Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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What makes this book such a fascinating read is that it isn't a clinical study of the organizations and their remits, but of Ms. Margaret Humphreys, a British Social worker literally fell into a hornets nest when she discovered the Child Migration Scheme. his public apology to former child migrants in November,2009 and Gordon Brown who delivered the UK apology in February,2010. I usually look at the parts of the book I need to to do my job and then I move onto the next book, but this book was different.

The author of this book started the Child Migrant's Trust to help reunite these children with theri mothers.For me the stories have always been diverse, the needs of the people involved varied, and the journeys seemingly individual and private despite their occasional similarities. Normally this is not the genre I will spend time on reading but it was so captivating that I could not put it down and it is still haunting me. And then suddenly there is a programme on the television and he somehow finds the courage or the anger, or whatever it takes, to come and say, ‘I’m giving you this, I’ve carried it for long enough. Many of the children were subjected to the most inhumane and brutal treatment, such as at Bindoon where they built the building they eventually lived in, using their bare hands.

The recent film 'Oranges And Sunshine' is an adaptation of 'Empty Cradles', and is a good complement to the book - while some elements had to be compressed or left out, the visuals and especially the acting help to illustrate what it was like for the Lost Children. It is inconceivable, that from the start of the Child Migration Scheme in the 1930's until the end in the late 1960's, 10,000 children were taken from England and shipped off all alone to places half way around the world!It was shocking to realise that Child migration was still happening when I migrated to Australia in the early 1960s and even more so when she described how some of the child migrants travelled to Australia on the same ship that I travelled on with my family albeit several years apart. The author of this shocking non-fiction tale, Margaret Humphries, was originally a Nottingham social worker who, in 1986, began investigating the claim of a woman who stated she’d been transported to Australia on a boat, unaccompanied, at the age of four years old. In uncovering these events, Margaret Humphreys set up The Child Migrants Trust, in 1987, to attempt to reunite these ‘lost’ migrant children with any family members who were still living.

A self-author is never likely to sing their own praises, but Oranges and Sunshine lacks both the style and clarity to evoke empathy and feeling from readers for its creator. An excellent account of a social worker in England discovering a shocking secret covered up for years by the British and Australian governments. It reminds us that no matter how badly we feel about ourselves, and how difficult life is, it’s important to know, and keep remembering, that we can develop the inner strength to cope with the life that we actually have. Dear Ruth, know I have been thinking about you a lot recently, and I played your wonderful music…You are in my thoughts and sending some energy your way via the cosmos your way.They were told that they were orphans, even as their parents were told that they'd been adopted into loving families in England, or worse, that they'd died of some childhood disease. There is possibly still a lot of work going on to help the children who are now men and women coming into their twighlight years of life. At great cost to herself, both financial and emotional, Margaret Humphries made it her mission to try and reunite some of these child migrants with their families.