Description
This is a clip from a story in the weekly movie newsreel, 'Westralian News', in early October 1947. It shows young English migrants, both girls and boys, disembarking from the liner 'Asturias' at Fremantle and two small girls eating oranges. The clip ends with a shot of a little girl carrying her suitcase. The sound track gives the numbers of young migrants and the schemes under which they came to Western Australia and declares that the girls were probably tasting oranges for the first time.
Further information is available for this resource.
Educational value
- This asset shows how young and potentially vulnerable the child migrants were and how little they brought with them.
- It states that 147 child and juvenile migrants were sent to Australia by the Catholic Episcopal Migration and Welfare Association and were destined for Catholic orphanages in Western Australia.
- It states that some other children arrived under a Church of England scheme and that their ages ranged from 4 to 14 years - at least 20 voluntary and church organisations were involved in child migration to Australia from 1911 onwards.
- It explains that a small number of children aged between 14 and 17 had been in Australia during the Second World War and were returning after the war under the Children's Overseas Reception Board scheme.
- It indicates that some of the children had been in Australia during the Second World War and were returning after the war under the Children's Overseas Reception Board scheme.
- It is typical of similar media stories and represents the level of interest of the Australian public in the child migrants - the upbeat background music, the spoken commentary and the scenes of children eating oranges for the first time reveal a certainty that underprivileged children were coming to a better life in 'this sunny country of their adoption'.
- It is an example of the types of stories produced by 'Westralian News', an independent weekly movie newsreel that concentrated on Western Australian stories and was screened in Perth for 35 weeks in 1947.
