Connected through a “lousy childhood”, the women of Australia’s child migration schemes are telling their stories of resilience on the 77th anniversary of their voyage down under. 

Between 1947 and 1953, Australia would see the arrival of more than 3000 child migrants aged between 3 and 14 who had been shipped away from their lives in Great Britain.

The schemes operated with the belief the children’s lives would improve with religious and charitable organisations in former British colonies taking them in. 

Run by the Sisters of Mercy, St Joseph’s Girls’ Orphanage in Subiaco housed child migrants up to the age of 16. The orphanage operated from 1901 to 1972 and received child migrants from Great Britain and Malta following the end of World War II. 

Now, the former child migrants of St Joseph’s say they carry the weight of a childhood riddled with abuse. 

Abuse

In 2004, parliamentary report “Forgotten Australians” outlined the “widespread” abuse and assault which occurred across institutions such as St Joseph’s. 

The report was produced following an Australian government inquiry into the institutional care of children, and received over 500 submissions which detailed “graphic and disturbing accounts” of treatment experienced by children in out-of-home care. 

Many of the submissions came from anonymous former residents of St Joseph’s in Subiaco.

“I shall not forget that life of Hell that the Western Australian Government put us through.” 

“If any girls ran away, when they were caught, they were publicly flogged. Us girls used to have tears in our eyes watching this, but we couldn’t do anything.” 

“On a few occasions the police would come to the orphanage if one of the girls died. I remember once when a baby had died and the police came – we were told what to say by the nuns, which meant lying.” 

“When welfare came, you never told them about the beatings etc. as you wouldn’t be believed and would just get flogged again.” 

The report recommended the establishment of a “reparations fund for victims of institutional abuse”, which was later introduced in WA during 2008. 

Sheilagh Pearce 

Sheilagh Pearce docked in Perth’s Fremantle port in 1947. She doesn’t like to talk about the years she spent with the Sisters. 

“We are children of abuse,” Ms Pearce said. “But out of all of it, we grew as people.” 

The former migrant girls of St Joseph’s now refer to themselves as the “Joey Girls”, a sisterhood “grown out of tragedy”. 

“The Joey Girls are exceptional,” Ms Pearce said. 

“The Joey Girls suffered the most but they’re also the best.” 

In May 1997, the resilient former child migrants of St Joseph’s undertook the huge task of returning back to the UK together, where they hoped to better understand their history and reconnect with long lost family members. 

The trip from Australia back to England was expensive and took a lot of planning. 

“We formed a committee, and we started fundraising” Ms Pearce said. 

“We’d have cake stalls and all sorts of things; I made over 2000 bottles of jam.” 

Ms Pearce said it was hard to find where the girls of St Joseph’s had ended up. 

“We spent all Christmas Eve looking for where the girls lived now,” she said.  “But we found the whole lot.” 

In just five months the determined Joey Girls had fundraised and organised the trip, which they called “the sentimental journey”. 

“We eventually got on that plane, with a great deal of effort,” Ms Pearce said. 

“The girls all knew each other; they hadn’t seen each other but they still had that connection,” she continued. 

“They know loyalty, they know to have each other’s back, loyalty was always something we had.” 

Like many of the women, Ms Pearce was apprehensive about going on the trip at first. 

“I didn’t want to go on that trip,” she said.  “But one of the reasons I went was because I’d always wanted to find my father’s grave, that was very important to me.

“When I found my dad’s grave, it was a funny thing, I had no feeling. After all those years of wanting to see his grave so badly, I felt nothing.” 

Ms Pearce explained how being separated from her family in England had affected her. 

“When we went to the orphanage, I think we were reborn as different people,” she said. 

“We aren’t the people we were born to be; we are different to what our families are. It’s very hard.” 

Ms Pearce said she left the orphanage to become a nurse, eventually working in infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria. 

“I went on to be a nurse for 37 years,” she said. 

“I was always going to be a nurse; I’d made up my mind.” 

She said it was a very different environment to St Joseph’s. 

“It was a hard road, you had to leave home and live in,” she said. “The ambulance would pick us up at 5:30AM.” 

Ms Pearce said living and working with the other nurses made her thankful for the lasting bond she had with the Joey Girls. 

“I’ll always be grateful in a lot of ways,” she said.  “Through it all we’ve had each other, we’re the family that we never had.” 

Mary Cooper 

Three migrant-filled boats landed in Western Australia in 1947, one of which held a young, scared, and 23kg Mary Cooper. 

Before being sent to Australia, Ms Cooper had been living at a Nazareth Children’s Home in England, where she would be constantly punished for her speaking skills. 

“I had a stammer and a stutter, I couldn’t talk,” Ms Cooper explained. 

“The nun would get me to read, and I couldn’t get the words out, I would end up crying,” she continued. 

“So, she would give me a flogging.” 

“I wasn’t safe in England because I got flogged that many times,” she said. 

Ms Cooper arrived in Perth’s Fremantle port 77 years ago to what she had been told was “the land of savages”. 

She had begged the nuns to let her stay in England. 

“I was absolutely terrified,” she said. 

“They took us to the train and there was just all these girls and boys. It was incredible.” 

Those children would end up in more than 30 government-approved homes throughout Australia. 

Ms Cooper recalls the welcome the migrant girls received arriving at St Joseph’s for the first time. 

“It was amazing. All the kids were over the veranda banisters waiting for us,” she said. 

“I remember seeing the playground, we never had playgrounds in England, but they had swings and seesaws.” 

However, the excitement didn’t last long with the children being reminded of the strict rules and punishments which awaited them. 

“Mother Teresa came out on the back veranda and told us ‘disobedience will not be tolerated’,” Ms Cooper said. 

“We all knew what disobedience meant, because we’d come from the places over in England.” 

Ms Cooper recalled how difficult it was to understand the Australians initially, and how elocution lessons at St Joseph’s helped to improve her speaking skills. 

“Nobody could understand the migrants, and we couldn’t understand the Australians because of the different accents,” she said. 

“I learnt how to speak properly, and I’m very, very grateful for that.” 

Ms Cooper said it was at this point where she began to feel safe for what felt like the first time in her life. 

Like Ms Pearce, Ms Cooper also took the “sentimental journey” back to England in 1997. 

“I didn’t want to go,” Ms Cooper recalled. 

“But I went on the trip, and I never regretted it for one minute.

“It was the most beautiful trip I’ve ever had.” 

For many of the women, it wasn’t only their first time returning home, but also their first time flying. 

“We took over the whole plane. It was incredible,” Ms Cooper said. 

“Running around the seats, sharing photos, talking, and doing all sorts of things.” 

The women arrived in England to a media frenzy, they say this is where their stories began to gain traction. 

But it would take 12 more years before the Australian government issued an official apology to the former child migrants, and a further year for the British government to follow suit. 

Ms Cooper said she learnt a lot from the trip back to England and has been learning ever since. 

“After the trip we went to the archives here, my son took us,” she said. 

“I needed to know why I was sent away, but as soon as I saw my mum’s signature on the form, that was it for me.

“I couldn’t look at it, I was bawling my eyes out.” 

Many of the children sent to Australia were orphans, but a great deal of them came from families who were no longer able to care for them. 

Ms Cooper said she has carried a picture of her mother holding her as a baby around with her everywhere. 

“The mother I thought I had was not really a mother at all,” she said. 

Ms Cooper said she’s “grown a lot since those times” and now has 12 grandchildren. 

“I’ve had a very busy life,” she said. 

“I’ve enjoyed it because I love children, I’ve got a lot of empathy for children, and I love them dearly because of the life I’ve had.” 

Ms Cooper said she’s grateful for the “sisterhood” of the Joey Girls. 

“We are a collective bond,” she said. 

“It’s a bond that can’t be broken.” 

Of the migrant girls who arrived in Perth during 1947, just 15 remain to tell their stories. 

“We’ve lost a lot of our girls in the last 12 months and it’s hard,” Ms Cooper said. 

“We have to do right by them and remember them.

“We can’t ever forget them.”