Growing up in Australia with no past, no family and just unanswered questions ..... Empty Cradles

The story of the children sent to Canada from the late 19th century into the early 20th has almost passed out of living memory, but those who went to Australia were still leaving our shores in the 1970s.

These Australian stories are no less harrowing than those young people who travelled across the Atlantic.

They bring to the surface all the same feelings of anger and incredulity that someone could think it was a good idea to solve the problems of our homeless, neglected and poverty stricken children by dumping them in other parts of the Empire.

Now before any one accuses me of a lack of historical impartiality I do have to say that like many of the descendants of children sent from Britain to Canada I have been very careful in examining the case for their migration. Some in Canada might even feel that I have been over cautious about coming to a judgement.

Here is it is enough to say that despite some well meaning thinking on the part of some good people and a belief that wide open spaces were a better environment than the streets and dismal courts of the poorer parts of our cities the policy was wrong.

And it was seen to be wrong at the time.  Almost from the onset of the programme people were worried about the lack of supervision and inspection in Canada and had been challenging the very premise upon which the migration was undertaken.

So, that I hope has negated that oft used argument by the apologists of the scheme that we are in  some way judging past actions by  present day sensibilities.   It always was a tired and barren argument but one totally exposed when you consider that the policy was still in full swing in the 1960s and really only came to an end 40 or so years ago.

This was no case of another time and another place, but at a moment when Britain had embraced the welfare state, believed we were advancing to a new bright future which offered new life choices to its entire people and set against full employment and growing prosperity.

And yet the children were still being sent.  In some cases having been told their parents were dead and in almost all cases denied any real knowledge of who they had been or why they were sent.

This shabby little episode, this last flickering of a discredited policy in child care was exposed by Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker in the 1980s.  Her work in providing a history for all those Australians who grew up with no knowledge of a family in Britain or the circumstances which led to them being sent to Australia is documented in her book Empty Cradles which in turn became the film Oranges and Sunshine.

It is a powerful account of the confusion, hurt and anger felt by many of these young people combined with an insight into the reluctance shown on the part of the charities and government agencies to either help or even admit the extent of the programme.

And this is why I think it is essential reading for all of us engaged in telling the story of British Home Children.

For most of us our own BHC relatives are dead and many of their records are scattered, lost or unobtainable.  Even just identifying the names of the young people is a huge task and some I fear will never emerge from the shadows.

So for most of us looking for family it is a matter of pouring over newspaper accounts, census returns and just possibly if we are very lucky the records of the local work house or children’s charity.

Going the next step and trying to understand the justification for the migrations is wrapped up in dense committee minutes of long forgotten charities or the often vain self congratulatory biographies and autobiographies of the worthies involved.

All of which means our own feelings of anger and disbelief are one step removed.  Mrs Humphrey’s book has the value that here are the voices and experiences of people still alive, still able to recount their stories and give a context to what happened.

In its way the book has done more to make me angry about what went on than the plight of my own great uncle or the stories uncovered by Lori and Norah and the many others committed to telling the story of our Canadian BHC.

But it is also a very revealing insight into how the charities and authorities tried to minimise what went on and in some cases to perpetuate the myth that it was all oranges and sunshine and that they were only doing what was best for the children.

More than once Mrs Humphrey’s was told that her work had caused hurt to those who ran the charities to which her reply was always that she knew of countless other Australians who had been at the receiving end and were also still hurting.

I know there are those who feel that the publicity around the book takes the limelight away from the experiences of our Canadian relatives but I rather think it is the reverse.  Empty Cradles exposed an awful episode in child care, opened up the debate and contributed to national apologies made by the Australian and British Governments.

All of that was a good thing, and will lead I have no doubt to an apology from the Government of Canada.  The work of those promoting the petition along with the growing number of books, exhibitions and research will continue to shine a light on all those young people sent north across the Atlantic.

In the meantime I shall finish the book and order up the DVD of the film.

*Empty Cradles,  was published in 1994. Its sales of 75,000 copies helped to fund the work of the Child Migrants Trust at a critical time when British government grants had been stopped. Empty Cradles has been dramatised as the 2011 feature film Oranges and Sunshine.

The Child Migrants Trust was established in 1987 by Margaret Humphreys CBE, OAM. It addresses the issues surrounding the deportation of children from Britain. In the post-war period, child migrants as young as three were shipped to Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia and Australia, a practice that continued as late as 1970. http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/

A little bit of Australia in the 1930s

I am in Australia gazing across at the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or at least a bit of it.

The year is 1930 and the bridge has been under construction since 1923.

Now I am indebted to my friend for both the pictures and the story.  June and I first got together when we discovered a common interest in Alexander Somerville the radical journalist who came here in 1847.*

For me he was a fascinating link into the politics of the 19th century and for June a direct descendant, and so we began writing to each other and discovered our joint passion for all things historical.

June has be kind enough to contribute to the blog over the last few months and I am pleased that she done so again with the story of that iconic bridge which along with Opera House features in so many photographs of Sydney.

“The first proposal for a bridge across the Harbour was made in 1815 by the NSW government architect, Francis Greenaway, an ex convict. 

Other crossings were suggested, including a number for a tunnel. A regular ferry service began in 1842 from Dawes Point to Blues Point. 

(There is now a tunnel as well). Work commenced on July 28 1923 and the bridge was formally opened on Mar 19. 1932 by NSW Premier J T Lang, although the ceremony was disrupted by Francis Edward de Groot, a member of the New Guard, who dashed in and cut the ribbon before the Premier could do so!

The steel arch span is not the world's longest, but it was the world's most massive arch. The main span is 503 m long. The top of the arch is 134 m above sea level. In July 1959, two extra road lanes were opened after two tram tracks on the eastern side of the deck were removed. 

Train lines also run over the bridge. We have visited the pylons at the city end of the bridge and these days, for people who don't mind heights, there is a walk up the span to a magnificent view over the Harbour. I hope this information is useful.”

But equally fascinating is the picture of her father’s car.

“This photo was taken by my father in 1930 when he and my mother first visited Sydney in his first car, a Chevrolet tourer, I think it was called. 

It was when the Great Depression first hit Australia and an acquaintance of Dad's had just bought himself a new car and found himself in financial trouble. 

So Dad, a working class man, helped him out by purchasing his car.

It was Dad's pride and joy until 1938 and his children have fond memories of holidays with the car although Dad's justification for buying himself a car was the difficulty of carrying the tools of his trade, brushes, paint and ladders with a motorbike and sidecar.”

So there you have it a glimpse in to the history of a Australia, as ever the blog has got the lot.

Pictures; from the collection of June Pound

*Alexander Somrerville, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alexander%20Somerville

The goldfields of Australia in the 19th century

It remains one of those rare privileges when a friend shares some of their family stories with me and then agrees to them being posted on the blog.

And this is all the more exciting when the family experiences come from the other side of the world and explore the Australian gold rush.

Now I didn’t know that much about the discovery of gold in New South Wales in the 19th century but like the opening up of the Californian gold fields its discovery led to a similar gold fever.

There had been stories of chance gold finds as far back as 1815, but the first official confirmation came in 1823.  This however was suppressed for fear that it might attract large number of prospectors including runaway convicts and free settlers who would abandon their farms in search of a golden fortune.

But ironically it was the Californian Gold Rush in 1849 which convinced the authorities that in the face of people leaving for the USA the home gold fields should be made known and so pre-empt a local drive for gold.

And so from 1851 into the 1880s parts of Western Australia became the haunt of the hard working, the hopeful, the lucky the unsuccessful.

All of which make June’s ancestors all the more canny because at least one chose to grow the food the gold hunters needed and in turn became more successful than many of those who chased the metal.

"My mother's grandfather, John Templeton, was also a sailor but nowhere near as elevated as Captain Dan.

I think he probably started out on a collier carrying coal out of Whitehaven where he lived as a young man. Possibly he sailed to Liverpool and back although I will never know this for sure.

Somehow he took a position on a ship which sailed to Victoria not long after Victoria separated from New South Wales and then he worked on a coastal ship. He was a sailor working out of Melbourne when he met my great grandmother.

When they married he gave up the sea and started working as carrier, a job which was very necessary in and around Melbourne in those days. Eventually he purchased his own horse and cart and when a family crisis occurred, he packed up the family and headed to Bendigo with the horse and cart.

I believe that he kept the horse and cart whilst he prospected for gold on the Bendigo Creek at what was then known as Kangaroo Gully, now known as Kangaroo Flat.

When it became harder to find gold some of the first miners who had families started reworking the piles of dirt which had been left by other prospectors due to lack of water and also lower yields of gold. These types of miners were known as puddlers.

To extract gold in this way you needed a horse which travelled around and around, processing large amounts of soil. John and his brother-in-law, George Teasdale, who came from Manchester, did pretty well with this.

They were also quite ingenious in that they used the mud which would have clogged up the creek to make mud bricks with which to build their more permanent houses. The government still had not surveyed the land in the area so no land was available then on which to build homes. The miners and their families had to make-do with tents.

However, the large number of puddlers who were working in the gully eventually clogged up the creek and was very unpopular with other settlers and miners. So the government clamped down on the puddlers by charging them a higher licence fee to work their claims making it an unprofitable way of extracting the gold. George then took to being a carter and John moved his family to the site of a new gold rush at Inglewood.  

He later returned to Kangaroo Flat where, with his brothers-in-law John MacPherson and George Teasdale they worked on a deep mine at Diamond Hill using their skills in following likely veins of quartz to open up new leads.

When he died John was a cab proprietor, so he returned to driving horses and a type of cab which carried about 8-10 people. One of the Templeton’s must have taken over the cab business as, when I was about 11 years old, my grandfather took my sister and me out to Kangaroo Flat in a cab. We never knew the significance of this until years later when I took up researching our ancestors! Why did he not tell us, I wonder?"

Pictures; from the collection of June Pound

Mining opals in Australia in the 1890s

I am back in Australia, this time in the 1890s reflecting on the opal mining fields.

And again it is my old friend June who has shared her knowledge of the history of the opal workings along with some wonderful pictures.

"Well Australia is the source of most of the world's opals. Fire opal, the least common, is mined in Western Australia. 

It is almost transparent and has beautiful flashes of red and orange, hence its name. 

Black opal, the most valuable, is not really black but has a dark background with flashes of every colour of the rainbow. I believe that as a gemstone they are an acquired taste. 

Then comes white opal which has a white background with flashes of all colours. 

Because it is not as valuable as black opal it is sold as solid opal but the valuable black opal is sold as doublets or triplets. 

The opal is cut into very thin pieces and glued to what is called potch, a black stone without colour. 

As opal is very brittle, it is sometimes covered with a thin layer of clear white opal or a type of plastic to protect the black opal.

In Australia opal was considered unlucky so it is not particularly popular here. However the Americans love it and whenever they come to Australia they will not go home without buying opal. 

They were our best customers for opal and, even after we closed our business, Frank's cousin, an engineer with General Motors Holden in Australia, who spent four years in Detroit working for the American GM, often had visitors from the US and whenever they came he would ring us and he would come and select some opals already set for his guests to purchase. 


Sometimes they would buy unset opals but it was quickly discovered that our jewellers were more experienced in setting the opals without breaking them.

Almost anyone, when we went to the opal fields, could prospect for opal simply by obtaining a miner's licence. 

Women also mine for opal and there are lots of different nationalities. 

You pick yourself a likely spot, maybe an abandoned mine or completely new ground and start digging! This was in the 60's but things may have changed since then.

The mines are not all that deep; I suppose 

I was lowered about 20' down into a pit and from that pit was a tunnel with lots of lovely colours. 

The walls were, if I remember correctly, of white-ish stone and you could see the veins of colour running through them. 

At the top of the pit, similar to the early gold mines, there was a windlass and a bucket and very necessary tool for removing the dirt as soon as you start burrowing underground. 

Of course you also need a pick and a shovel and I suppose these days they have pneumatic drills. None of the mines I have seen were very deep. 

There are more trees and Lightning Ridge had more facilities than Andamooka which was quite primitive when we visited it. 

Although some of the houses in Lightning Ridge are partially underground, most of the other facilities are normal. Coober Pedy does have a good camping area.

It is very hot on the opal fields and there is also a shortage of water. 

For this reason the houses and other buildings are dug into the ground, in a hillside if there is one. 

In Coober Pedy there are quite large buildings, shops and restaurants, the hospital and the church, all dug into the hill. 

In the photograph I sent you of the church only the doorway and the steeple are above the ground. 

With the hospital the roof and skylights and the upper part of the walls are visible with windows on the upper part of the walls to let in light.

Two ladies dug out the house which is open for tourists in Coober Pedy. 

They say if you run out of cupboard space it is really quite easy to dig yourself another cupboard, so I think the stone must be fairly soft. 

It also appears to be stable unlike the soil in the gold mines which needed to be shored up with wood. I never tried any digging but Frank and his friend, Gerry, an opal dealer, did."

Pictures; from the collection of June Pound

Oranges & Sunshine the on going story of British Home Children

The story of the children sent to Canada from the late 19th century into the early 20th has almost passed out of living memory, but those who went to Australia were still leaving our shores in the 1970s.

Their stories are still there to listen to and so I am looking forward to watching Ken Loaches’s film Oranges and Sunshine based the true story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham who has worked tirelessly to reunite members of families who were separated when one or more siblings were sent to Australia.

Oranges & Sunshine Saturday evening 21.45 BBC 2