Famous Farm School Revisited After 20 Years

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28618, 21 June 1958, Page 10

Famous Farm School Revisited After 20 Years

[Specially written for "The Press”) 4 [By R R- BEAUCHAMP) To go back to the beginning of my connexion with tlie Fairbridge Farm School is to visit an English fireside in 1924 where, as I sat pondering future plans, my mother read aloud from “The Times” the obituary of one Kingsley Fairbridge, worn out at 39, in the midst of his work at Pinjarra in Western Australia. Dissatisfaction with overcrowded v industrial England had by then so settled upon my spirits that I was determined to seek new life in a new land, and I listened attentively to the quiet voice across the hearth.

Kingsley Fairbridge, said the glowing tribute, was himself a child of these new, and then empty, lands who had in his boyhood seen and felt the need to people them.

-As a South African Rhodes Scholar, he discovered in the slums of English cities the children who 1 might be brought from a life of near slavery to the freedom and opportunity of the open spaces he loved so well. To this end he then devoted all his talents and energy: and indeed, his life.

I have just' come back from visiting, after nearly 20 years, the Fairbridge Farm School at Molong in New South Wales. There I have lived again amongst the present generation of children and visited, in remote country districts, and in Sydney too, some .of the men and women who were boys and girls with me in the early days of the Molong school. In a world where future prospects are a litle uncertain and depressing; where mankind’s chief aim and only hope is to stave off'for another year the disasters threatening on every side, ft is refreshing to find a human experiment that works well and gives hope for the future.

Fairbridge tells in his autobiography how as a boy of 12 he was sent by his father, a Rhodesian surveyor, to peg out land some day’s journey from their camp. He went with one native companion, did his work and set out on the homeward . journey. Through difficulties with a tribe, through whose territory they must pass, they ran out of provisions. In the last delirious stages of exhaustion he thought he saw the empty land filled with farms. From the homesteads rose the smoke of cooking fires and the people welcomed him and fed him. He reached home at last and that vision of the empty and well loved land of his childhood being peopled with children like himself, never left him. With little formal education 1 but outstanding qualities of character and leadership he was given a Rhodes scholarship. In the cloistered calm of Oxford he found fresn inspiration and, in the crowded cities 'of industrial England, he met the under-privileged children who were the very material for his dreams of settlement. Uphill Fight The battle was uphill all the way. By persistence and force of character he won first recognition, then support. Rhodesia would give him no land, but Western Australia rather grudgingly offered a block of poor sandy soil at Pinjarra, 50 miles south of Perth. To this unpromising wilderness he and his young wife led the first party of boys in 1912. They cleared the bush, built their first house with their own hands, and won more support from both the Australian and British governments. In 1919 they moved to better land not far away. There Fairbridge built z his house of cob and jarrah—typical of the man that he took the earth at his feet and the forest round him to make his dwelling place. As parties of boys and girls began to arrive regularly from the old country, there grew up around that house the Children’s Farm School at Pinjarra. During a year’s work there in 1936 I came to know many hundreds of old Fairbridgians, including some of the earjy boys to whom Kingsley had been father, teaching and everything else. He died in 1924 and is buried in the village that in his first memorial.

The depression of the early 30’s, with its disastrous effect on the industrial population of England gave the work a new impetus. In some parts of the old country there seemed really no hope for children born in towns and cities where unemployment ran to 80 per cent, and year by year there was no sign of improvement. In 1935 I helped to collect, from [some of the most distressed-And distressing areas of Tyneside? a

party of 42 Aiildren and had charge of their journey to a new Fairbridge Farm School in British Colombia. The 10-day pilgrimage by sea and rail took those boys and girls from smoky Tyneside to their new homes set in the pine forests of Vancouver Island. There, beside sparkling streams * where the salmon and trout abounded, they began a new life.

We then spent a year in Western Australia, doing after care work amongst the 1300 old Fairbridgians who comprised about one in every 300 of the state’s population—no mean achievement to have sprung from the drpam ot one man. Then my wife and I, with a growing family, were appointed to the new farm school at Molong, a venture which owed much to the faith and enthusiasm of the Rhodes Scholars of New South Wales. A 1500-acre farm 200 miles from Sydney, on the western slopes of the Blue Mountains, had been bought. A gently sloping paddock that runs down to the main highway leading to the Western Districts was chosen to be the site of the village with its playing fields, its market garden and orchard. When I first saw it there was a ripe crop of wheat on the paddock. As old Jim Shreeves, with his header and 14-horse team, harvested*the crop we followed behind to peg out the main road, the children’s cottages, the hall, the school and our own house. If you look under the hall today you can see the lines of wheat stubble—surely a good example of a house built upon a sound foundation. The land had long been cleared of bush and only half a dozen gum trees gave shade from the strong summer sun. Buildings rose apace and children came from Britain to fill them as soon as, and sometimes before, they were ready. Trees were planted and gardens laid out around the cottages. With the growth of children and trees and gardens there grew up also traditions of loyalty to the farm school and to the ideals of Kingsley Fairbridge. The first boys and girls went out into the world in 1939 to work on farms and in country homesteads. They came back “home” for holidays or for help in sickness or in trouble. As the years went by they came back to be married and to have their children christened. A Fairbridge family had been established. After 20 Years To go back to such a family after nearly 20 years was an adventure not lightly undertaken. Would they remember us—would things be very different? We needn’t have worried. When the train decanted us at 5.30 a.m. into the chilly blackness of a country railway station there to meet us was W., who had taken over from me 18 years ago. W. is a big man in every way and, like Kingsley Fairbridge, a South African Rhodes Scholar. From Molong station we drove through three miles of shadowy gums to the farm boundary and a row of poplars, the first trees 1 had planted there, now 30 feet high and pale autumn gold in the early light of dawn. Into the familiar gate with the little hospital, now half hidden in greenery, on the right. To the, left was a big building that was new to me. “Gloucester House,” said W., “the Old Fairbridgians’ club: built it seven years ago.” In the old principal’s house was Mrs W., with a cup of tea and a welcome; and soon the talk was of this child and that—what work they were doing, who they married, and how many children they had. We had always kept in touch with the school by letter and, from time to time, children had come over

to New Zealand to stay with us and give us news—but such news was patchy. Now we were back in the family home. It is indeed a family. 'There are 160 children at the school. Some 300 Old Fairbridgians are out at work and there are to date some 170 grandchildren. It grows at the rate of about 30 boys and girls a year from Britain—the spate of grandchildren has only just begun! At the centre are the W’s: knowing every child, for they were at the school with me almost from the beginning. Besides the day-to-day running of the village they are always there to welcome children back; to commend the diligent, to straighten up the laggards, to advise the worried, to bail out the troublesome, to nurse the sick—and to love them all

The bright Australian winter sun topped the hills across the valley as I went out to walk through the village I had known as a field of corn. The big hall stood out against a background of trees that almost hid the cottages. The bare gardens that the children had laboured over in the burning shadeless sun of the first summers were now cool and green and sheltered. Nature had repaid those early efforts with interest. But, if the village looked different, there was no change in the children—tumbling bare-legged from theij? cottages as the kitchen trainee boy beat a tattoo on the same old length of railway iron hanging beneath the flagstaff. They still spoke with all the accents of England and Scotland. The girls were a little shy and the boys had, all a bright good morning for the stranger.

But not a stranger for long. It was Saturday and school holiday time and Fairbridge was holding a fete to raise money for the new chapel fund. There were tents to put up and sideshows and stalls to rig. The tools seemed still to be kept where I had put them and one soon slid back into the old ways. In the afternoon friends and neighbours and old boys and girls came from the farms around and from Molong and Orange. Great big men would grasp my hand—“don’t you remember me —Jim? I was the first boy you caught smoking—and didn’t you half go to market!” And he would introduce me to 'wife and children. Everything was for sale at Fairbridge that day. There were pony rides at 3d a time. In charge of the 10 children’s mounts, ranging from Shetland ponies to retired racehorses, is a boy of 13 From a nervy, difficult product of industrial England the responsibility has made him into a lad poised and capable. • There was a shooting gallery with air rifles and no supervision more than four feet high. An old Fairbridgian had brought from his own farm a sheep whose weight we had to guess. There was all the fun of the fair and in the evening a barbecue and dancing in the hall—what a day! By 11 o’clock I was well and truly tired; but little' children were still dancing tirelessly when I went to bed.

daily love which only the cottage mother (sometimes a married couple) can give. When I was a| Pinjarra some mothers had been there since Fairbridge’s day. That, of course, is the ideal—that children should come back to the familiar faces of home. With increased mobility and increased opportunity for all kinds of work the good cottage mother, the real stayer, is harder and harder to get—especially when the work is three miles from a village, 18 from a town and 200 from the octopus that is Sydney. Others share in the responsibility of bringing up the children: in fact all the staff on the place have a kind of honorary aunt or uncle-ship—the bursar, the cook, the maintenance man, the gardener and the farm staff. A key man is the after-care officer, responsible for the welfare of the children out at work.

From the earliest time and up to ,my day at Fairbridge the general principle was that, at the age of 16 boys went to work on farms, girls in country homes. If money cotfld be found, then exceptional children -went on to higher education; but that was unusual. Nowadays, while the farm training atmosphere is such that boys have every encouragement to take to the land (and I suppose half of them still do), the way to high school and university, to trades and professions, is open to all. With all its triumphs and heartbreaks the running of a Fairbridge Farm School is a precarious business. For one thing the finding of suitable children in Britain is becoming increasingly difficult. It is a heartening fact about the post-war Western world that orphans are in short supply Single children are snapped up for' adoption almost as soon as they are born. Fairbridge now depends mainly upon whole families that have for some reason lost one or both parents. At Molong now there is one family of seven, two of six, and severai fours and threes. These children keep their own private family loyalties and have the sense of belonging to the Fairbridge family as well.

When all is-taken into account I have come back from my visit well satisfied with all I saw and heard. Kingsley ‘Fairbridge would be glad to know that his dream of settlement by British children has borne such fruit. The need is still for capable and dedicated men and women to staff the schools. Old Fairbridgians themselves are beginning to play a part in this and the time will come when they must carry most of the burden.

The days passed all too quickly. Breakfast in the dining hall—prayers just the same: a little boy to read one and a little girl the other. “O Lorrrd who hast safely bro’t us ’t the beginning o’ this day . ... ” and no mumbling, but good speaking out as Fairbridge children have always been taught to speak. There was work with older boys in the morning and then perhaps a picnic. There were always to watch. Thanks to W.’s football coaching and Mrs W.’s hockey the children excel As young farmers, pony club riders, scouts and guides, they carry off most things in the district. Then an invitation to tea in one of the children’s cottages; the cottage mother perhaps a little on edge lest her boys let her down—which they never did“Cottage Mothers” . All this may sound too good to be true and there is, of course, another side to the work. As in every small family circle there is joy and sorrow, harmony and strife—so, on the scale of this big family, all these things are multiplied. Some children lose touch: some marriages go on the rocks. In Molong church yard are memorials to the children that war and accident and sickness have taken. The principal and his wife are the mainspring upon which all depends. But just as important are the cottage mothers; each with about 14 boys or girls. That they should be stayers and lovers of their children is more important than their ideas of discipline or smartness. The parental care of the principal is necessity diluted. What the child needs is the immediate and

With all its difficulties the system works. Child psychologists and Government welfare workers may raise their eyebrows over some of the methods employed—but the family spirit grows. So long as Fairbridge remains a family it will survive. Once it becomes an institution it is lost.