‘The Risk Involved is Inappreciable… and the Gain Exceptional’: Child Migration to Australia and Empire Settlement Policy, 1913–1939

This chapter examines the development of UK child migration to Australia in the inter-war period. Following the opening of Kingsley Fairbridge’s experimental farm school for child migrants at Pinjarra in 1913, the 1920s and 1930s saw a gradual increase in the number of voluntary societies involved in this work and of residential institutions in Australia receiving child migrants. The growth of these programmes in the wider context of the UK Government’s assisted migration policies is discussed. During the 1930s, the global financial depression weakened governmental support for assisted migration, and greater caution emerged within the UK Government about the value of some planned migration schemes. Nevertheless, by 1939, child migration to Australia was seen by UK policy-makers as a small but important part of the attempt to strengthen ties with Britain’s Dominions and to make more efficient use of their collective human and material resources.