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Record #12753
Name :
: Nigel POWEL (1950 - )
  aka : Nigel Owen


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 15 Jan 1950

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
:
Abode (1) : Place of BirthEngland
Abode (2) : Place of Death / Burial
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 14 Mar 1955
Country
: Australia

Ship
: Strathnaver

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Fairbridge Homes
NotesA Child Migrants Story


Nigel Owen (Powell) aged 60, is still searching for answers why as children the Government decided to send them overseas.

In the post and pre war era, approximately 150,000 children were shipped to Australia while New Zealand, Rhodesia and Canada.

The child migration programme sent the youngsters to start new lives in a foreign land always without their families and often after many years of harsh institutional care.

I was four years old at the time; we were in a Fairbridge Home in Knockholt Kent with my brother Clive and sister Wendy.

We are still trying to ascertain why it happened.

But we were shipped out in March 1955 on the ship SS Strathnaver to Melbourne and stayed at Northcote farm school outside Bacchus Marsh.

There was regular physical and sexual abuse there, the children would be beaten and we would have to get up in the early hours.

If you had wet the bed then you would be beaten with a strap and made to have a cold bath then wash the sheets, then polish the floor for hours or chop wood at the wood pile behind the cottage.

There were around 160 kids in the school, I remember I had to peel the potatoes for everyone and my hands were bleeding, this happened regularly.

I had a teddy with me, "Hector", I hid where I could and that became my comfort blanket, as all toys and personnel belongings were taken from you."

I still have him today and took him to the apology and told the story to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. When I was six I sewed a smile on his face to try and make me happy

In the summer farmers would come to take us for what they thought was a holiday but instead used us for slave labour. My sister Wendy was raped at the age of 12 by a farmer and had three ribs broken.

Eventually after five years the three returned to Britain and was placed into another orphanage the British Seaman?s Orphan Boys Home in Brixham for three years.

At the age of 14 I was adopted and my name changed.

After a working life in the merchant navy as an engineer, a father of three and granddad to three, I am now contemplating the emotional scars of his childhood experience.

I learned very early on crying did no good and stopped crying, even now I have trouble expressing emotions,

At the time I just thought it was the normal way to be brought up, it wasn?t until many years after I realised it was unusual and started making inquiries.

It?s ironic I attended and got the apology nearly 55 years to the day at Westminster.

It made me feel I can get closure and there maybe compensation, but what price is there on a stolen childhood. No amount of money can repair the physical and mental scars Child Migrants had to endure.

I found an aunty in 2009 aged 85; she was devastated when she found out. If she had known she said she would have taken us all in.

My real father died in 1993 aged 79, I had a grandmother who died at the age of 103 in 2003, but I never got to meet either of them. 
ContributorsCreated : 2010-08-28 08:22:01 / From original database

Last Updated :

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IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
12753 POWEL, Nigel1950ENG,     Mar 1955 : Strathnaver AUS Fairbridge Homes