 After the Second World War, Australia escalated its child migration program from Europe. Ron Metcalf was one of the Australian immigration officials who worked closely with the organisation selected to care for the children. Well, I was called a migration officer child. But to know after a while, it became obvious. See, what had happened? Mr Corwell had felt like many others. During those war years, the bombings in London would mean that we've got to get rid of these children. They're all going to be bombed to death here. Let's get them out to Canada and to Australia. Then there was submarine trouble in the Atlantic. It was obvious you couldn't put all the kids on these ships going over there. They'd be all sinking. So they had to stay in England. So that screen which he had in mind initially, that faded completely. But then he knew that prior to the war, and even then showing some signs of existence, there were all these people like Fairbridge and Banados and all sorts of organisations that had taken small, very small numbers before the war. Here was one avenue at least that might work. He'd also sought very much about Norway because Norway had been taken over by the Germans. They reckoned there was going to be a lot of illegitimate children in Norway. They also thought that all the bombings that had taken place, that they'd be all doubly orphaned and they weren't doubly orphaned. They usually had one still alive or they had a close relative. They also had some governments that felt that it was unwise, even though some of these people were unsuitable, weren't going to be accepted by their own friends and so they felt that they had a responsibility to look after them too. So that the numbers that were thought available in every sink were much smaller than they ever anticipated. And as I say, in 10 years, in 10 years from these countries and churches, there were only 2,536 I think children, 7 to 13 years of age came to Australia. Now that was one of the reasons why I've always felt unhappy about the criticism because they mainly talked about people of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, some of them even got up to 50,000. The figure was 2,500 in 10 years. So when you felt that there was this sort of publicity, you're worried about the whole thing. And as I say, I did my best on a few occasions to actually be able to be heard by the people that were making inquiries and I could not get them to agree to me. I had some here in this house, but I couldn't get any of the inquirers, the politicians who were making the inquiries or others to come and I had a dealings with the British High Commissioner with them and eventually they sent a note back to me which is in the House of Lords in the library about my views. But never have I spoken to any of all these critics and yet I was the only Migration Officer child in existence at the time. They were people who in my opinion in the main had been deprived of a normal home life and this was something better. The man who came out from London who I saw, John Moss, who came to this house and I travelled with her for a short time, he was the one who sent a report back saying to the British authorities if I were you I'd send more. The question of housing was always a problem as to whether it was going to be you're going to have them in a large numbering or whether you're going to have them in small numbers or whether, which was the best method of doing it. They were trying all sorts of systems, whether they should have housing as well or they should have just looked after by two or three people in various areas in the one. It wasn't as if there was, you know, it was ignored. My opinion was that the, I felt that some orders, some orders of the Catholic Church were tougher than others but I think from my own experience they were tougher than in their own homes too. They were not, they believed in that sort of behaviour, that was the way they felt people should be looked after and there were some orders, we refused some orders. I didn't know one of the children who ever complained about the fact that they never got to school. I never heard of any children that had been badly treated. Well, you can understand perhaps that's why they didn't do that because they wouldn't be game to perhaps. But nevertheless, they went, some of them went to public schools in their own, in the town, they weren't in their own little school in their own little room, they were going to normal public schools. If anything was adverse was happening, it surely would have been known to some of the other people in those schools as well. This is not to say that you know that I'm sure as we can even see today the handling of children is not an easy matter and particularly when some of the mothers just left them, some of the fathers more frequently left them and it was a genuine attempt to help these young people to live a new life. Mind you, they had all in mind then we were will and sheep and they thought about farming as being the best way to do it. So a lot of them were in farming property areas. As I said earlier, when you consider in the first 10 years Arthur Corwell was very interested in child migration. He wanted to succeed. The money that was granted, there was more money available than there are for people today in building homes, providing ablutions, providing everything that was clothing, equipment. I had to make a submission, as you all know, to the government about equipment allowance to get more paperwork available, knives and pencils and pens and all that sort of thing. Each state government gave money, the Commonwealth gave money, the federal, the Commonwealth's endowment was paid. I think that there are certainly, you would always find ways to improve child migration, always. But I don't think that the way that has been put that all the people looking after them were devils and so on, just died out, doesn't rad out.