‘Never had a chance’ – child refugees and health in postwar Australia

Standards of care that exist for child refugees within a receiving country are integral to their successful settlement. And yet, specific questions regarding health and wellbeing have rarely been considered in histories of migration to Australia, despite the obvious trauma and subsequent physical ailments that can afflict those fleeing from their homes. How has Australia historically dealt with the health of child refugees? I am specifically interested in how these needs were met (or not) within the government-administered space of the ‘Reception and Processing Centre’. As part of my upcoming book on Bonegilla Centre, I explore the controversial deaths of twelve babies at Bonegilla in 1949. My aim here is to link it to wider discourses around the immigration scheme, standards of care afforded to refugees, and the responsibilities of receiving countries.

Eureka Henrich’s new research on the health beliefs and practices of post-war migrants reveals that many brought health supplies with them. Pregnant women packed bandages and ointments in preparation for birth; mothers concealed treatments and foodstuffs for their children. Distrust of the state, and a general uncertainty about what Australia had to offer, surrounded these decisions to bring health supplies. Little information was given about their settlement situation.

In September 1949, a ‘health scare’ at Bonegilla became public news. Twelve young children had died of malnutrition over a ten-week period. Twenty-five others remained gravely ill. A media storm descended on Bonegilla and the Department of Immigration. Before this time, little attention had been paid to the centre. Bonegilla was intentionally placed was out of sight and out of mind, so as not to arouse a public backlash against the mass post-war immigration scheme. Nothing like it had been attempted in Australia’s history: the reception and accommodation of hundreds and thousands of new arrivals, all from non-English speaking countries. Bonegilla itself was a former military establishment, barely suited for accommodating older children, let alone babies.

Immigration Advisory Council Officials visiting Bonegilla, 1951, NAA: 1/1951/20/16

So much had been invested in selling the wider immigration scheme to the public and in assuring them of the health and vitality of those first Displaced Persons (DPs) from war-torn Europe. The revelation of child deaths by malnutrition shocked many. Editorials and letters expressed outrage and condemnation toward the government. The level of care given to vulnerable DPs, which was made especially evocative through images of malnourished (and ethnically acceptable) Baltic children, concerned the Australian public.

A reporter asked whether the Australian Department of Immigration and the Health Department ‘were absolved from contributory causes to these child migrant deaths’; a Health Department officer replied: ‘We hope so, but we do not know’ (5 Sep 1949, Northern Star). The initial unpreparedness of the government was quickly replaced by a terse defensiveness. The federal inquiry into the deaths found that while Bonegilla’s conditions were inadequate for children, their deaths could be blamed on gastro-enteritis caused by a poor ship-board diet. The report also noted that Bonegilla hospital was only partly equipped and grossly understaffed.

Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, used the child deaths as a means to promote his vision for the immigration scheme and assure Australians of its humanitarian (rather than its primary labour) aims:

The deaths are tragic reminders of the conditions of privation under which children are still forced to live in war-devastated Europe … [They] should encourage Government to redouble efforts to bring to Australia as many as possible of these innocent victims of war’s cruel aftermath (Calwell, 7 September 1949).

The wide-open spaces, warm Australian sunshine, and ‘plentiful and nutritious’ food on offer at Bonegilla would remedy these cases, he implied. Australia was not only boosting its population and economy; it was saving ‘the innocent victims of war’. The children who perished in 1949, however, ‘never had a chance’ (Bonegilla medical officer, in: Kalgoorlie Miner, 6 September 1949). The media were banned from entering Bonegilla after 5 September. Increasingly, government spokespersons blamed the IRO. Calwell asserted that ‘the migrant from Europe becomes the responsibility of the Australian Government only from the time of arrival to Australia’, despite being selected and sponsored by the Australian government.

To a contemporary audience, the government response and media furore also feels gravely familiar. To be sure, contemporary cases that come to light of poor conditions, abuse, self-harm and suicide by asylum seekers in indefinite detention are qualitatively different from this Bonegilla case study. However, government and individual politicians’ responses feel remarkably similar—particularly for their steadfast ability to hide, conceal, screen-out scrutiny, and deflect blame. The influence of public shock and media furore in arousing reactive policy decisions is also telling. In this example, and in subsequent controversies in Australian immigration history, it often takes shocking or even fatal incidences to rouse public attention—and when this attention is roused, the response from those in power can be short-term, reactionary, or pre-empt a media lock-down to conceal victims from sight.