UK. http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/13784175/child-migrant-abuse-revealed/ if you are interested in finding out more this is an article in The West Australian newspaper, grim reading.
Paddy and I spent quite a bit of time wondering about taking photo's, you will see similar photo's on both blogs.

5 comments:

  1. Glad you posted this sis. You explained the place better than I ever could. Must try and get the movie to look at. My favorite photos are 2,3,4 and 6. The old building with the jasmine growing was lovely too.

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  2. i feel the sadness in this photos one of despair

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  3. there is an air of sadness about this place

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  4. lovely photos but you can see the gloom aye.

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  5. Hey Jacky, what location was the first two pictures from in Fairbridge Village? Thanks

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