After the Second World War, Australia escalated its child migration program from Europe.
Ron Metcalfe was one of the Australian immigration officials who worked closely with the
organisations selected to care for the children.
Well, I was called a Migration Officer Child.
But, you know, after a while, it became obvious.
See, what had happened, Mr Calwell had felt, like many others, that during those war
years the bombings in London would mean that we've got to get rid of these children -
they're all going to be bombed to death here - let's get them out to Canada and to
Australia.
Then there was submarine trouble in the Atlantic.
It was obvious you couldn't put all the kids on these ships going over there, they'd be
all sinking.
So, they had to stay in England.
So, that scheme which he had in mind initially, that failed completely.
But then he knew that prior to the war, and even then showing some signs of existence,
were all these people like Fairbridge and Barnardos and all sorts of organisations that
had taken small - very small - numbers before the war, were ...
here was one avenue, at least, that might work.
He'd also thought very much about Norway because Norway had been taken over by the
Germans.
They reckoned there was going to be a lot of illegitimate children in Norway.
They also thought that everyone ...
all the bombings that had taken place, that there'd be all doubly orphaned, and they
weren't doubly orphaned they usually had one still alive or they had a close relative.
They also had some governments that felt that it was unwise even though some of these
people were unsuitable, weren't going to be accepted by their own friends and so on, they
felt they had a responsibility to look after them too.
So, the numbers that were thought available in every scene were much smaller than they
ever anticipated.
And, as I say, in ten years, in ten years from these countries and churches, there were
only 2536, I think, children - seven to 13 years of age - came to Australia.
That was one of the reasons why I've always felt unhappy about the criticism because they
mainly talked about people of ten thousand, 20 thousand, 30 thousand - some of them even
got up to 50 thousand - the figure was two and a half thousand in ten years.
So when you felt that there was this sort of publicity, you know, you're worried about
the whole thing.
And as I say, I did my best on a few occasions to actually be able to be heard by the
people that were making enquiries and I could not get them to agree to me.
I had some here in this house but I couldn't get any of the enquirers - the politicians
who were making the enquiries or others - to come.
I had dealings with the High Commissioner -the British High Commissioner - with them, and
eventually they sent a note back to me with ...
which is in the House of Lords, in the library, about my views.
But never have I spoken to any of all these critics and yet I was the only Migration
Officer Child in existence at the time.
They were people who, in my opinion, in the main, had been deprived of a normal home life
and this was something better.
The man who came out from London who I saw, John Moss, who came to this house and I
travelled with for a short time, he was the one who sent a report back saying to the
British authorities - if I were you, I'd send more.
The question of housing was always a problem as to whether it was going to be in ...
you're going to have them in a large number, whether you're going to have in small
numbers, or whether you're...which was the best method of doing it.
They were trying all sorts of systems, whether they should have housing as well as they
should have just looked after by two or three people in various areas.
It wasn't as if it was ignored.
My opinion was that the ...
I felt that some orders - some orders of the Catholic church - were tougher than others.
But I think from my own experience, they were tough with them in their own homes, too.
They were not ...
they believed in that sort of behaviour.
That was the way they felt people should be looked after and there were some orders would
- we refused some orders - I didn't know why all the children whoever complained about
the fact that they never got to school.
I never heard of any children that had been badly treated, well, you can understand
perhaps that's why they didn't do that because they wouldn't be game to, perhaps.
But nevertheless ...
some of them went to public schools in their own... in the town.
They weren't in their own little school, in their own little room.
They went to normal public schools.
If anything adverse was happening, it surely would have been known to some of the other
people in those schools as well.
This is not tot say that, sure, as we can even see today, the handling of children is not
an easy matter and particularly when some of the mothers just left them, some of the
fathers, more frequently, left them.
And it was a genuine attempt to help these young people to living your life.
Mind you, they had all in mind then we were willing sheep and they thought about farming
as being the way, the best way, to do it.
So, a lot of them were in farming property areas.
As I said earlier, when you consider in your first ten years ...
and Arthur Calwell was ...
he was very interested in children migration, he wanted us to succeed.
But the money that was granted - there was more money available than there are for people
today - in building homes, providing ablutions, providing everything - clothing,
equipment.
I had to make a submission, as you would know, to the government about equipment
allowance to get more paperwork available, knives and get pencils and pens and
everything, all that sort of thing.
But each state government gave money, the Commonwealth gave money, we had the
Commonwealth endowment was paid.
No, I think that there were certainly ...
you would always find ways to improve child migration, always.
But I don't think that the way that it had been put that they were ...
that all the people looking after them were devils and so on, it just doesn't add up.