1964-1965 - Gordon's Story

1964 - An Arrival

Immigrants would arrive at Fremantle harbour after sailing from Southampton. The voyage lasted around three weeks and, at that time, ships sailed via the Suez Canal. Ships in service at the time included the vessels Canberra, Oriana, Orcades, Oronsay, Fairstar, Fairsky and Castel Felice. Rarely did anyone emigrate by aircraft but a few families at that time actually did.

Berthing at Fremantle in late-February, an initial impression was of the clarity of the city, the searing heat and the impressive Fremantle wool stores buildings.

Disembarking into a vast customs haul, claiming ones shipping trunks and being met by the Principal of Fairbridge was a typical first-vision of Australia. After completing formalities, the Principal easily had room for 5 people or more in his 1964 Holden station wagon. After a brief drive around the then very young Perth, he'd head south down the South Western Highway bound for Fairbridge.

Arriving at the Farm, there is little easing into the new life. The parent might spend typically one night there and the disappear off to some unknown place (Perth). For the children, its moving into their assigned cottage, being fitted out with school uniforms and standard Fairbridge apparel, then off to school the next day, just like everybody else.

1964 - 1965 - A Beginning

In 1964 and 1965 their were around 180 children at Fairbridge. Their ages ranged from very young (around 3 years old) to after school-leaving age. Some children had very short stays, some only a few weeks, whilst others remained at Fairbridge throughout their whole school life.

Fairbridge was a relatively self-sufficient community, having its own primary school, general store, church, farm (including a herd of dairy cattle, pigs, calves, poultry, and a grand old Clydesdale cart-horse), an extensive market garden, swimming and sports facilities, post office, communal dining room, hospital, steam laundry, as well as various engineering and associated workshops.

There was little need for the children to leave the precincts of the village except to attend church (non-C of E) in Pinjarra, to attend High School (again in Pinjarra), or if they were unfortunate to require hospitalisation beyond the capabilities of the Farm's medical facilities.

Contact With Parents

The only other time children used to leave the farm was for a monthly "Perth Trip". Children would be transported to Perth either on the Fairbridge bus or by train (usually on the Bunbury Shopper). Both the bus and train used to leave the Pinjarra area on a Saturday at around 9.00am, arriving in Perth about 90 minutes later. Children would spend the day or weekend with their parent or guardian. Those only spending the day would return via bus or train at around 5.30pm that same evening. Effectively then, "day trip" children (who were in the majority) would spend no more than seven hours per month with their parent.

Parents did not themselves visit the Farm very often. This is probably due to their work commitments, plus the fact the place was difficult to get to, being some 54 miles (80-odd kilometres) from Perth to Pinjarra, then a part back-tracking taxi ride of some 5 miles (8 kilometres). When parents did come to stay, they could be accommodated in a building called "Scratton" which was there specifically for housing visitors.

Children's Accommodation

Children were accommodated in cottages. These were essentially wooden structures, either single or two storey. Cottages were equipped with a kitchen, bathroom, laundry, lounge and dining room, plus one or two dormitories. Their were usually about 12 children per cottage. Boys and girls were "cottaged" separately. The girls' cottages were generally the two storey structures, while the boys' cottages the singles. Each cottage was managed by a cottage mother.  Each cottage had self-contained accommodation for its cottage mother.

Jobs To Do and Meal Times

The communal dining room was used for evening meals for all children, Monday through Saturday. During the school term the primary school children had lunch there. Saturday lunch was also provided there for all children. Breakfasts and Sunday meals were prepared in the individual cottages. Children attending high school in Pinjarra took a pre-packaged lunch with them, colloquially known as a "Fairbridge Burger".

Children residing in each cottage were expected to perform house-keeping tasks. They were usually rostered to perform such tasks as cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the laundry, polishing floors, chopping wood, sweeping verandas an kitchen duties. The person allocated to kitchen duties (usually one of the senior children) had to prepare the morning breakfast that consisted of porridge then toast. Depending upon the culinary skills of the kitchen assignee, the quality of the breakfast could range from reasonably good to bordering on inedible!

High school boys were assigned additional tasks that were performed after arriving home from school, and before the evening meal. These tasks included chopping wood for girls' cottages, cleaning the dining room toilets and grease traps, preparing coke for the dining room furnace, or performing various odd-jobs around the residences occupied by Fairbridge staff members. Those who performed these tasks were paid at the rate of one shilling per fortnight. Half of this was paid into the child's trust account, whilst the remaining sixpence could be kept (and spent).

Dress

Upon arriving at Fairbridge, the children were kitted out with standard garb. For primary school boys, it was khaki shorts and shirts for school (2 sets), black shorts and horizontally-striped round-necked tee-shirts, known as binder-twine tee-shirts, (also 2 sets), grey shorts and shirt and a Fairbridge tie for Sunday best. The tie was brown and yellow in broad horizontal stripes.

The children would have one set of shoes generally provided by the parent. These were only worn to church on Sundays, on Perth Trips and if the person went to high school.

In general bare feet was the order of the day. Tender British feet negotiating very lumpy gravel roads. A common sight was a child creeping along a road very very gingerly, trying to put as little weight into each step as possible. Needless to say there were a lot of sore feet and "stone bruises".

Some were very fortunate and had a pair of thongs. These were not standard clothing issue and were usually cobbled together with any "spare parts" a person could get their hands on. Typically, a pair of thongs would be of odd size, odd colour and each thong would be in different states of wear. One base might be paper thin whilst the other have a few good years wear in front of it.

High school children wore the standard Pinjarra High School uniform. This was a pale blue shirt with a maroon tie, grey shorts, black shoes with long grey socks.

The BIG dress graduation was a change in Fairbridge tie between primary and high schools. I've described the primary school tie. The bigger kids wore one that had a brown background with diagonal yellow stripes. A great leap forward for the old school tie - Harrow was it, old chap?

Bites And Bits

For some reason the local mosquitoes (and there were millions of them), relished tender new European skin. Lying in bed in the dormitory at night, one was often kept awake by the constant drone of mosquitoes, especially on searing hot summer nights. How they got in is anybody's guess. The dormitory windows were made from vertical glass louvers, backed with fly-wire. It's quite possible there were holes in the fly-wire. Once bitten, the skin would turn into an ugly red lump, sometimes resulting in infection.

Even pumping vast amounts of bright yellow DDT into the air through a manual vapouriser unit didn't seem to stop the mosquitoes. It's quite probable that Fairbridge had bred a super-mosquito strain that was DDT resistant. It would also seem, that maybe the children became resistant to DDT as well.

There were no doubt snakes, spiders, centipedes and other things that bite hanging around, but in this period of time, no-one suffered much more than being half-eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Cottage Life

The cottages were equipped with two dormitories, one large, where the younger children slept, one small where the older 3-4 children slept. The beds were made of a flat wire base supported by two hinged "U" shaped legs - one at each end. A thin mattress covered the wire base, topped with sheets, grey army-style blanket and a thin coloured bedspread. The beds were in various states of repair. Some were almost horizontal, some dipped savagely in the middle which must have done wonders for a child's developing posture.

Because the bed supports were hinged, it was a common practice to "set" someone else's bed. That is, to move the legs away from being splayed into a precarious vertical position so that a minimal amount of movement on the bed would cause the bed to collapse. "Apple-pieing" beds was also the order of the day. The bottom sheet would be doubled back to that the occupant could only get half way down their bed.

Each morning each child would make their own bed, the quality of such efforts often being inspected by an eagle-eyed cottage mother. Sheets were changed on Saturdays and general cottage cleaning also took place that morning.

A lot of the cleaning consisted of polishing the wooden floors in the dormitories, lounge and dining rooms. Beds in the dormitories were dismantled and stacked somewhere, copious quantities of brown floor polish was applied to the wood from huge polish tins. A favourite method of shining the floors was for the children to don one or more pairs of football socks (again, varying in sizes, colour and state of disrepair) and then use the dormitory as a skating rink.

Linen and all other clothing that needed washing was stacked in a large wicker laundry basket. A sheet was tucked in over the top to prevent items falling out. Two children would carry this basket to the steam laundry and retrieve the clean clothes and sheets some days later. Apart from rinsing out the odd pair of school socks, little clothes washing was done in the cottages although there were facilities.

The bathroom was quite a public affair. The toilets at least had doors but the showers did not. There was no running hot water so showers were taken in cold water all the year around. Sometimes one might want a hot bath. This was achieved by boiling the copper in the laundry and transporting by bucket or dipper the hot water from the copper to the bath. It's a wonder no-one ever slipped over and suffered scalding. Occasionally someone might get a little more innovative and try siphoning hot water from the copper to the bath via a length of garden hose. This method was never particularly successful. It was rather tricky to prime the siphon (the water was boiling) and the hose pipe would nearly melt with the hot water passing through it. The method also was notoriously slow and by the time the bath was approaching an acceptable depth, the water was at best tepid..

The floor of the bathroom was concrete and painted a dull red colour. Part of the Saturday morning cottage tasks was mopping the floor and scrubbing the bath, showers and toilets. The person assigned to this task did it with haste so he could join in on shining the dormitory floor.

Water supplied to the cottages (and for that matter, the whole of Fairbridge) was pumped from the South Dandalup River. The pumping station was adjacent to a bridge that was located beyond the market gardens. The water was probably filtered in some ways but it is doubted whether it was further purified or contained any intentional additives.

There were instances of unintentional additives though. From time to time water coming out of the taps would take on a distinct brownish tinge. Possibly when the river was low during summer. On one occasion, a child was sitting in the bath running the cold water tap and a 4-5" centipede emerged from the tap and started swimming around in the bath.

The laundry contained two very large grey concrete troughs and a "copper" made from bricks. The "copper" had a large open container oddly enough, made of copper. This was filled with water and a fire was lit under the copper to heat the water. Sometime later on, running hot water was actually added. The hot water system was a Braemar storage unit which was powered by solid fuel.

Lighting fires in the Braemar, the copper, the lounge fire or the kitchen often required either skill or on reflection, crass stupidity. The cottage had firelighters, which were soaked in kerosene, placed under the kindling and ignited. Often the kerosene would run out but it was found that DDT was an admirable substitute. Sometimes the kindling was green or wet or whoever chopped it thought that kindling sticks should be at 2 inches in diameter. The crass stupidity method was to douse all the wood in the fire with a jar of kerosene (or DDT), and drop a match on it.

Another task around the cottage was solid-fuel management, In 1964 terms it was called chopping wood. Each cottage has its own wood-heap. It was the responsibility of the occupants of the boys' cottages to ensure that the wood-heap was adequately stocked. The girls' cottages had wood supplied for them, in the form of mill-ends. One boy was assigned to the task of chopping wood to stock up the wood-bins. Chopped wood came in a number of classifications the most notable being lounge-logs, and smaller pieces which would fit into the laundry and kitchen fires. Wood was chopped every morning. In all probably, the boy chopping wood in the morning at his cottage would be chopping wood at a girl's cottage after school.

Chopping wood was rather less of a task and more of an art-form. Chopping in bare feet, the first principle was to keep your feet intact. The next important thing was to keep your feet splinter-free and also from stopping them from freezing off on a cold winter's morning. The true art though, when labouring through a 12 inch diameter jarrah log, was to invite passers-by to exhibit their skills with the axe, thus they completed the task for you without them really realizing this.

The daily task assigned to the most junior residents of the cottage was "Chips and Verandahs". This entailed collecting chips from the wood-heap that were used for lighting fires, and sweeping the verandahs. By the sound of it not a particularly terrifying task, but this was assigned to the youngest members of the cottage and out they went on a cold and dark winter's morning, carefully avoiding splinters and centipedes to do their tasks. These lads were only 7 or 8 years old and often got scolded for not performing their duties to someone else's idea of perfection.

Kitchen duties were always performed by the older children. One person was rostered on a weekly basis to do this. The main obstacle was to be out of bed before anyone else and prepare breakfast for the whole cottage. Lighting the stove ( a Metters wood stove) was the initial brain-teaser, especially if there were no wood chips, or there were some but they were wet. Porridge was cooked in a large pot and invariably chunks of soot fell down the chimney and into the pot which were stirred in for extra body. It seems (in the long run) that some added carbon didn't really adversely effect us, carbon based beings we are anyway.

Often the bottom of the pot burnt and many a long hour was spent using trusty "Tru-Sol" paste trying to remove the remnants of caked-on charcoaled gooey bottoms of porridge pots.

Breakfast was served in the cottage dining room. Then it was off to school. High school children would catch the bus outside "Wolfe", primary school children would make their way over the gravel tracks to their school.

The lounge was an area dominated by a large fire place, where, in winter, lounge-logs glowed courtesy of the person who chopped the wood. Generally there was no TV in the cottages although a couple of cottage mothers had them but they kept them in their own quarters. 

Off for a Haircut

Once per month it was shearing time and that description is probably very apt. This was for the boys anyway. I don't know who or what about the girls. The local barber was actually George Elliot moonlighting because during the day he was on the farm in charge of the pigs and poultry. Each boy's cottage was assigned a hair cutting evening. This was performed after dinner and presumably before prep. Two or three of the boys would wander over across the road to George's house and as each rather sad-faced freshly shorn boy  filtered back, another couple would slowly meander across the road.

I don't know where George learned to cut hair but I'm sure it wasn't from one of the more prestigious city salons. However, time was of the essence as he would have to cut the hair of around 80 boys monthly all over around 7 evenings (I think there was 7 boy's cottages open then). Naturally, there was none of "Well, how would you like it cut, sir". Sit on the chair and out would come the electric clippers that were deftly used to remove any hair growth which extended anywhere below the top of the ears. Short back and sides were the order of the day and the head felt very very chilly crossing that road back to the cottage on a winter's night. Not a lot of attention was actually paid to doing much with the hair on the top of the head though and often boys would come away from his house with heads looking very much the same on top but extremely shorn around the back and sides. George didn't bother putting a sheet or whatever over his customer while doing his job so needless to say a lot of the hair fell down the back of your tee-shirt and you suffered from the "itches" until next bath or shower time.

Sport and Games

For some it's the dreaded part of the curriculum. For others the highlight. Either way it was there and you had to do it, like it or not! For me, never being particularly sports-minded, it was something I had to grin and bear. Wherever you live and go to school in Australia, participation in sporting events is probably the norm. Fairbridge was no different. Sport there mainly consisted of swimming carnivals, football (Australian rules) matches, hockey matches, cross country running and the obligatory school sports athletics etc.

Recreation swimming and swimming carnivals where held in a section of the South Dandalup river, up the track behind the club house. A small straight section of the river had been effectively dammed by huge wooden blocks to lift the water level and a bridge and starting blocks built over the dam. Approaching  winter the upper "chocks" (wooden blocks) were removed to allow flood waters an easy passage down-stream. This task was performed by some of the older boys. The other end of the swimming area was delimited by half the river width being blocked also by wooden blocks, but these not much higher than the summer water level.

Much to the chagrin of the House Master the carnivals were sprinkled with prankish behavior from high spirited children. One a particular occasion, a group of boys were up on their marks ready to dive and start the race. "On your marks, get set, GO". All dived in with a huge splash only not to resurface .. none of them. They all swam back, under-water, and under the bridge, well out of site, and came up there. On another occasion - probably the same bunch of wags, dived in and swam under water all the way to the finish line. Yet another prank was to all dive in and then swim in a perfect horizontal line so that the race was a dead heat between all the 6 or 7 contestants. Another stunt once pulled was all the swimmers racing merrily along but going wide of the wooden finishing barrier and continuing around the river bend and out of sight of everyone! I don't think there were any real repercussions from these antics. If I were the House Master I might have shown a stern exterior but I'd be bubbling with mirth inside.

Recreational swimming was rostered by cottage to prevent over-crowding and to make sure the boys were not swimming with the girls. Usually a cottage was allocated about one hour in one evening during the week, and an hour sometime over the weekend. This was quite fun and it was during these times that I actually learned to swim. Oh, I'll re-phrase that. Float maybe?

Fairbridge had both a football oval that was adjacent to the primary school, and a hockey pitch that was close to the church. Neither sport was for the faint-hearted because no one wore shoes and it was also quite likely that you might be playing against some kid twice your size. Very little sport was done by age bracket - almost all events seemed to be open to all ages. The hockey pitch was a nightmare. I didn't really mind trying to play hockey but the whole pitch was infested with "Double G's" a kind of creeper plant, its seeds being very hard, very sharp three pronged spikes, guaranteed to make you hop madly around trying to extract them from the soles of your feet. If you ran into a patch of those it was like being stranded. It was very hard to find a safe way out again without getting dozens more stuck in your feet.

I rarely played football. Probably because I showed little interest in it and also not more than 36 can play at any one time. Once I did have to play and my opposition guy was a fellow almost twice my age and size who was a gentle-at-heart person, but physically, he didn't know his own strength. Needless to say, if the ball came anywhere near us, I ran off in another direction. At one stage I think I actually did kick a goal and was pretty thrilled about that. My sporting career highlight. It couldn't have been the day I was playing on that fellow though!

An annual cross-country running day was also held. This is one occasion where they did divide the event into ages. The "little kids" (probably under about 10) did a short course. The older kids went the whole distance. The long course started off at the hockey pitch, down past the market gardens, over the river bridge where the pumping station was, then followed the river back to the swimming pool area, then went out through the Fairbridge Gates and up towards the airstrip. Torture on tender new British feet but they hardened up in time. This event was regularly won by the same few people who were usually Hudson boys - generally Ian Pickering and Stuart Law.

Everyone belonged to a sporting faction. They were either in Blackboys or Brumbies. These factions later gave way to four factions named after Australian Governors General and the like. One was "Slim"  - I can't recall what the others were.

Occasionally a team of "footballers" (term used very loosely) would hop on the bus and go to play a team from Dwellingup or Swanlea in Perth. Sometimes also the opposition travelled to us. I think the Fairbridge side usually came off second best and thus the House Master instituted a weekly training program in the club house. Push-ups, "fingers, knuckles, palms" and things like that. Some wily older kids got themselves out of this neatly by claiming it was effecting their studies and so on. A pretty thin excuse but it seemed to work!

A Day In The Life

Ok, let’s assume it’s winter (to start with anyway) …..

Tucked up in bed on a dark winter’s morning the cottage mother would burst into the dormitory, turn on all the lights and belt out a good “OK, get up youse mob …”. Real good Australian lingo. 

Big kids and little kids would stumble out of bed at around 6.30am, groggily pull on the school clothes, go and wash in icy cold water in the bathroom, then wander into to the cottage dining room for breakfast. This was mostly third grade porridge – oh the oats were ok – it was generally the cook – one of the bigger kids rostered to get up an hour earlier to light the fire and cook the porridge, followed by toast and probably vegemite. 

I sometimes had to go and get the milk. Can’t remember if this was before or after breakfast but I can remember walking up to the dairy at the farm in the pitch dark (and it was BLACK – no lights) with an empty billy, freezing cold perhaps pouring with rain, careful with those bare feet on the road, into the warm and welcoming dairy which smelt so strongly of the cows who were being milked and of course the milk itself, warming pouring over the pasteurising (or whatever) unit. The dairyman cheerfully filled the billy and then set out back in the darkness with the wire billy handle biting into the hand. Was Ok with only one billy because you could swap hands but on some days – I suspect Saturdays – when you had to take two billy’s, swapping hands didn’t seem to offer a lot of benefit! 

Meantime little kids went off to sweep the verandahs and collect wood chips from the wood heap and the other kids had various tasks to perform. 

After all that the bigger kids who went to high school in Pinjarra trudged off up (or down) the road to catch the bus from outside Woolfe. The little kids gingerly walked their way down to the primary school. 

Let’s take the high school trip first. Get on the bus – everyone went into the same seats and Mr Wishart hopped into the door of the bus and read out the roll to make sure everyone was there. “Here, Present, Yes, Available etc” Amazing how many smart answers and comments for so early in the morning. The bus would trundle on down to the main dining room and a couple of people would hop off and load on a basket of lunches – “Fairbridge burgers” – seemingly universally hated (I think that was a popular fad) but mostly eaten by hungry lunch time. Two rounds of cold baked bean sandwiches seemed hardly appetizing that time of the morning which led to some of them being pelted out of the windows of the bus at the North Dandalup bus which was invariably overtaken as it was stopped on the highway to pick up children. 

We had to wash our school socks out each day. Mine were still ringing wet when I put them on for school. The feet turned green probably from dye from the shoes. They usually dried by about lunchtime. In winter it’s a wonder no-one ever caught pneumonia yet I don’t ever recall catching even so much of a cold. Perhaps the others had a better sock-drying method than I did? 

The bus arrived at Pinjarra High School much to the fear of local Pinjarra & Mandurah kids. This is a good study in sociology …. bitter foes at Fairbridge (i.e. schoolboy differences and fights) dissipated into a harmonic camaraderie. The message is to you folks – don’t mess with any Fairbridge kid else you’ll have them all to contend with! I was once “saved” at school by a rather “difficult” (that’s being kind) Fairbridge kid. Once we were back on the farm however, it was business as usual – he didn’t like me and used to pick on me badly! 

Into classes. While it was very eventful it’s probably outside the scope of this story. Lunchtime came around – for those who were lucky to have a few pence (generally though who had divested themselves of their lunch at the North Dandalup bus) they might nip over to Mann’s tuck shop and buy a Peter’s pie and really be the envy of everyone! 

An aside here. Leaving the high school grounds and going into town was strictly off limits to Fairbridge kids, but who was there to police that rule? Every weekend all children had to write a letter to their parent's). These were read and censored by the cottage mothers. That’s the way it was. Even the big kids had to do this. Of course the big loophole in the system was the high school kids could write a note at school (or wherever) and drop it into the mailbox in town at lunchtime. Memory has it that the post master in Pinjarra was Mr Brayn’s son so a little innovation was required in the actual stamp purchase and posting. Perhaps use your classmate from Dwellingup? Now there’s a novel idea! 

The bus trip back was usually uneventful. Arrive back in the cottage after the little kids from primary school. A slice of bread with jam and whipped cream on top (that billy milk we got had at least an inch of cream on the top) was the order of the day. There were contests as to who had the thickest slice of bread. This bread came in unsliced loaves so to see someone hack off a slice over 10cm (2 inches) thick was not uncommon. And then off to task. 

Task was duty all high school boys had to do each weekend day evening for one hour plus two hours each Saturday morning. The girls didn’t have to do it although they probably had something equally onerous to do. This was paid work however. I think we got sixpence every other week. The intervening week’s sixpence got paid into your trust account managed by the office. Sixpence was big money in those days (or was the pay thippence?). 

Junior high school boys had to do things like chopping wood and weeding gardens at the girls’ cottages. Demeaning stuff – they really looked down on us (I think). More glamorous than that was cleaning the dining room toilets and kitchen grease traps – I actually didn’t mind that. Once I got Mr Wishart’s house – he had a million kids (well, only 4 but they were everywhere!) and his wife was kind. I succeeded one day in chopping up the whole woodheap and was told I could go home! The senior kids got easy numbers like the Principal’s house or better Steele’s. Mrs Steele would let them work 5 minutes then ply them with tea and scones. I never got that far up the ladder. Another good number was washing the coke (in an old bath) used in the kitchen boilers behind the main kitchen. On a hot day the kids would hop in the bath with all the coke to cool off. 

Teatime in the main dining room was around 5.15-ish. Get back to the cottage and clean up after task (fairly important after cleaning out grease traps). Listen for the first siren. Second siren came 5 minutes later indicating you had to be there in 5 minutes. Rush out onto cobbled-together bicycles and race down there performing circus acts in front of the hall as you stopped just as the third siren rang! You’re in time today. 

Troop into the dining room to your cottage’s table. Same table, same seats each time. Hudson’s was down by the window. Mrs Fry or Mrs Jarvis would tell everyone to stand up and say Grace. Older children into the kitchen to get the food. Cottage mothers dole it out on plates – pass them down. Eat up. Kid next to you trying to give you a camel bite on your bare thigh. He’s bigger – just sit there and take it. Eat. 

Assigned children would go and get the steel bowls full of hot water from the kitchen. Once I went in the wrong door (the out door) and got the cane for it. Only 2 strokes on the hand. Not too bad. Older kids would wash up and dry up. Cutlery and smelly dishcloth went back into the cutlery holder which went back with the cottage mother (or nominee generally) to the cottage for safekeeping. And so then, we’d all go back. 

Little respite for the high school kids. Get out your schoolbooks and back to the dining room because you had to do an hour or so of “prep” from 7pm. The primary school teachers and a few others supervised prep on a rotational basis. God help you if you messed around when Mr Gaines was supervising but with Mr Blackwell, well, you could pass notes around and whisper and do what you liked - I suppose he thought that if you don't pass then it's your funeral. 

Back to the cottage after that. In winter it was pitch black (again). It was hard to see the trails (hardly roads)  - often the one with the best eyesight led the way and we all formed a human chain and followed. After that perhaps sit in from of the lounge room log fire then off to bed to repeat it all over again tomorrow. Whose turn is it to get up early to light the fire and cook the breakfast? 

Meanwhile, let’s go back to after breakfast and look at those primary school kids ….. 

The high school kids have gone. No more clips around the ears – we’ve got a bit of a respite, of sorts. We didn’t have anything to take to school except perhaps an exercise book but I don’t remember getting homework. Perhaps no exercise book? Leave the cottage (remember it’s still winter) in our khaki shirt and shorts – no shoes – my my, that gravel seems hard today. Some of these children are only 5 years old. The oldest 11 or 12. Grades 1,2 & 3 into one wooden classroom, grades 4&5 into another & the seniors go together also with the headmaster. 

In the seniors (grades 6&7), it was pretty full on and a definite education culture shock from UK school. At 8.45am each day we’d have to listen to the ABC radio news and then stand up and talk about one of the items – usually dreary political stuff even many adults had difficulty in understanding. Indian ink would dribble around carefully drawn maps of NSW or somewhere with narrations of Burke & Wills or Wentworth or Edward John Eyre seemed all we did.  

Having to select, remember and recite a piece of poetry was a personal nightmare but my fears were somewhat eliminated when some of those presenting before me had chosen particularly juvenile pieces for which they were absolutely roasted. Mine was no better.

At playtime everyone went out and played “Poison” this was played with marbles on a piece of land where small holes where dug in the ground. I can’t remember the rules except that it was all pretty competitive! 

Lunchtime bell rang and everyone went to the main dining room for lunch. This was far more relaxed and informal than evenings when the high school kids were there. The absolute favourite and best lunch was baked beans and saveloys which was Tuesdays (and sometimes Thursdays too). Yum. Same wash up, etc then back to school. 

Afternoon’s was the same primary school humdrum. Altogether not bad – probably not different than any other primary school in WA at the time. 

Approaching Christmas 1964 is was time to plan the agenda for the end of year concert that was held in the main dining room each year. Almost everyone took part. I wasn’t than interesting even in auditioning but had to (teacher said so) and surprisingly got the lead role in our class’s play “The Reluctant Dragon” basically because I had a louder voice than the others that could be heard down the back of the hall. Terror soon turned into smugness and I spend many a wasted hour missing our on Blaxland, Wentworth and Burke & Wills stuff fooling around “rehearsing” in another room with the rest of the cast, and getting my costume made and fitted up in the hall near Mrs Fry’s house. That year the biggest kids mimed the Beatles “I Want To Hold Your Hand” etc. Our play went down well especially when my dragon’s tail fell off. 

After school the primary kids went back to the cottage and did more Indian-inking. So there, we must have had homework! Listen for the first siren then go off to the dining room and await the big kid’s bike broadsiding show. 

After tea play some games, sit by the fire, get to bed early as you’ve got another day lime this tomorrow! 

In summer, cottages were rostered for swimming. I recall going down to the swimming pool – a dammed section of the South Dandalup River -  in bare feet across the red mud track behind the dining hall doing my best to avoid the zillions of ants. It was a busy swimming pool then, and the boys and girls cottages rostered at different times – no mixed bathing! 

Weekends were a little different. Everyone had jobs to do on Saturday morning – inside the cottage or outside on task. Lunch was had by all in the main dining room but after that – for the rest of the weekend - eating was all in the cottage.  

On Saturday morning another thing that had to be done was grabbing the wheelbarrow and going off to Mr Pettit’s store to fill it full of Tru-Sol and floor polish and oats and stuff – plus hot loaves of bread which we’d peck at the middles on the way back. Eying the Gest cans which were out of budget. 

Saturday night was picture night in the clubhouse (if the projector worked and the film arrived). Rows of benches lined up aside the aisle. Girls on one side, boys on the other. The films, with other freight, came down by train from Perth and were picked up by the school bus on its stop at the railway station on the big kid’s trip into school. We must have seen “Toby Tyler” half a dozen times – Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin were favourites – ‘Pollyanna’ cropped up more than once. We made homemade drinks to take to the pictures from citrus fruit growing on trees behind the hospital.  

Before the pictures, in the Clubhouse, sometimes a rare glimpse of TV – Brian Henderson’s Bandstand or some such. There was a TV there. One of the first cottage mothers to get TV was Middie in Darwin and on rare occasions went over there, invited of course, and a little over-awed by both the TV and Middie! 

We’d also get rostered for swimming on weekends in the summer. Other times people would catch marron at “Welly” or “Rocky Pool” and take them back to the cottage and cook them in the copper. Mostly on weekends we were kicked out of the cottage and left to our own devices. Not allowed back in until teatime. Go and play.  Sometimes the cottage mother would take us up to “Happy Valley” in the Darling Range behind Fairbridge and swim and have a barbecue & billy tea. Other times (on our own) getting chased by cows whilst trying to collect mushrooms or fiddling around in the gardens or generally getting into mischief.  

Oddly enough it was not the done thing to go into cottages other than your own – almost anytime – nor did we really associate at playtime or any other time with children from other cottages, apart from school or sports, ... oh, and of course Mandurah camp (that topic deserves another section - later). What went on in the girls’ cottages was a total mystery but the same applied to our neighbours – in my case Raleigh and Darwin, both boys’ cottages. I never went inside Raleigh and only 2-3 times very timidly went into Darwin at Middy’s TV watching invitation. Strange.   

We did take a bit of personal pride in the cottage. Inside cleaning jobs were mandatory but on weekends some of the greener thumbs messed around planting flowers in the garden etc. I think raking the yard was also on the mandatory list too. Hudson had a rather healthy loquat tree and the fruit on that kept us nourished during our kicked-out time between lunch and the evening meal.

Well, that gives a little insight into the daily routine. Hardly comprehensive but it gives a glimpse.

Sailing Close To The Wind

Now what does this mean? Well in this context, most of the kids at Fairbridge were good law-abiding citizens :) But as with all kids, they liked to display their disdain for authority. Mostly by a bit of "civil disobedience" a la Mahatma Gandhi. Authority at Fairbridge wasn't harsh or oppressive. But there were rules, and when rules are made of course they're made to be broken.

Sometimes there were no specific rules and people did more-or-less innocent things that broke no rules but seemed more of exasperation value to the authorities.

Take Norm Heslington for instance. He had a refined knack of being exasperating without directly infringing rules. His interest in keeping bantams - the building of pens and nests etc - irritated some staff no end but little could be done:)

Another older boy liked to sit on the verandah and play his harmonica. Again, no rule breaking but it irritated the cottage mother and Mr Wishart no end!

The real big no-no at Fairbridge was smoking. Older kids did it - again probably as a sign of thumbing their collective noses against authority. I actually never saw anyone smoke but I saw lots of evidence that it was going on. Tut tut. Don't know where they got the money etc but some of those kids were as resourceful as a prisoner in solitary confinement. In those days you could buy cigarettes in packets of just 2 so I suppose squirreling away a week or three's task money could provide the money and perhaps some non-Fairbridge Pinjarra high school kid had a supply going?

Is it OK to leak a few secrets now? Sheesh - it has been 40 years! Quite a bit of the smoking in our cottage happened right underneath the cottage (the cottage was wooden and stood up on wooden supports - plenty of room to crawl and even sit-up, underneath). There were, however, bore holes in the floor here & there so how the cottage mother never smelt the smoke is still a mystery to me!

Another trick was to get up into the roof. Now the only access to the roof was through a man-hole in one of the toilet cubicles. One kid would go into the cubicle and close the door. Another would then come along and open the door but "hey presto" no-one there! So he would go in and close the door. This would be iterated a few times. They'd all climbed up through the manhole and be passing around in there the valued smoke!

One night - well, it was probably only around 9 or 9.30pm, our cottage got raided. Mr Wishart must have got some tip-off that someone in our cottage had cigarettes. He stormed into the dormitory, turned on all the lights, and all us bleary-eyed kids had to stand by our beds and we could see Mr Wishart grilling the older boys in the small dormitory and stripping their beds looking for the offending materials. I think I know who the likely target was.  The raid didn't last long and nothing was found. So much for the quality of intelligence and under-estimated the resourcefulness of some of those kids!

Mr Wishart had a pretty tough job but I think (given the way things were socially back in those days) was generally fair. He didn't do himself any favours by driving around in a huge pale-blue 1950's American car that could be spotted a mile away by any kid up to no good.

He did though, on occasion resort to getting around on foot, and patrolled cottage verandahs at night, listening for misdemeanours either happening or being planned after lights out in cottage dormitories. He must have had had fairly distinctive "silent" foot falls because legend has it that one older boy (whose name has been previously mentioned) was lying in bed and said in a highly audible voice to the boy in the next bed, "Who would you rather be? Superman, Slooperman or SNOOPERMAN"? He got the cane for that! 

You can read about the stuff that used to go on at swimming carnivals in a previous section.

Mandurah Camp

Each year in January Mandurah camp was on for all. The boys went for 2 weeks and the girls went for 2 weeks - at separate times, naturally (that's my memory but perhaps it was co-ed?) . High excitement at packing up a few tee-shirts and hopping on the bus for the trip over there. It seemed like a long long way  - all of around 17 miles!

Fairbridge had an established campsite on the southern side of the Mandurah estuary complete with wooden buildings serving as a mess hall, ablution blocks and dormitories. I don't know if that place stood idle for the other 11 months of the year.

To the kids, this was the treat of treats but in reality I think it was time for a collective sigh of relief for Farm School staff to be rid of their charges - a time for them to go on holidays and kick their heels up or whatever they did.

David Buck ran Mandurah Camp - I'm sure he had back-up staff but I don't recall who. I think Mr Wishart popped in and out to make sure no-one had any Craven A's stashed anywhere!

Arriving at the camp, one of the first things you did was find your bunk. Bunks were paired with two up and two down, dormitory-style. There was almost no privacy and nowhere to stash any personal goods anywhere. The odd thing was bunking in with boys from other cottages. I said before that we rarely ventured into "foreign" cottages - I think you needed a passport and valid visa. So being in a dormitory with boys from Raleigh or Darwin was a trifle weird and a little unsettling!

First thing in the morning (7.00am) everyone had to pull on their swimming gear and go and dive into the estuary. That water could be a tad cold at that time of the morning even in high summer. After the ritual, back over the sand and grass and into the showers, change into clothes and off to breakfast. The dining room was a lot less formal that the dining hall at Fairbridge. It was wooden, with wooden tables, but with open walls which gave it a really different feel. The food was great!

There were some organised activities during the day - sport and stuff, but most of the time everyone was more or less free to do what they wished - that including going into town or walking up to Halls Head, around the head of the estuary, where the real sea was - the Big Rollers! Groups of children would walk up to Halls Head in the heat of the day. We'd stop off on someone's front lawn for water to drink which tasted foul - so salty - but it did the job. When I think back, I'm amazed we had so much freedom. A lot of the day was spent pottering on the estuary foreshore, fossicking amongst the rocks, swimming, and generally whiling away the days. We'd all go back to camp for lunch and later for dinner.

The evenings were magnificent. Many children would walk up to the Mandurah traffic bridge, trundle on down underneath and spend the time fishing. The cook would prepare the fish next day for eating for the lucky catcher. Mandurah had an open-air cinema and many would go there to recline in a deck-chair and take in the evening's film. Not sure how we paid for all this because we also had the luxury of an occasional Gest Can - soft drink for those who don't know, and perhaps even a Peters pie! There was curfew - pretty generous - perhaps 10.00pm.

Fishing was a good past time. Aside from under the bridge, trying to spear cobbler along the estuary banks was popular too. There was also a wooden boat and the older kids would row out into the middle of the estuary after dark to fish. This was also a golden opportunity to smoke. But those kids didn't realise that those little red lights could be seen from shore and water carries conversation so well, so I think a few of them got sprung! Private property for the kids was almost unheard of. I got a treasured torch for my birthday from my mother but this was invariably commandeering by the boat people until the batteries ran out. Oh well, it wasn't that important!

It was a pretty idyllic time those two weeks, and they seemed to stretch on forever. Having the run of the town and the foreshore and all around was fabulous - the sort of holiday which many parents would pay heaps to have their children go. In those days Mandurah was a small, sleepy town which didn't even boast its own high school. A far cry from today.

Up The Hills

While we're in a holiday mood it's a good time to mention other weekend activities. Fairbridge is situated right beneath the foot hills to Darling Scarp and on the odd Saturday or Sunday the whole cottage would trudge off up the hills for a day out. Happy Valley was a popular spot - nestled over the first set of hills with an icy river (even in summer) running through the bottom of the valley. There was an old tin shed and place to build a fire to boil the billy and chuck in a handful of fresh gum leaves. 

It was a fair hike across the paddocks to the east of Fairbridge - crossing paddocks with cattle eying you off - perhaps a bull, and clambering through barbed-wire fences en route. Of course you could stop off briefly at Rocky Pool on the way, for water and clown around a bit. I take my hat off to some of those cottage mothers (some of whom couldn't have been that young and sprightly) making the journey.

We'd carry our picnic lunch with us, plus the billy and stuff. I think the cottage mother basically carried it all, increasing her burden. Up there we'd skinny-dip in the river and emerge with the odd leech attached here and there to the skin. We'd cavort around the slopes, surfing down of scrap bits of corrugated iron. Some of us would carry on over the next hill and walk along the pipeline to what was, I think, the South Dandalup dam. There were plenty of huge rocks where icy waters would splash across, to amuse ourselves in. They were certainly good times. You get the drift!

Fairbridge Socials

Held in the Clubhouse periodically (perhaps every few months), these were events off-limits to primary school kids. These were times when the high school kids (and trainees) could let what little hair they had down under the watchful eyes of Mr Wishart and Mrs Fry and probably others. After all, girls and boys were mixing, tut tut.

Starting around 8.00pm and lasting a couple of hours, the older kids would be encouraged to start acting like young adults, and dress up a little and come and dance away the evening. These were on Saturday nights to perhaps the pictures were deferred until Sunday? 

Actually, these socials were organised by a group of the senior kids who did a pretty good job, all things considered. They tried to add a touch of sophistication by charging an admission fee of a silver coin. Thank goodness in those days for three-pence! I don't recall anyone showering the bowl with half-crowns. I wonder what happened to all that money? Probably added up to at least a pound!

Recorded music was a little scarce but we did have "Pride of Erin" and "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" which were repeated many times, and the music was supplemented by recordings of one of the older children playing harmonica into a battered old reel-to-reel tape recorder with slightly varying play-back speeds! Now put all this in context - I'm talking 1965 - the height of Merseybeat - the Beatles, Stones, and even Johnny O'Keefe! I think that music was off-limits or we simply didn't have the records. Talk about missing out!

But it wasn't a bad night all in all. The first social I went to I made the terrible faux pas of wearing shorts. I was later taken aside and gently told (through gritted teeth) don't do that! Consequently I later used to borrow a pair of long strides from Philip Fitzgerald. 

Pinjarra High School also used to hold school socials in the civic centre hall, just a bit up the Mandurah Road. With so many kids and therefore less supervision it was a little more relaxed. I went to a few of these. Forget about dancing - was much more fun sky-larking with classmates - preferably non-Fairbridgian mates who had a few coins in their pockets and therefore could buy you a coke!

It's A Personal Viewpoint

This narrative has been fairly jocular but factually correct as recalled, from a single point of view. The whole Fairbridge experience was relative to age and background, and of course many other personal  circumstances - too many to name.

Whilst being light-hearted about the experience, I know that other children would paint a different picture and see events in a totally different light.

A History of Fairbridge Farm School, Pinjarra, Western Australia

Home | OFA | Our History | Present Times | Notices | About This Site | Links | Site Map