Apology for last boy shipped to Australia
News Archive > General > Apology for last boy shipped to Australia
St Columb Major resident Rex Wade, 51, was just 11 years old when he was sent to Tazmania with his younger brother because their father had died and his mother was unable to cope.
They were taken from their mum by council officials and flown Down Under in December 1970.
More than 130,000 poor and orphaned British children were sent to Australia to be used as child labour before the practice was outlawed in 1967.
But despite the Child Migrants Programme being scrapped three years before, Reg and nine-year-old Kevin were sent to live 13,000 miles from home.
They were moved to a home in Exeter, Tazmania, where they were put to work and endured regular physical abuse and beatings by staff.
Rex tried to escape several times and was sent to an offenders' home. When he was eventually freed in 1986 he sold all his possessions to buy a ticket back to Britain.
He has now received an official apology from Cornwall County Council - the authority which sent him to Tazmania illegally nearly 40 years ago.
Rex said: ''I was put on a plane with my little brother and a suitcase each. I never saw my mother again. We had no idea what was happening to us and why we were going away. We ended up in a care home, regularly receiving punishments and beatings for minor things.
''The whole experience ruined my life. We were sent the other side of the world and were treated like slaves. It was wrong and should never have happened.''
Because Rex tried to escape the boy's home many times he was sent to a Borstal-type facility which he left aged 26.
He said: ''The care home was brutal - if the grass wasn't cut in a certain way, you'd be punished for it and he'd throw things at you like a stone or a shovel until it was done right. 'It was so bad I got into more and more trouble trying to get away but by 1986 I was free. I sold the few bits I had and came back.''
Rex says Kevin later joined the Navy after he left the home in the 1980s and still lives in Australia.
A spokesman for Cornwall Council - which replaced the county council in 2009 - apologised and said migration was a ''sad and highly emotive chapter in the country's history''.
He said: ''This policy was in operation more than 50 years ago. Modern-day practices, which are set out in legislation and overseen by the courts, would not use this as an option for children in the care of local authorities.
“The council recognises that this may have been a difficult experience for some individuals, and has offered counselling and support to anyone who has been affected.''
Rex has been compensated by the Government of Tasmania, which has admitted that ''nothing that happened at the home was his fault''.
