The dark side of Bindoon

So we left Toodyay and by the time we got to Lower Chittering we realised the Mystery bus still wasn’t right , better but no power on hills.

Our friend we had meet had invited us to stay at theirs intactly it was only supposed to be a flying visit which turned into 6 nights. Vincent recommended Dane to look at the Coaster , he found the intercooler was broken but needed it confirmed and asked Vincent ( who happens to be quite mechanical ) to take it out! But as usual it wasn’t a five minute job more like alll day and into the evening, the radiator had to come off! It was confirmed that the intercooler had blown and the part needed ordering from Toyota , so we got prepared to be bent over and shafted with a big stick!
All our plans/trips for Cervantes, Jurien had to be cancelled , RAC resorts and parks wouldn’t put the deposit on account and refused to help the situation , yet the local business Lobster pot refunded us immediately the trips we had booked and the Jurien Summerstar park credited us on account, put it this way I hadn’t finished with RAC , watch this space!

As we headed to Lower Chittering I noticed a sign Bindoon? Bindoon rang a bell and I realised that the place was out of a movie called Sunshine & Oranges. So we took a visit, the barrier was down and the place was closed.

Historically, the school was called Bindoon Boys Town, which started in 1938.The name was changed after revelations of institutionalised cruelty to Australian and migrant children. A series of inquiries, as well as the research of Margaret Humphreys, found that systemic sexual, physical and emotional abuse was perpetrated at the school. In one instance, a priest used a bullet attached to a stick to penetrate students as a form of punishment.
In 1989, Senator Jean Jenkins, the Australian Democrats senator for Western Australia, raised the issue in the nation's Senate on behalf of the Child Migrant Friendship Society of Western Australia and a number of individual former child migrants who had asked for her support.In 1994, the Parliament of Western Australia was presented a petition with 30,000 signatures which demanded an inquiry into the sexual and physical assaults that took place in Bindoon. Other institutions run by the Christian Brothers in Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun were also named in the petition.The child abuse that took place at Bindoon is alluded to in the 2011 film Oranges and Sunshine which portrays the dedication of British social worker Margaret Humphreys in seeking justice for child migrants.
Margaret Humphreys, CBE, AO (born 1944) is a British social worker and author from Nottingham, England. She worked for Nottinghamshire County Council operating around Radford, Nottingham and Hyson Green in child protection and adoption services. In 1986, she received a letter from a woman in Australia who, believing she was an orphan, was looking to locate her birth certificate so she could get married.
In 1987, she investigated and brought to public attention the British government programme of Home Children. This involved forcibly relocating poor British children to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia, and other parts of the Commonwealth of Nations often without their parents' knowledge. Children were often told their parents had died, and parents were told their children had been placed for adoption elsewhere in the UK. According to Humphreys, up to 150,000 children are believed to have been resettled under the scheme some as young as three about 7,000 of whom were sent to Australia.
Saving money was one of the motives behind this policy. The children were allegedly deported because it was cheaper to care for them overseas. It cost an estimated £5 per day to keep a child on welfare in a British institution, but only 10% of that, ten shillings, in an Australian one.

In 1998, a British Parliamentary Select Committee began an inquiry into child migration schemes, and published a report in August that year which criticized the policy in general, and particularly certain Roman Catholic institutions in Western Australia and Queensland such as the Christian Brothers where child migrants were housed and allegedly abused. The Western Australian Legislative Assembly passed a motion on 13 August 1998 apologizing to former child migrants.
In 2007, both the Queensland and Western Australia governments announced redress schemes for those who as children were abused while in State care. These schemes allow former British child migrants to apply for financial compensation if they do not wish to or cannot pursue civil litigation claims against the State.
In December 2014, a royal commission found that "Christian Brothers leaders knew of allegations of sexual abuse of children at four WA orphanages, including Bindoon, and failed to manage the homes to prevent the systemic ill-treatment for decades.It also found that the institution was concerned by the cost of legal proceedings, and "there was no sentiment of recognising the suffering of the survivors.

The part arrived Monday and was fitted by the guys , the Coaster needed tuning which lead to discovering the turbo booster pipe was split! Omfg! Really! We said our goodbyes and headed back to Toodyay to M & M as the pipe wasn’t easy to get hold of! Suprise! So it either needed welding or making , we contacted Toodyay manor to see if they would put us up again.Read more