Adelaide Migration Museum: It's not over here

The Immigrants by Aurelio Fortelaan

The Migration Museum in Adelaide is a building with a story of its own. The site was originally used as a Native School where Aboriginal children were boarded and educated. It then served as part of Adelaide’s Destitute Asylum (housing the poor and homeless and ‘fallen women’), from 1852 to 1918. In its final incarnation before becoming the current museum, it was a Government Chemistry Department, where chemists analysed blood samples. All of these eras have a small exhibition explaining their purposes, although the main body of the museum features the history of migration in Australia.

Scientific discoveries in navigation and shipbuilding technology meant that by the fifteenth century ships could travel much greater distances than before. The competitive nation-states of Europe began a search for distant lands where they could exploit natural resources in order to increase their power and trading opportunities. In 1492 Columbus claimed the Americas for Spain.

For the next four centuries, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England, France and Germany progressively explored the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Soldiers, missionaries, settlers and armies of bureaucrats followed in the wake of these voyages of ‘discovery’. The world’s oceans were linked through a network of empires, colonies, trading posts and shipping routes.

Between 1815 and 1930, 52 million people left homes in Britain, Ireland, the German States, Scandinavia, Italy and Southern Europe. Of those, 3.5 million came to Australia (fewer to South Australia). They were exiles for political or religious reasons, leaving their native land due to instances of poverty, such as the Irish famine or the Highland clearances of Scotland. They sought opportunities of work and land.

Of course, while the story of immigration is an important one for the continent, it was not Terra Nullius. The Kaurna people are the indigenous owners of the land of the Adelaide Plains and they called the area by the mouth of the Torrens River, which became the city of Adelaide, Tananya, which means Red Kangaroo.

The white settlers could have learned much from the original inhabitants, but were too busy trying to make a new Britannia; ‘civilising and Christianising’ the Aborigines. They found the rose (a symbol of England) flourished in South Australia, and Archdeacon Matthew Hale introduced cricket at Poonindie as part of the ‘civilising’ process. Escaping persecution made the new migrants zealous for religious freedom; there is a reason Adelaide is known as the city of churches.

The octagonal display room of the museum features many exhibits of what the immigrants decided they needed to take or were physically able to carry. Some of the items such as valuable work boots, sentimental christening gowns or tea-sets one couldn’t bear to leave behind are terribly poignant as people embarked upon a new life on the other side of the world.

In 1829 one of the founders of South Australia, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, published a theory of systematic or scientific colonisation in which settlers would no longer receive free grants of land as in other colonies. He suggested instead that colonial land should be sold for a set price to men of wealth, and the proceeds used to pay emigration costs of desirable labourers. The class system was still in evidence, however, and the ‘wrong type of labourers’ were arriving. The government began subsidising immigrants only at times of extreme shortage.

Australia became a Federation in 1901. The Nomenclature Act of 1917 prohibited use of German language and changed place names of German origin. In 1927 the Duke and Duchess of York opened the new Parliament House in Canberra, and in 1930, the first telephone link to Britain was established between Melbourne and London. And the waves of migration were reaching Australian shores from all over the globe.

In 1906 Australia took formal control of PNG from Britain; 7,500 Jewish refugees from Germany were accepted in 1973, flowed by Chinese refugees in 1940 after the Japanese invasion. Italian prisoners of war arrived in 1941, and in 1946 Austrians, Maltese, Italians and Germans came. Free and assisted passage agreements with the UK and Poland were set up to help displaced persons to migrate, and in 1948 the creation of Israel led to emigration of Palestinians.

Child migrants began to arrive in 1951 and, as of 1956, jet aircraft flights to Australia made it easier for Eastern Europeans to travel, which they did with the assistance of the Operation Reunion Scheme. Many people from the UK flocked Down Under as part of the Bring out a Briton campaign of 1957. The British, and particularly the English, make up a large percentage of Australia’s immigrants, but are often referred to as ‘the invisible migrants’.

Not all migrants were welcomed equally. A dictation test was established in 1901 in which some new migrants had to transcribe 50 words of ‘any European language.’ From 1909 the Immigration Restriction Act (known as the White Immigration policy) was implemented and until it was repealed in 1958, no one who was given the test passed it. Dictation would be given in Swedish, Scots Gaelic or Hungarian if the immigration officers didn’t like the look of you (i.e. you were Irish, Asian, black) or your politics.

A tapestry from Bosnia and Herzegovina

Immigration has continued steadily over the years, following a pattern of social, economic, political or geographical upheaval: – Italians from Sicily arrived after the earthquake of 1968; 12,000 Czech and Slovak refugees arrived following the Soviet invasion; Vietnamese people came to avoid the war in their country, and Cambodian refugees fled Pol Pot’s regime throughout the 1970s. Bengali immigrants escaped civil war between East and West Pakistan in 1971, and Chilean refugees escaped Pinochet where they could.

The relationship has not always been an easy one, however, and although migration adds multicultural richness in terms of faith, food, dress and theatre, not everyone is happy with the diversity. In 1949 the Minister of Immigration, Arthur Calwell, instigated The Good Neighbour Project to ‘Australianise all our migrants in as short a time as possible’. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was erected in Canberra in 1972 by indigenous people who felt their rights were being eroded by foreign intervention.

Despite the Declaration of Universal Migration in 1973 which stipulates, ‘any persons anywhere in the world can apply to migrate to Australia no matter what their sex, colour, ethnic origin or religion’, there is still a large amount of tension and unease around the subject, bursting into violent protest on occasion such as the 2005 race riots.

The museum had no section on the (current) Opposition leader’s tirade against Indonesian asylum seekers – Tony Abbott maintains he will ‘turn back the boats’ – but the fact that this is an incendiary issue which might have a significantly influence the upcoming federal election suggests that the migration museum has several more chapters to include in its narrative journey.

Tapestry detail

A World Away: Child Migration

On Their Own: Britain's Child Migrants
National Archives of Australia
December 2012 - March 2013

From the 1860s more than 100,000 British children were sent to Canada, 7,000 to Australia, and several hundred to Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) and New Zealand through child migration schemes. Some were as young as three, but the average age was eight years old, and most of them never returned home.

Their lives changed dramatically and fortunes varied. Some succeeded in creating new futures. Others suffered lonely, brutal childhoods. All experienced disruption and separation from family and homeland. This exhibition, a collaboration between the Australian National Maritime Museum and National Museums Liverpool UK, tells their emotional stories.

In the late nineteenth century, emigration was viewed as a solution to Britain’s economic and social problems. Between 1801 and 1911 the population of Britain increased from 9million to 36million and the rapid rise of industrialism led to overcrowded cities, disease, long hours and poor working conditions. It cost ₤15 to migrate a child and ₤12 a year to look after them on the Poor Law in Britain.

Charities were set up to support emigration including the Child Migration Scheme established by Kingsley Fairbridge in 1909. In 1900 many of the emigrating children came from workhouses, later they came from children’s homes and orphanages. Some parents chose the scheme for their children – orphans were not necessarily without parents – many children were taken into care when their parents couldn’t afford to look after them. They were told they were orphans to ensure they severed all ties with allegedly unworthy relations and made a fresh start.

Children were sent for the prospects of better living conditions and steady employment – a way to improve life away from the perceived evils of city life. It was not all totally altruistic, obviously, as there were growing labour needs in Britain’s dominions. The children were to be the bricks upon which the Empire would continue to be built. Australia in particular ran a ‘Populate or Perish’ campaign. The country was booming and there were demands for more children.

Before leaving Britain, children were given a wooden trunk containing winter and summer clothes (the first time many of them had ever had new clothes), a copy of the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. Fairbridge boys were outfitted in smart blazers, shorts, leather shoes and brown and gold striped ties. This fine wardrobe was taken from the children on arrival and replaced with khaki work clothes and bare feet. Barnardos gave children travel bags with new clothes, shoes and personal items (such as toothbrushes and combs) which were taken off them when they arrived in Australia and sent back to Britain to be used again by the next party of migrants.

The voyage was both frightening and exciting. The children they left behind home and family, but also poverty and hardship: they had new clothes and made new friends. Depending on their destination, they saw and experienced many strange sights, boats, islands and harbours – Suez Canal; Arab traders and camels; whales, dolphins and icebergs (off Labrador Coast); Quebec; Montreal; Dar es Salaam; Tanzania; Tenerife; Rock of Gibraltar; Naples; Mt Vesuvius; Port Said; Tropical Colombo; Sri Lanka.

Steamship travel afforded exotic delights and plenty to eat; many children put on weight. They played games of leapfrog and quoits and learned to swim in the pool. One interviewee remembers, “The ship had a swimming pool in the middle and I was terrified to jump in because I thought it would have no bottom and I would end up out in the sea and drown.” I can’t help but be reminded of the Land of Toys in Pinocchio where children are lured with leisure before being turned into beasts of burden. A quote at the exhibition confirms,

“The visual record of child migration is dominated by photographs of cheering children departing the UK and arriving in new lands. These photographs were taken to promote the work of sending organisations and ensure they continued to attract financial support from governments and wealthy patrons. They provide a remarkable contrast to the often damning written and oral testimonies of former child migrants, which form the basis of many case studies in the exhibition.”

Land of Toys by Bakke

Some children were given the choice of emigrating to Canada or Australia and the reasons for their choices are heartbreakingly innocent – they chose Canada because they wanted to be lumberjacks; Australia because they liked cricket or didn’t like the cold. In New Zealand many were fostered; in Canada and Australia they were put to work on the land; in Rhodesia they were educated (at the time they were told that ‘the blacks worked the land’). Some were happy with the skills they learned and later went into the farming trade, wool industry and defence forces.

For some the experience of Canada was that they were stationed in bleak, remote farms, where their accent was ridiculed and they were not allowed to eat with the family. In Australia many were shocked by the heat and the landscape, and sent to remote farm training schools or religious institutions. Pinjarra (80km south of Perth) was the first school of the Kingsley Fairbridge’s Child Emigration Society in 1912. The cottages in which the children were accommodated were called Clive, Raleigh etc – named after British navigators and war heroes to reinforce his imperial vision.

The Fairbridge Society and Barnardos sought ‘good British stock’ to populate, settle and defend the continent, but the boys were destined to be farmers, and the girls domestics and farmers’ wives. One woman recalls, “You finish school at 15 and became a cook in the Fairbridge dining room. Later you meet your future husband, an old Fairbridgian at the Fairbridge holiday camp.” The children were often put to hard labour; tilling soil, churning butter, milking cows, and hauling heavy bricks to build their own dormitories. The correspondent continues, “They asked for the best British stock – children of good health, high IQ and sound moral character – then put them to work as labourers. What a breach of faith that was.”

For some children, things were not so bad. The exhibition collects anecdotal evidence from many who underwent the schemes. One lad earned ₤10 a week and sent ₤1 to Barnardos for banking, for the savings to be released when he was 21. Others, however, tell tales of physical, sexual and verbal abuse, producing scars that remained with them for life. Some societies stole the children’s wages, belongings and letters from ‘home’ and told the children their parents were dead and that they had no siblings; that they were unloved and unwanted. When some of these children found out the truth the betrayal sent them mad. Things improved slightly with the Big Brother Movement (BBM) where Big Brothers helped Little Brothers to settle, but an interpretation panel baldly states,

“For former child migrants the legacy of their experience remains. Many have struggled, not only due to the hardships and abuse they endured, but also because they were torn from their homeland and lost their identities. Others were lucky enough to find fulfilment in their lives.”

In 1914, the First World War put a stop to child migration, although many former child migrants fought in the Canadian army as they still felt strong connections with their British roots. It recommenced after the war, but the interwar years were marked by poverty and austerity in formerly receptive colonies and child migration to Canada was formally ended by 1939. Australia became the main destination after Canada ended the scheme. One third of war evacuees to Australia later emigrated there for good. Indeed, some former child migrants also fought in the Australian army, only to later discover that they had never been granted citizenship.

In 1945 the introduction of the Welfare State reduced the need for child migration schemes, and they were officially ended in 1967. The Australian and British governments apologised for their roles in schemes “that were once considered generous philanthropy, but are now widely condemned as being fundamentally flawed.” The exhibition contains a number of oral histories, which are very moving. Videos and recordings reveal adults who still have a love for Britain even though they have lived in Australia since the age of 12, rationalising that they would have had to endure another war if they had remained in Britain.

Since the 1990s the Child Migrants’ Trust helps to reunite families. The hardest hearted cynic cannot fail to be moved by the collection of tales of reconciliations with parents thought dead and the difficulties of tracing families. Children were often given the wrong birth date and wrong name, and told they were told they had no relations, making it almost impossible to find their missing identity. One interviewee finally found his mother through her name on his birth certificate which had been concealed from him for many years. By the time he found it, she had been dead for two years.

Former child migrants gather in London for the apology from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in February 2010.

The exhibition is sensitively handled; a well-balanced and thought-provoking treatment of an incredibly emotional issue. We can’t change history, but hopefully we can learn from it. We have done some terrible things in the past with the best of misguided intentions. In the words of the exhibition itself:

“The history of child migration is complex and contested. Issues of redress and compensation remain unresolved. Many former child migrants are still coming to terms with their deportation and dislocation and find it painful to reflect on their past.”