The “Northcote Farm School”, also known as “The Lady Northcote Farm School”, was set up originally in 1937 by the wife of Australia’s third Governor General Barron Henry Stafford Northcote, to care for child migrants from impoverished families who were sent out from the UK. Later it became a home for migrant children, who like me, were sent there whilst the parents went to a Migrant Hostel in Melbourne to find work and a home for the family to live in. In 1962, apart from the migrant children, it became a home for Australian children whose parents couldn’t look after them, orphans, or wards of the state.
I spent nine months there, my siblings spent eighteen months there. It wasn’t a very nice place. We were there along with a number of other children ranging in ages from about 4 years old to fifteen years old. At the time I was there, most of the other children were wards of the state plus there were a few other migrant children there.
We lived with other children about the same age, big boys, little boys, big girls, little girls. We lived in much the same cottage for most of our time there. There were about ten houses, a Medical centre, a large hall and Dining room.
We were looked after by a lady in each cottage who we referred to as Aunt. Each cottage held approximately 12 children. The younger ones went to a local primary school nearby and the older children went to Bacchus Marsh high school.
I wrote a three-part memoir* about the Lady Northcote Farm School about twelve months ago.
One day I was asked by our lovely Convener, Bev, at our U3A class, “As Time Goes By”, if I would like to, or mind, meeting with another U3A member who had been in our class some years ago.
Bev told me the lady in question had read my story about the Lady Northcote Farm School, and that she had also spent time at Lady Northcote.
I said yes it would be nice to meet her and have a chat. So Bev organised a time and date for the two of us to meet and have a chat for half hour. We met at our U3A building and got straight into it. Our thirty-minute chat went for over two hours, we had so much to talk about. We will call this lady Shirley. She was, I think at the time, pushing ninety years of age. She had a wonderful memory, she had spent about five years at Lady Northcote in the late thirty’s early forties. Shirley could remember the names of the cottages, some of the staff, going to school, her chores whilst she was there. She was amazing, she remembered a lot more about Lady Northcote than I did, that’s for sure.
We met a couple of times after that for a coffee and a chat. Shirley brought in a folder of old photos and stories of Lady Northcote Farm School.
One day she said to me that if I ever go over that way again would I take her with me.
I had no intentions of ever going back to Lady Northcote. But this was a lovely lady, approaching ninety years of age, who had a better time than I did there. She wanted to go see it again. What could I say?
A few months later, we made a date, and along with my wife, the three of us set off to Lady Northcote. It is now a fitness camp, but most of the cottages and buildings are still there but modernised. Shirley remembered more of the place than I did. She hadn’t been back there in over eighty years. She still knew the names of some of the cottages, if not all of them. She even remembered the name of the one that had been demolished. The one that I had spent time in.
We were met by my sister and her husband, the manager of the property, and a lovely couple who had also spent time living there in the years somewhere in between Shirley and myself.
This couple had made up a cottage, with a few other ex-residents and volunteers, exactly as it was when we had all been there. Rooms still looked the same, with the old wire beds in the dormitory, the shower block and the Aunt’s room. Tables were full of old photographs and stories from the last eighty-seven years since it opened up in nineteen thirty-seven. I was amazed, we all were, with Shirley recognising people she new from eighty years ago. This was confirmed by our two guides, who spend a lot of their time volunteering and setting up all these memories and organising reunions for past “clients”.
They also provided us with coffee and biscuits.
It was a long day, but it was well worth the visit for both me and especially Shirley.
YouTube Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCgiGfzzxKU&t=104s
Flickr photograph folio ‘Lady Northcote Children’s Home’ taken by L.J. Gervasoni - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gervo1865/albums/72157649544614523/
‘As Time Goes By’ Story Collection:
Phillip Hughes (2023) Story Collection category ‘Lady Northcote Farm School’ including category *‘Shaped by Childhood #1, #2, #3’
Shirley Roberts (May 2017) ‘I Was There’ https://u3abenalla.weebly.com/shirleys-stories/i-was-there
Shirley Roberts (October 2017) ‘Good Vibrations’ https://u3abenalla.weebly.com/shirleys-stories/category/good-vibrations
Further reading –
Victorian Heritage Data Base - Lady Northcote Recreation Camp (background) https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/26773
DHHS – ‘Finding Records – Lady Northcote Children’s Farm School’ https://www.findingrecords.dhhs.vic.gov.au/collectionresultspage/Lady-Northcote-Childrens-Farm-School
Find and Connect – Northcote Farm School https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/entity/northcote-farm-school/