Fairbridge Farm

Many child migrants learnt about Australian rural life through their time at Fairbridge Farm School near Molong. The movement was started in Western Australia by Kingsley Fairbridge in 1911 and the Molong farm school was opened in 1937. Usually orphans or the children of poor parents, they were taken from England at a young age with a view to giving them a healthy life and training in farm or domestic work so they would find employment as adults. Children continued to be sent in the 1940s and 50s but this type of child migration gradually decreased. Many children thrived and remember fondly their years at Fairbridge while some found the strict discipline and separation from their real families hard to bear.