ABSTRACT
I have been eight weeks in the State, and am profoundly impressed with what I have seen of it ... I have seen the south-west corner. And it is a grand country - a country which in time should be able to support twenty million people. I have been in Mrica - South, North, and East. I have been in New Zealand, in Canada, and in the United States, and I dare to say that your South-West is better than anything I have seen in Mrica and compares favourably with New Zealand and British Columbia ... I am an enthusiastic white Australian already. But Australia must have immigrants -white not yellow. And you should have them young, in order that you may fit them for the special work of life here. The children I intend to import will grow up under Australian conditions. Farmers and farm labourers are at present difficult to get. But you have in Great Britain a body of 150,000 children from whom you may select suitable immigrants. Instead of letting your immigrants be brought up under English conditions, you will then bring them up under Australian conditions. This, in my opinion, will be a good thing for Australia, as well as for the children. 6
As it was summer, Kingsley decided that we would have to make shift. He ordered a truck of timber 'seconds', that is, faulty weatherboards, et cetera, thrown out from the mill, and with this he proposed putting up a lean-to skeleton against the west side of the house, giving it a roof of hessian, and thus providing a shelter for meals. A bath room for the boys' use had also to be erected. This was a very simple affair, it consisted of odds and ends tacked on to some studs. Inside a trench was dug and some boards placed across on which to stand the tin tubs. This edifice, improved in later years by the addition of, first a roof, and then some shower baths, served its purpose quite efficiently throughout the entire period of our residence at the Old Farm. 10
orchard. 14 He also became attracted to the ideals ofFairbridge. Asked to comment on the accommodation and the suitability of the site, Cox later sent a long reply to Moore, the Agent-General for Western Australia in London, praising the intentions of the scheme: 'I have never seen a healthier happier lot of boys than the lads on this farm school. And I hold such a high opinion of both Mr and Mrs Fairbridge that I feel confident that they will carry through to success the larger scheme to include girls'. 15
provided state subsidies to certain voluntary child welfare institutions, and also allowed for the boarding out of children with Western Australian families.2'
On the whole the arrangements are very primitive, and some of the premises would doubtless be condemned were it a Government institution. As a training farm, in order to render the boys fit to undertake farm work in Western Australia when they grow older, the place is, in my opinion, quite unsuitable, as there is no real farming carried on, though, doubtless, until the boys are beyond the school stage it is sufficient. It is quite certain that there is no room for any more boys until additional buildings have been erected, the premises, in my opinion, being already over-crowded. 29
I am afraid Mr Hearty hardly suits our purpose. He means very well, I think, and is no slacker though rather laborious even office work to which his training has accustomed him! ... the fact that he is not a gendeman (in the narrowest sense of the word) further disqualifies him. I mean that he is rather puzzled by his 'h's' and his manners and phrases are only too often of a kind that I sternly reprimand in the boys which makes it uncomfortable for us all! 36
The fact that the farm did not close was essentially due to the actions ofFairbridge. On receiving the cable from England informing of the Government's offer and the executive decision to close down the CES, he decided to appeal directly to the Western Australian authorities. Having first written to the Premier and then seeing Rufus
Underwood, a Minister without portfolio in the Scaddan Government, Fairbridge succeeded in receiving an immediate state grant of 4 I-per week per child. On the basis of this sum, and a promise of £200 from the local advisory board over the next 12 months, he now requested that the Oxford committee continue to send £60 per month even though he really needed £95-100.49 Following a further appeal from the local advisory board that it was impossible to close down, the executive committee in London decided to defer its decision. But it also wrote to Perth setting out the situation and proposing a solution.
