More than 80 years after the first of nearly 1000 English child migrants arrived at Fairbridge Farm near Molong for an often harsh life, a commemorative park telling their story will open.
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Work crews were this week installing large panels of interpretative signage and gardens at Fairbridge Childrens Park, a two hectare site on the Mitchell Highway east of Molong.
David Hill, the former head of the ABC, Soccer Australia, the State Rail Authority, Sydney Water and the North Sydney Bears rugby league club, is an old Fairbridgian.
He has been instrumental in leading the project and fundraising to see the park built on Molong Creek, on the northern border of the former Fairbridge Farm property.
It's uplifting. It is beautiful. It's quite emotional.
- David Hill, Fairbridge Childrens Park
At 11am on Sunday about 75-80 former Fairbridge children will unite to cut a ribbon to officially open the park.
Mr Hill said it was the culmination of years of work by the former children with help from the Orange and Molong communities and government funding.
"It's uplifting. It is beautiful. It's quite emotional," he said.
"It's got the right tone to it. It's not dwelling on doom and gloom."
The park tells of the children's journey in various stages starting with their life in Britain, the voyage by ship to Australia, their life at Fairbridge and finally going alone to find adult life and work.
Mr Hill said the park had been designed free of charge by noted landscape architect Leonard Lynch.
Exhibits include a former Fairbridge Farm bed which was bent at one end to save the need to supply pillows.
Mr Hill said the Fairbridge bell, a steel rail which was struck by a metal stick, had also been relocated. "Our life was dictated to by the bell," he said.
Mr Hill said it determined when to go to bed, when to go to work and when to come for meals.
"It was so loud you could hear it in Molong," he said.
The Molong site was one of six around Australia where the children of poor and destitute English families were taken to get them out of British slums from 1938-1974.
They faced a difficult and often abusive life.
A class action in 2008 saw $24 million compensation paid to the victims. In the past five years the British, Australian and NSW governments have apologised and publicly acknowledged they failed the children.
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