History Council of Victoria
Jane Hansen Prize for History Advocacy 2024
Awarded to Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN)
This paper, a lightly edited version of the submission to the History Council of Victoria, was prepared by CLAN Life Member Dr Frank Golding OAM 17 November 2024. (Photos added by courtesy CLAN and personal sources.)
Abstract
This paper provides the rationale for nominating Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) for the Jane Hansen Prize for history advocacy. It starts with a brief outline of the context of the out-of-home Care system in Australia, then shows how Care Leavers have been presented or, more often, overlooked in Australian history. It goes on to show how Care Leavers have pushed back against this treatment by asserting leadership in advocating for a more authentic, layered and nuanced history and, in doing so, stimulated a new direction in public history and the academy and generated renewed vitality to a previously sub-standard field in public history. The particular role of the unique Australian Orphanage Museum is highlighted as a remarkable achievement in CLAN’s contribution to the way history is presented and received in the community.
The context
Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) is an independent peak membership body established in 2000 to provide support, advocacy, research and empowerment for survivors of past abuse and neglect in child welfare systems in Australia and New Zealand.
It is estimated that, between 1930 and 1980—in addition to some 50,000 Stolen Generations children and about 4,000 child migrants from the UK and Malta—at least half a million Australian children grew up in the welfare system, or what is nowadays called out-of-home Care (OOHC). Although many were wards of the state, children were routinely outsourced to the ‘care’ of churches, charities and even private individuals, and were raised in orphanages, children’s Homes, Missions, training farms, laundries, and by fostering. It was not uncommon to find that more than one generation in a family had been placed in OOHC—although that intergenerational history is rarely documented in the welfare archives.[1]
Children were placed in institutions often without warning and without explanation. Some were moved from home to home, having to make a fresh start at school each time. Their lives were controlled by strangers—court officials, caseworkers, superintendents, matrons, rostered staff in residential units, foster carers. And all the while, their lives were systematized, regulated, and documented by care orders, contact orders, case plans, case reviews, family group conferences—none of which they had any say in, let alone knew about.
Their lives were changed forever, tragically many for the worse. Many never saw their families again, but grew up without love and nurturing while being subjected to cruel physical and sexual abuse, emotional humiliation and neglect, put to work, and not given a proper education or health care. They were isolated from the community, and were sent out ill-prepared for the adult world. Many became outsiders in that world, struggling to fit in, with unstable accommodation and insecure jobs; with little education and not knowing about further education; with poor interpersonal skills and little understanding of how to form relationships with people they could trust.
In recent decades, formal inquiries have encouraged Care Leavers as mature adults to testify from their direct experience. Many revealed traumatic memories, some telling for the first time what they had experienced in childhood and the lasting impact those events have had throughout their lives.[2] In James Baldwin’s terms, they carry their history within them—it is both lived and living.[3]
Formal inquiries such as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013-2017) and the accompanying media have highlighted sexual abuse as the ‘worst’ abuse—focusing on the criminality of the physical act itself.[4] Other serious abuse and neglect is overshadowed, especially when sexual abuse is perpetrated by clergy. In particular, clergy sexual abuse—’the worst-of all-possible-scandals’—dominates media coverage of child abuse and neglect.[5] Yet, as CLAN co-founder Joanna Penglase reminds us, ‘Being used sexually was just one of those victimisations.’[6] More recently, David McDonald has adapted Rob Nixon’s term ‘slow violence’ which is mostly not viewed as violence at all because its incremental attritional nature renders it natural or invisible. It creates delayed destruction.[7] For these reasons, and others we will come to, a more critical history has been needed to sharpen understandings of what it means to be harmed in a system that was intended to protect children.
‘Strangers in the village of Australian history’[8]
CLAN’s active engagement with advocating for history began over 25 years ago as a response to a deep dissatisfaction among Care Leavers with the way they have been treated in Australian history. They have felt invisible in bookshops, libraries, and museums. When Care Leaver history is written, they are distressed by the way it is framed. They see a predominantly top-down, adult-centred history, often written to mark an institutional milestone. They are troubled by institutional histories that are heavily biased towards self-congratulation of the valiant efforts of the authorities with barely a nod towards the children whose voices are silent (silenced too, it is now acknowledged).[9]
Mainstream media have reinforced this adults-only perspective, often reflecting precisely what management fed them. As CLAN CEO Leonie Sheedy puts it, “The general public see only the media headlines and are assured that the matter is in steady hands.”[10] For example, the media reported without comment that the Superintendent of the Ballarat Orphanage told a conference of the Children’s Welfare Association in 1944 that conditions in orphanages were ‘equal to that in the average middle class home.’[11] Likewise, when reporting in 1961 that ‘More than 20 screaming, hysterical girls defied police and fire brigade officers from a rooftop…’ [12] at the Parramatta Girls’ Home, the media simply echoed the Minister’s line that the problem ‘was confined to a small group of girls who were either emotionally disturbed, unusually violent and unruly or inclined to be hysterical.’[13] This latter instance illustrates what has also been found in overseas studies: that a majority of reporters cover the child welfare system solely through a crime lens with the majority of stories about child welfare in the news being generated by events such as the death of a child, or horrific incidents of abuse or neglect that fall within the criminal justice system.[14]
Nor can Care Leavers rely on personal records for reconstructing childhood histories.[15] These records (when they were made and not lost or destroyed) are partial, unreliable, incomplete, often ‘hostile biographies’,[16] containing no evidence of the harm children experienced. Countless Care Leavers have sought access to their ‘their file’ (as they call it) under the provisions of Freedom of Information/Right to Information/Privacy legislation. Many of them report that they find very little that is positive and much that is insulting and misleading, including offensive remarks about parents. This pattern can only be understood when a Care Leaver learns about the historical context in which it was difficult for welfare officers not to prejudge parents because the police evidence produced in children’s courts was designed to show the failings of the parents in order to secure a conviction of neglect in the Children’s Court. ‘Police reports tend to strip parents naked showing them in their very worst character’.[17] Once a child entered the system, the original reports continued to be relied upon year after year even if the family circumstances changed for the better. And the child continues to be depicted as a problem rather than described as a young person with needs, hopes, fears, aspirations, and strengths.[18]
The many problems with historical personal records were the subject of a special volume of the final report of the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in which it made repeated references to widespread problems that were pervasive and enduring, concluding
in the past, many institutions did not have clear and enforced policies for creating and managing records about children under their care. The fact that we also found poor records and recordkeeping practices in recent times suggests that the problems with creating and managing accurate records are systemic and enduring.[19]
Many Care Leavers have sought CLAN’s help to fill gaps in their records—whether these be redactions made by risk-averse officials protecting alleged third-party privacy or gaps in what was recorded. CLAN has been creative in exploring previously unused sources such a police gazettes, cemetery archives, newspaper reports, and military dossiers to track down family members or to discover rare photos of long departed parents.[20]
Given the importance of historical records—not just personal case files but a host of other archived material—and the problems of accessing them, CLAN developed a Charter of Rights in Records in 2015.[21] In collaboration with academics from Monash, Melbourne, Federation and ACU universities and other stakeholders who gathered at a national summit in 2017, the CLAN Charter developed into a lifelong charter which has contributed to a nationwide conversation about contemporary record-making and record-keeping. This work has extended to archivists, social workers and historians in the UK, USA and Europe.[22]
The deficiencies of Care Leaver history are also observed when Care Leavers return to the physical sites of their childhood. There they usually find the old institutional buildings have been demolished or re-purposed, with no respect for their heritage value or the meanings they hold for those who were there. There is nothing to show their children or grandchildren to help explain their extraordinary upbringing. Care Leavers have been active in heritage struggles to preserve the remnant fabric.[23] Care Leavers assert that they hold unique information, invaluable insider knowledge, that historians often discount because they are overly-reliant on written documents, which we know are often unreliable.
Traditional museums also avoid the brutal, harmful aspects of life in institutions and the aftermath. Leonie Sheedy, CEO of CLAN implored the Senate Committee in 2004: ‘Get the dinosaurs out of the Australian [National] museum, for once, and dedicate it to orphanages and children. Let our histories be visible.’[24] This Senate Committee recommended that the National Museum of Australia (NMA) dedicate a permanent exhibition to this subject but after a delay of more than seven years, the NMA mounted only a small-scale temporary exhibition which toured a few cities, then closed.[25]
Care Leavers pushing back: Whose history is it, anyway?
In the face of Care Leavers’ deep frustration with the way they have been, and are, treated in Australian history—as described in the section above—CLAN has been advocating ceaselessly for historians and national cultural institutions to pay proper attention to this sadly neglected chapter in the history of this nation—and to raise community awareness that a dark history has been created in their names. The struggle has now been fought for over a quarter of a century now, and has led to an increasingly robust view that if anyone is going to document the Care Leaver past and make it known to the public, it would have to be—and should be—Care Leavers themselves, and specifically CLAN. After all, they asked, whose history is it anyway?[26] This paper canvasses a cluster of historical milestones that CLAN has reached during the past two decades. It is confidently asserted these major achievements that have changed the way we look at the history of OOHC in Australia, have come about as a consequence, in major part, of CLAN’s advocacy.
These milestones include the Senate inquiry in 2004 that led to the report Forgotten Australians[27] and the National Apology to Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants in November 2009.[28] Former Senator Andrew Murray, a leading member of the relevant Australian Senate inquiries—and later one of the six child sexual abuse royal commissioners—told CLAN members at the opening of CLAN’s Sydney office that the 2004 Forgotten Australians Senate inquiry ‘would never have seen the light of day’ had it not been for the persistent lobbying of concerned activists.[29]
It is reasonable to claim that that inquiry facilitated CLAN’s successful advocacy for a cascade of achievements including the establishment in 2011 of the national Find and Connect web resource,[30] and the Find and Connect service network in each jurisdiction.[31] The Find and Connect web resource focused on historical records and archives and was then accompanied by a suite of history projects that CLAN was heavily involved in including Inside, the exhibition sponsored by the National Museum of Australia,[32] and a national Oral History Project through the National Library of Australia.[33]
Subsequently, CLAN had successfully advocated for further state inquiries and national and state parliamentary apologies.[34] CLAN’s part in those inquiries and its subsequent lobbying of governments contributed to the formation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2013. The then former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister for Families Jenny Macklin each paid acknowledgment to CLAN. Gillard wrote, ‘The Royal Commission is a tribute to your efforts.’[35]
The Commission did, among other things, produce a variety of historical reports related to OOHC that will influence the approach not only to record-making but also to the writing and presentation of history.[36] Much of the impetus for this transformation came from the direct personal evidence from thousands of Care Leavers given in camera and in public hearings and consultations.
The Royal Commission was a game-changer, but changes in how history about OOHC is approached have been evident for some time now. The shift in formal inquiries towards direct testimony has had a significant impact with countless written and oral submissions from direct experience becoming available to historians. Some historians like Shurlee Swain, Nell Musgrove, Cate O’Neill, Keir Reeves and David McGinness have grasped the significance of this insider knowledge and, further, have seen the value of collaborating with Care Leavers in producing new historical works.[37]It must be said, however, that Care Leavers including prominent members of CLAN—such as Joanna Penglase,[38]Leonie Sheedy,[39] Frank Golding,[40] Jacqueline Wilson,[41] and others—have been among the leaders in this space.
It could be said that this prolonged advocacy finally paid dividends when, on 1 April 2023, the Deputy Prime Minister, The Hon. Richard Marles officially opened the Australian Orphanage Museum (AOM)—a CLAN initiative.[42]
More than 25 years ago, CLAN had begun amassing a collection of historic artefacts, memorabilia and documents relating to the Care Leaver experience, and exhibiting these in ad hoc fashion in whatever spaces could be set aside. At the same time, it has conducted a long campaign for a national purpose-specific museum. A core strategy of this campaign was to invite influential people to inspect the historic collection, to so impress them that they too would add their voices to the need for a more appropriate and permanent facility. One such visitor was the Chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Justice Peter McClellan, who, in a spontaneous remark at a public session of the Commission in 2017, commented
There are many things that I will remember when this is all over, but one of them will be visiting the museum that you [CLAN] have put together. It’s a very significant Australian memorial, and I hope that you are able to keep it and maybe develop it in the years to come, because it marks out for all of you a very significant story in Australia’s story.[43]
In the aftermath of the Royal Commission and a National Apology, CLAN won a Commonwealth government grant to purchase a property to serve as a permanent home for the Australian Orphanage Museum. The grant funds were insufficient to proceed with a plan to purchase a former orphanage in Geelong built in the 1850s. It was for sale and would have been a stunning venue. The reality was that funds were sufficient only to acquire a former residential property at 351 Ryrie Street Geelong and adapting that to purpose while acknowledging that it is not possible to represent all that could be exhibited in the finite space available.
The Museum takes an activist position in deciding both what should be included and how it should be interpreted.[44]It rejects what Laurajane Smith calls a ‘consensus version of history’ and the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ which dominate mainstream museum exhibitions.[45] It challenges conventional top-down history of OOHC which privilege authorities and adult-centred perspectives, instead offering previously ignored historical perspectives through memory activism including sharing a collective memory.
The Museum aims to support Care Leavers in the process of recovering voice and agency in their own stories while, at the same time, informing the Australian community about what a former Prime Minister called ‘an ugly chapter in our nation’s history’.[46] It portrays that difficult history from the perspective of those with lived and living childhood experience—a history that they still carry within themselves into adulthood. The exhibits show what it means to have the state break up your family, obstruct or lie about your parents, and separate you from your siblings—and what it means for those who never saw their parents or siblings again.
The collection is very strong on personal items from Care Leavers dating back to their childhood in ‘care’, including clothing, luggage, toys and family treasures that may have been their only possessions, as well as furniture, crockery, schoolroom items and signage from orphanages and children’s Homes, photos, books, artworks and memorabilia. Many are what James Deetz (1996) called ‘small things forgotten’, stark reminders that as children they had few personal possessions such as a doll, marbles or football socks.[47]
A central space at the Museum is devoted to works of art which reflect themes from Care Leaver history, and in particular responses to issues amplified by the Royal Commission. Several of the art works were previously shown at the Art Gallery of Ballarat at a special exhibition, ‘Out of the Darkness: A survivor’s journey’, curated by the then President of CLAN, Robert House.[48] Much of the art collection has been created or commissioned by Care Leavers.
The Museum also incorporates the CLAN Library, undoubtedly the best collection of published material on Care leaver issues in Australia. More than 160 books in the library have been written by Care Leavers and these amplify the voices in the Museum’s exhibits. The Museum aims to encourage visitors to make use of this specialist library to make connections with the themes in the exhibitions and to dig deeper into aspects of particular interest.
The vision is far removed from a static collection of memorabilia that gathers dust. CLAN envisages the Museum becoming a hub for research on the history of institutionalisation and genealogical research related to Care Leaver family history; a place for secondary school classes studying Australia’s social history; and training programs for social workers and other professional groups specifically targeted at those working with Care Leavers and their extended families. It has become clear also that many Care Leavers’ children and grandchildren visit the Museum seeking to better understand what life was like for their parents or grandparents when they were children.
Presenting these items through a range of information panels, photos, film clips, soundscapes and interactive activities, the Museum aims to give visitors an experience that elicits an emotional response to the themes being explored. The Museum wants people to be touched by what they see—and go away with lots of thoughts in their heads. In time it will mount travelling exhibitions and strengthen its already existing online presence[49] so that exhibitions can be accessed from anywhere in Australia or the world. The Museum has produced several videos about the Museum as a tool for publicising its existence and to generate interest in Care Leaver history.[50]
CLAN encourages visitors to the Museum to write remarks in the visitor’s books before they leave—and these comments provide insights into how they react to what they experience. Some express surprise, shock, sadness. Others express their admiration, encouragement, gratitude that we have an item that resonates with their personal experience. The Museum routinely asks people for their postcode so that it knows where visitors are coming from. Most visitors have come from Geelong, and Victorian metropolitan, regional and rural areas but significant numbers have come from other states and from overseas. Brochures and other handouts also help the Museum get good information out to people.
As noted earlier, Care Leavers and members of their extended families predominate, but large numbers of professionals—historians, social workers, archivists, curators, service providers, and so on—have visited. The Museum has been pleasantly surprised that a growing number of members of community groups have booked group tours. The evidence is that the word-of-mouth communication process is highly effective.
The Museum has also generated a high level of interest among academics including historians, social workers, and criminologists and several papers have already been published citing the Museum as a focal point.[51] CLAN has been invited to present at several national conferences[52] and an international conference[53] and has plans for further public presentations.
Concluding remarks
The History Council of Victoria awarded CLAN the Jane Hansen Prize for history advocacy in 2024 (jointly with Dr David Waldron). This paper demonstrates the case for the award beginning with the frustration Care Leavers feel with the way history about them has been presented or, more often, overlooked in the nation’s history. As strangers in the village of Australian history, CLAN has pushed back by asserting leadership in advocating for a more authentic, layered and nuanced history about Care Leavers and the out-of-home Care system; and, in doing so, stimulated a new direction in public history and in universities and brought renewed vitality to a previously flawed field in public history. The particular role of the unique Australian Orphanage Museum is highlighted as a remarkable achievement in CLAN’s contribution to the way this important history is presented and received in the broader community.
Endnotes
[1] Frank Golding (2024). That’s Not My Child: Five generations on the welfare treadmill. Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publications.
[2] Senate Community Affairs References Committee (2004). Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
[3] James Baldwin (1953). Stranger in the Village. Harper’s (October 1953); republished in T. Morrison, (ed.) (1998). James Baldwin: Collected Essays, New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, p. 123.
[4] Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017). Final Report (17 vols.) Sydney, The Commission.
[5] Ronald Niezen, (ed.) (2017). Truth and Indignation: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. 2nd ed. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, p. 32. For the way sexual abuse came to be the only abuse for the Australian Royal Commission, seeFrank Golding (2018). Sexual Abuse as the Core Transgression of Childhood Innocence: Unintended Consequences for Care Leavers. Journal of Australian Studies 42 (2): 191–203. doi:10.1080/14443058.2018.1445121. For the overshadowing effect see Lisa Waller, Tanja Dreher, Kristy Hess, Kerry McCallum & Eli Skogerbø (2019). Media Hierarchies of Attention: News Values and Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Journalism Studies, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2019.1633244
[6] Joanna Penglase (2005). Orphans of the Living: Growing up in ‘care’ in twentieth-century Australia, Fremantle Press, p.145. D. McDonald (2024). Local Australian memory activism and the fast and slow violence of institutional abuse. International Journal of Heritage Studies, p. 12. Published online 14 July 2024. doi:10.1080/13527258.2024.2378448.
[7] D. McDonald (2024). Local Australian memory activism.
[8] The term comes from James Baldwin (1953): see footnote 3. The idea is further developed by Frank Golding & Jacqueline Z. Wilson (2022). Strangers in the Village: Care leavers and history, in Paul Ashton & Paula Hamilton (eds. 2022). The Australian History Industry, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly.
[9] Examples of adult-centred institutional histories are: Ethel Morris (1965). A Century of Child Care: the story of Ballarat Orphanage 1865-1965, Ballarat, Committee of Management; Elizabeth Bleby (1986). Kennion House: A hundred years of children, Adelaide, Anglican Child Care Services; and P. Pegler and J. Marlow (1998). The Nazareth Connection, Melbourne: Self-published by Sisters of Mercy.
[10] Leonie Sheedy quoted by Paul Gregoire (2024) The State Is Still Abusing Ex-Child Wards, Via Redress, Just as it Did in Their Youth, Sydney Criminal Lawyers, 8/8/2024 at: https://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/the-state-is-still-abusing-ex-child-wards-via-redress-just-as-it-did-in-their-youth/
[11] The Age (Melbourne), 2 June, 1944.
[12] Daily Telegraph qu. in B. Djuric (comp.) (2008). 14 Years of Hell: An anthology of Hay Girls Institution 1961-1974, Hay: Women About Hay, p. 8.
[13] Minister’s Report for Year 1961, qu. in Djuric, 2008, p. 11
[14] Jodi Hill-Lilly & Chip Spinning (2024).ryo The Blame-and-Shame Cycle in Child Welfare Needs to End, Imprint Youth & Family News, 30 September 2024 at https://imprintnews.org/opinion/blame-shame-cycle-child-welfare-needs-end/252041; and Sarah Han et al. (2019). The child welfare system in US News: What’s missing? Berkeley Media Studies Group, April 2019 at: https://www.bmsg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/bmsg_child_welfare_domestic_violence_news_analysis2019.pdf
[15] Frank Golding (2022). Whose history is it, anyway? IQ: The RIMPA Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 3, September 2022, pp. 34-36.
[16] Michelle Caswell, & Anna Robinson-Sweet (2023). “It was as much for me as for anybody else”: The creation of self-validating records, Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 10, Article 10.
[17] Leonard Tierney (1961). Children Who Need Help: A study of child welfare policy and administration in Victoria, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, p. 93
[18] Frank Golding (2024). That’s Not My Child.
[19] Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017). Final Report, Vol. 8:
Recordkeeping and Information Sharing, p. 39. See also F. Golding (2020). ‘Problems with records and recordkeeping practices are not confined to the past’: a challenge from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Arch Sci 20, 1–19.
[20] The CLAN newsletter, Clanicle, also enables Care Leavers to access a missing persons’ service.
[21] Available at: https://clan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CLAN-Charter-Rights-Records-Rev-update.pdf.
[22] F. Golding, S. McKemmish, & B. Reed (2021). Towards Transformative Practice in Out of Home Care: Chartering rights in recordkeeping. Archives and Manuscripts, 49(3), 186–207; and F. Golding, A. Lewis, S. McKemmish, G. Rolan, & K. Thorpe (2021). Rights in Records: a charter of lifelong rights in childhood recordkeeping in out-of-home care for Australian and Indigenous Australian children and care leavers. The International Journal of Human Rights, 25(9), 1625–1657.
[23] See for example, Frank Golding (2016). ‘Saving the Remnant Fabric: Contesting assessments of an orphanage heritage site’, a paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Historical Association, Ballarat, 8 July 2016; and D. McGinniss, K. Reeves, & F. Golding (2024). Whose pain? Whose shame? Integrating heritage and histories in Ballarat, Australia. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–14.
[24] Senate Community Affairs References Committee (2004). Forgotten Australians, p. 326. See also footnote 33.
[25] National Museum of Australia (2011-2014). Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions (Canberra, November 2011-January 2012; Melbourne August 2013-January 2014; Fremantle March-June 2014; Brisbane August-November 2014).
[26] Frank Golding (2022). Whose history is it, anyway?
[27] Senate Community References Committee (2004). Forgotten Australians.
[28] Issued by Kevin Rudd and accessible at: https://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/community_affairs/completed_inquiries/2004-07/inst_care/national_apology/index
[29] Senator Andrew Murray (2004). Speech at opening the CLAN Office in Bankstown, Sydney, 6 March 2004.
[30] https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/families-and-children/programs-services/find-and-connect-services-and-projects
[31] https://www.dss.gov.au/families-and-children/programmes-services/family-relationships/find-and-connect-services-and-projects/find-and-connect-support-services-and-representative-organisations
[32] National Museum of Australia (2013). Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions, Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia. This commemorative publication gives prominence to Leonie Sheedy’s comment, ‘Let our history be visible’, made at a hearing of the Senate Forgotten Australians inquiry. https://www.nla.gov.au/sites/default/files/ohbooklet_forgottenaustralians.pdf
[33] https://www.nla.gov.au/collections/what-we-collect/oral-history-and-folklore/forgotten-australians-and-former-child#
[34] For example, Family and Community Development Committee (2013). Betrayal of Trust: Inquiry into the handling of child abuse by religious and other non-government organisations, Melbourne, Parliament of Victoria.
[35] The Right Hon. Julia Gillard (2012). Letter to James Luthy, President of CLAN, 16 November 2012
(Correspondence File C12/4705). The messages are reproduced in the CLAN newsletter, The Clanicle 76, January 2013, p. 3.
[36] For example, three papers by Shurlee Swain (2014). History of Child Protection Legislation; History of Institutions providing out-of-home care to children; and History of inquiries reviewing institutions providing care for children. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Sydney.
[37] Shurlee Swain, Leonie Sheedy, & Cate O’Neill (2012). Responding to “Forgotten Australians”: historians and the legacy of out-of-home “care.” Journal of Australian Studies, 36(1), 17–28; J. Wilson, N. Musgrove, & D. McGinniss (2024). Activism and institutional care: history, heritage and social memory. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–5; J.Z. Wilson & F. Golding (2017). The Tacit Semantics of ‘Loud Fences’: tracing the connections between activism, heritage and new histories. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(8), 861–873.
[38] Joanna Penglase (2005).
[39] Shurlee Swain, Leonie Sheedy, and Cate O’Neill (2012) pp.17–28.
[40] Frank Golding (2005) An Orphan’s Escape: Memories of a lost childhood, Melbourne Lothian; Frank Golding (2024) That’s Not My Child.
[41] Paul Ashton & Jacqueline Z. Wilson (eds.) (2014). Silent System: Forgotten Australians and the Institutionalisation of women and children, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly.
[42] The Museum has created a video of the official opening to complement the pictorial coverage on the website at https://aomuseum.com.au/australian-orphanage-museum-opening/ and in the local media at https://timesnewsgroup.com.au/geelongtimes/news/telling-their-stories-australian-orphanage-museum-opens-in-geelong/
[43] Royal Commission (2017). Case Study 57, Transcript, 31 March 2017, p. 27840.
[44] On museum activism, see R. Janes, & R. Sandell (2019). Posterity Has Arrived: The Necessary Emergence of Museum Activism. In Museum Activism, ed R. Janes & R. Sandell, London, Routledge, pp. 1–35; and E. Robenalt, D. Farrell-Banks, & K. Markham (202)2. Activist Pedagogies in Museum Studies and Practice: A critical reflection, The Journal of Museum Education 47 (4): 401–413.
[45] Laurajane Smith (2006). Uses of Heritage, Abington, Oxford, Routledge.
[46] Hon. Kevin Rudd (2009). Address at the apology to the Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, Parliament House 16 November 2009, at: https://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/2004_07/inst_care/national_apology/prime_minister_speech_pdf.ashx
[47] J. Deetz (1996). In Small Things Forgotten: An archaeology of early American life. New York: Anchor Books.
[48] Art Gallery of Ballarat (2021). ‘Out of the Darkness: A survivor’s journey.’ City of Ballarat, at: https://www.artgalleryofballarat.com.au/explore/exhibitions/out-of-the-darkness-a-survivors-journey.
[49] See https://aomuseum.com.au; https://ehive.com/objects?query=orphanage&facet=account_name_facet%3AAustralian+Orphanage+Museum
[50] The videos are available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4uFuAeMqK0
[51] See for example D. McDonald (2024) Local Australian memory activism; D. McGinniss, K. Reeves, & F. Golding, (2024). Whose pain?; N. Musgrove, & L. Saxton, (2024). Closing the cell door: where are the histories of Care-leavers at the old Melbourne Gaol? International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–12; and J. Z. Wilson (2024). The Australian orphanage museum: heritage and activism. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 1–13.
[52] AHA National Conference, Geelong 29 June 2022; ASA/NAA & UNESCO Australian Memory of The World Symposium, Canberra 21 October 2022; AMAGA National Conference, Newcastle 17 May 2023.
[53] World Conference of the International Federation of Public Historians, Luxembourg, 4 September 2024.