Fairbridge Village | |
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Location | |
Australia | |
Coordinates | 32°35′59″S115°56′44″E / 32.59972°S 115.94556°E |
Information | |
Other names |
|
Type | Secondary School, part of Fairbridge WA Inc |
Established | 1912 |
Founder | Kingsley Fairbridge |
Status | Currently used for education, school camps, and tourism purposes |
Authority | Independent |
Principal | Gavin Nancarrow (Acting) |
Chief Executive | Graeme Gammie (Acting) |
Age range | 11-18 |
Enrollment | 150 |
Official name | Fairbridge Farm School |
Type | State Registered Place |
Designated | 2 June 1998 |
Reference no. | 1762 |
Fairbridge, Western Australia is a former farm school near Pinjarra in Southwest Western Australia. It is now used predominantly for education, school and community camps and tourism purposes. It is also home to Fairbridge College, a curriculum and reengagement secondary school.
It is also a rural locality of the Shire of Murray in the Peel Region . [1] [2]
On 15 April 1912, Kingsley Fairbridge and his wife, Ruby Fairbridge, arrived in Albany, Western Australia, from England and made their way to Pinjarra, arriving on 16 July that same year to establish the world's first Fairbridge Farm School. [3] The school opened on 19 October 1912. Kingsley wanted to see "little children shedding the bondage of unfortunate circumstances and stretching their legs and minds amid the thousand interests of the farm." [4]
From 1913 to 1982, Fairbridge Farm School was home to a total of 3,580 children [5] who came to Fairbridge under various child migration schemes. The school provided education in task-learning, husbandry, metal work and wood work. During World War II, Dutch refugee children evacuated from Indonesia were based at Fairbridge while they were waiting to be reunited with their families. The site was also used as a training ground for the Women's Land Army, and Guildford Grammar School partially relocated there while their school was used as a hospital base. [6] An airfield was constructed and operated from the school during the Second World War until the 1950s.
The Australian Heritage Commission commented, when announcing the listing of Fairbridge on the Interim List of the Register of the National Estate in December 1997 that "Fairbridge is a striking example of Australia’s early philanthropic movement to resettle and educate migrant children." The Chair of the Heritage Commission at the time, Wendy McCarthy stated that "'by entering Fairbridge in the Interim List of the Register of the National Estate, we are not only recognising the efforts of this philanthropist, Kingsley Fairbridge, but also its role in a significant phase in Australia’s migration history. From 1912 to 1980, Fairbridge Pinjarra played a significant role in the development of the British Empire and Australian migration history on child, single parent and family migration schemes. [7]
Many of the child migrants were falsely told that they were orphans and consequently never saw their families again. [8] In 1986, the first Australian child migrant approached the British government to seek reparation. The approach eventually led to the establishment of the Child Migrant Trust in 1987. [9] The Australian Government apologised for its involvement in the scheme, and in 1998 the Western Australian Government apologised to the former child migrants: "The Western Australian Government apologises to former child migrants who suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse in the state's institutions". The following year the Christian Brothers, Sisters of Mercy and Poor Sisters of Nazareth launched a computerised personal history index to the records of former child migrants.
On 24 February 2010, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a formal apology to the families of children who suffered. [10] [11] On 31 January 2019, the UK Government announced that following the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, which handed down its report in May 2018, the UK Government would make an ex-gratia payment of £20,000 to any former British child migrant who was alive on 1 March 2018, or if alive as at that date and since deceased, the payment would be made to the deceased's beneficiaries. [12]
In July 2020, it was reported that the Australian Government had named Fairbridge Restored Limited as one of six institutions that had failed to sign up for the National Redress Scheme by the June 30 deadline. [13] In November 2020, The Guardian reported that Fairbridge Restored Limited was dormant and under administration, and that the administrator, Chris Laverty, had claimed that insolvency law in the UK meant Fairbridge was unable to comply with the redress scheme criteria. [14]
The chapel is the only building in Australia designed, and with construction overseen by noted British architect Sir Herbert Baker. Described as "the architectural jewel in the crown" of Fairbridge Village, the chapel was built in 1930–31 by the Western Australian Government with construction funded by British interests. [15]
Fairbridge Western Australia Inc. was established as a charity in 1983 and owns and operates Fairbridge Village. The organisation runs programs and services for young people including an independent school, registered training organisation, school and community camps. Fairbridge work closely with local employee Alcoa providing traineeships to youth from the local community.[ citation needed ]
As a not for profit organisation all surplus funds are invested to provide opportunities for youth.
The 30-hectare (74-acre) Village is run as a training facility for young people and as a tourist destination providing visitors with accommodation, catering and activities in its historic surroundings. It is the only Fairbridge Farm School site remaining out of the eight that were originally built around the world.[ citation needed ]
Fairbridge offers historical tours and activities. It has a number of buildings which are used as conference and function venues and a coffee shop featuring local artworks.
Fairbridge Village consists of 55 heritage listed buildings and ten newer buildings. [16] The Village also has a chapel, dining hall, single and double storey cottages, training and sporting facilities. Accommodation can hold 370 people. There are 23 different self-contained cottages that sleep from 2 to 56 people.
Guests staying at the village have access to a 30-metre (98 ft) swimming pool, full sized sporting oval, tennis, beach volleyball, mini golf, art gallery and museum.
Fairbridge was WA Tourism Award's Silver Medallist 2006 and 2007.[ citation needed ]
The Scheyville National Park is a protected national park that is located in the northwestern suburbs of Sydney in New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The 920-hectare (2,300-acre) national park is situated approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northwest of the Sydney central business district, northeast of Windsor, near the settlement of Scheyville. Longneck Lagoon lies in the northern section of the park. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 9 April 2010.
Home Children was the child migration scheme founded by Annie MacPherson in 1869, under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. The programme was largely discontinued in the 1930s but not entirely terminated until the 1970s.
Sir Herbert Baker was an English architect remembered as the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades, and a major designer of some of New Delhi's most notable government structures. He was born and died at Owletts in Cobham, Kent.
The Hotham Valley Tourist Railway is a tourist and heritage railway in the Peel region of Western Australia.
Pinjarra is a town in the Peel region of Western Australia along the South Western Highway, 82 kilometres (51 mi) from the state capital, Perth and 21 kilometres (13 mi) south-east of the coastal city of Mandurah. Its local government area is the Shire of Murray. At the 2016 census, Pinjarra had a population of 4910.
Guildford Grammar School, informally known as Guildford Grammar, Guildford or GGS, is an independent Anglican coeducational primary and secondary day and boarding school, located in Guildford, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.
Bindoon is a town 84 kilometres (52 mi) from Perth city on the Great Northern Highway within the Shire of Chittering. The name Bindoon is thought to be Aboriginal in origin and to mean "place where the yams grow". The name has been in use in the area since 1843 when an early settler, William Brockman, named the property he had surveyed as Bindoon. The townsite was gazetted in 1953.
David Hill is an English-born Australian business leader and author.
Margaret Humphreys, is a British social worker and author from Nottingham, England. She worked for Nottinghamshire County Council operating around Radford, Nottingham and Hyson Green in child protection and adoption services. In 1986, she received a letter from a woman in Australia who, believing she was an orphan, was looking to locate her birth certificate so she could get married.
The Shire of Murray is a local government area of Western Australia. It has an area of 1,710.1 square kilometres (660.3 sq mi) and is located in the Peel Region about 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of the Perth CBD.
Kingsley Ogilvie Fairbridge was the founder of a child emigration scheme from Britain to its colonies and the Fairbridge Schools. His life work was the founding of the "Society for the Furtherance of Child Emigration to the Colonies", which was afterwards incorporated as the "Child Emigration Society" and ultimately the "Fairbridge Society".
Clontarf Aboriginal College is a co-educational Aboriginal college for indigenous youth aged between 15 and 18 years, located in the Perth suburb of Waterford in Western Australia. Since 2000 the college has also been the centre for the Clontarf Football Academy run by the Clontarf Foundation a program of Australian rules football for indigenous youth.
Katherine Mary ClutterbuckCSC MBE, usually known as Sister Kate, was an Anglican nun who pioneered a cottage home system for looking after orphan babies and children in Western Australia. She later became well known for her work with Indigenous Australian children who were selected according to a criterion of skin colour and sent to her homes to groom the young "nearly white" children for absorption into the white community. These children would later be described as part of the Stolen Generation.
Tardun is a small town in the Mid West region of Western Australia.
Forgotten Australians or care leavers are terms referring to the estimated 500,000 children who experienced care in institutions or outside a home setting in Australia during the 20th century. The Australian Senate committee used the term in the title of its report which resulted from its 2003–2004 "Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care", which looked primarily at those affected children who were not covered by the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, which focused on Aboriginal children, and the 2001 report Lost Innocents: Righting the Record which reported on an inquiry into child migrants.
Pinjarra Senior High School is an independent high school in Pinjarra, a regional centre 86 kilometres (53 mi) south of Perth, Western Australia. The school district covers the Pinjarra and surrounding areas such as Serpentine, Dwellingup, Waroona, North Yunderup and South Yunderup.
Castledare Boys' Home was a residential college in Wilson, Western Australia owned and operated by the Congregation of Christian Brothers from March 1929 to 1983 and established for the treatment and training of intellectually handicapped children. A 1929 newspaper article announcing the opening described it as a "training school for sub-normal boys". It opened with ten boys and under the directorship of Brother G. Hyland. The state psychologist, Ethel Stoneham, travelled to Europe and the United States to study similar institutions and was influential in the design of the home.
Sir Ernest Augustus Lee Steere was a prominent Australian businessman and pastoralist.
The Long Journey Home is an Australian TV documentary in which former child migrants relate their generally unhappy experiences as inmates of a Fairbridge school establishment at Molong, New South Wales. The script is largely based on an autobiographical book by David Hill, published in 2007. The documentary first went to air on ABC Television in November 2009, with Hill as one of the presenters. It included his report of allegations made by three former residents that the former distinguished governor-general Sir William Slim had sexually assaulted them and other young boys during visits to the Fairbridge farms.
Marrinup is a ghost town in the Peel region of Western Australia between Dwellingup and Pinjarra. Its local government area is the Shire of Murray. The town was destroyed in the 1961 bushfires and the townsite is now used as a campground. The ruins of the townsite are heritage listed. Little remains of the town other than an old bridge over Marrinup Creek and some wooden railway sleepers.