Barwell Boys

ABC's Landline program aired a story about the Barwell Boys on Sunday 22nd June ('Hard Labour' by reporter Prue Adams). It was paired with a story about a proposed migration scheme for agricultural labourers from the Pacific Islands. In the segue presenter Anne Kruger made the point that "there is nothing new about Australian agriculture looking overseas to meet the demand for labour".

You can watch the story at the Landline website: http://www.abc.net.au/landline/

You can currently download the story from the home page and later it will be available from the Program Archives section of the website. Congratulations to Prue, Don Best, Lydia McLean, Dorothy Gifford, Dawson Wheatley, Kathy Gargett and everyone else involved for a great story. It was wonderful to see the men honoured on national television.

One of the aims of my research is to ensure that the 1913-14 scheme is recognised as the predecessor to the Barwell Boys (1922-24). It is commonly asserted that Premier Barwell was the founder of the programme but as MP William Morrow argued in 1924, it may have been more appropriate to call the scheme the "Young Boys" after the pre-WWI Minister for Agriculture, Frederick Young, or the "Sedgwick Boys" after British empire-builder Thomas Sedgwick, who initially proposed this model of youth migration to the South Australian Government [see p. 32 of Cosmos Christo's 1974 thesis].

It is commonly asserted that the Barwell Boys scheme was established in order to ‘restock’ the state after the heavy loss of life in the First World War. However, I think it is important to recognise that the scheme originated before the War, indicating that a shortage of agricultural labour was an existing problem exacerbated by the War.

I would love to share my research with anyone who is interested in the origins of the Barwell Boys scheme, so please do get in touch!