TODAY will be a day of mixed emotions for former Fairbridge Farm residents when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises for the treatment they received at the institution.
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Mr Rudd will make the apology at 11am and a large contingent of former child residents are travelling to Canberra for the historic address.
His apology will encapsulate the treatment of 7000 child migrants who were among 600,000 children institutionalised in homes and orphanages between 1930 and 1970.
Among those travelling to Canberra today will be Stewart Lee, of Blayney, who arrived at Fairbridge, near Molong, at the age of just four with three older brothers.
He says he doesn’t believe the Prime Minister’s apology will remove the emotional scars he has carried with him since leaving Fairbridge, and later when he was sent to work at a dairy at Tottenham when he was 17.
“But I want to hear what he’s got to say even though I think he’s just grandstanding,” Mr Lee said.
“When I first went out to work they (Fairbridge) told me that they owned me and they could send me where they wanted.
“It’s one thing to apologise - but it’s another to mean it.”
His brother Ian Bayliff will meet up with Mr Lee in Canberra today and says he finds it equally difficult to forgive.
One incident, he says, will stay in his memory for ever.
“There was this one little bloke and he was four. It was raining. He ran away and only got as far as the top paddock before he was bought back,” he said.
He says the house mother, who was later investigated for her cruelty to children at the institution, disciplined the boy.
“The other boys from the cottage had to stand there and watch. She flogged him, I think about 40 times, with a leather strap and I can still remember her turning to us and telling us that would happen to us if we tried the same thing.”
But Mr Bayliff said the threats were taken to a higher level when she later produced a riding crop and disciplined the children in Blue cottage.
Former resident David Hill, whose documentary outlining the harsh life at Fairbridge screens on ABC television tomorrow night, said several house mothers were unfit to be employed in the institution.
“The house mothers were sadistic and nasty people and there were several of them who handed out that type of punishment, along with the principal Mr Woods who also took part in public thrashings,” he said.
However, Mr Hill said he believes today’s apology is a step in the right direction.
“For the first time, some of the terrible things that were done to these kids will be acknowledge,” he said.
“But it will definitely open old wounds.”
