Who were the Barwell Boys?

This year marks the centenary of a little known episode in Australian history.

In 1922 the South Australian premier, Henry Barwell, travelled to Europe seeking new opportunities for his state. Addressing a gathering of dignitaries, his speech was reported in The Times in March 1922:

‘Great hopes are centred in a scheme of migration for boys aged between 15 and 18. The ideal aimed at is the replacement of the 6,000 South Australian soldiers who were killed in the war … The scheme, in a word, is an instalment of practical Imperial reciprocity.’

Yes, he was a lawyer . . .

His scheme was a re-launch of an earlier one in 1913 that had brought out 125 young British boys to work as farm apprentices to help develop the state’s agricultural districts.

Between 1922 and 1924, nearly 1,500 boys left their homes and families to work in the harsh conditions of the South Australian outback. The first boatload of ‘Barwell Boys’, as they became known, arrived in Port Adelaide on the SS Largs Bay in June 1922.

The picture was taken after the arrival of the Largs Bay last week. Ninety-eight boys have come out from England and have been placed on farms in various parts of the State for agricultural training.

' Others are on their way , and more are to follow…‘ said Mr. Victor Ryan, in charge of the boys in South Australia, who is seen in the bottom right-hand corner of the picture. Source: Trove

The Largs Bay arrivals photographed in Kintore Avenue before they left Adelaide. All the boy migrants had their photos taken in Adelaide for sending to their families back home. Their attire gives a clue as to how ill-prepared they were for the physically demanding and unfamiliar work ahead of them. Source: State Library, SA

Take a 15-year-old boy from his job as a clerk or errand boy in a crowded city and deposit him 10,000 miles away at an isolated farm with a stranger, where he is set to work clearing scrub, growing wheat and raising livestock. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, thanks to the government files of correspondence between the authorities and the boys – more than 11,000 letters were exchanged – we have a pretty good idea. Most of the problems stemmed from inexperience: ‘they do not even know how to handle a horse’; loneliness, homesickness and exploitation were also factors.

The 1924 Parliamentary Select Committee investigation into the scheme adds to the history. One of the boy witnesses said: ‘Another boy half a mile away had to work very late hours, at midnight or 1.00am, to feed the horses. Then up at sunrise.’

The low pay was the source of most complaints, from the farmers as well as the boys themselves. Some of them voluntarily raised a boy’s pay from 15 shillings once he had proved his worth. One farmer gave his boy a patch of land and a pig – clearly a forerunner of an executive bonus.

Decades later, oral histories from the ‘boys’ were recorded by a volunteer under the auspices of the State Library. Many of them wrote memoirs and some family members have published books on the remarkable stories of their fathers and grandfathers.

Alf Dyer recalled in his memoirs arriving in Adelaide in August 1922 with 70 others after a six-week voyage from England. Two days later, six of them were put on the train serving outlying communities. The mailman collected Dyer at the local station to take him part of the way and delivered ‘his parcel’ to the farmer in the nearby town.

‘We put the pony in the gig for the 8-mile trip to the farm,’ he wrote, ‘with only a candle lamp on each side of the gig to light our way. We arrived about midnight. It had been a long, freezing day for a lad far away from home with no means of return.’

Jack Greenwood, who arrived in 1923, remembered his introduction to the new country:

‘On the way up to Streaky Bay, the driver was delivering mail at roadside stops . . .  there was a kangaroo sitting on the road. He yelled out “There’s no mail today, Joe”. There were three of us Barwell Boys aboard and we didn’t know what to make of that! We didn’t even know it was a wild animal.’

Many of the boys ‘cleared out’ of their places before their apprenticeship was completed: they worked for other employers, moved to the city or to other states where they had relatives. A few returned to England.

Of those who stayed, many never saw their parents again. They continued to work on the land or moved to paddocks new: publishing, broadcasting, engineering, the church. They married local girls, raised families, fought in the Australian forces during the second world war and lived out their lives in their adopted country…

After retirement, a few of the Barwell Boys gathered together to reminisce over their experiences. Their children and grandchildren have continued to hold annual reunions in Adelaide to this day.

The scheme was always controversial but there’s no doubt that the boys’ efforts contributed greatly to opening up the agricultural land of South Australia in the 1920s during the two years that it ran. A change of government brought it to a sudden halt, as summarised in The Bulletin in May 1924 . . .