The Big Brother Movement

Chapter Two

The Big Brother Movement

The Big Brother Movement was set up in 1924 on the initiative of an Australian businessman, Richard Linton. The aim was to sponsor boys to emigrate to Australia by providing each boy with a ‘Big Brother’ in Australia, who ‘would act in every way as a foster father to him until he can place him out to suitable employment that will offer him a career in life.’ The Big Brother was then to keep a paternal eye on the boy ‘until he reaches manhood’.3 The ‘Little Brothers’ too had obligations. Each one had to sign an agreement ‘binding him to accept the instructions of his Big Brother and not to leave any employment without his permission. He was to work hard, not drink or gamble, avoid bad company, write to his parents once a month and … open a bank account and try to save a regular sum each week.’4

Unlike other child migrant schemes of the era, the Big Brother Movement did not concentrate on orphans or the underprivileged, but aimed to recruit ‘a better class of boy’. Richard Linton said, ‘that [only] boys of high standard, morally, physically, and of education … should … be sent under our auspices.’ The majority of boys selected for sponsorship by the movement came from middle-class and upper middle-class homes and had attended private schools. The first party of Little Brothers left England in October 1925 after a farewell from the Prince of Wales. On their arrival in Melbourne, the Argus described them as ‘probably the finest batch of new settlers, physically and mentally, that has stepped off an ocean liner in Melbourne.’

In the early days of the Big Brother Movement only about one in three applications for sponsorship succeeded. One of the successful applications was from George Alexander.

He recalled that he had to fill in a lot of forms and persuade his mother to give her permission (which she gave only reluctantly). It says much for the vision of the Big Brother Movement that George’s potential was realized when his background and education were not that envisaged by the movement’s founders.

George had just turned 16 when he sailed from Tilbury on 19 October 1926 on SS Moreton Bay. He recalled:

The big day arrived. Mum came dockside. I didn’t want her to because she looked so sad and lonely standing aside from the other noisy groups … Finally the call came ‘Visitors ashore’ and the deep booming siren stirred the stomach even more and we were away never to return. … At that time I would not have entertained returning, the steamer days were passed, finished, done with. It was always to be thus. Wherever I went, lasting roots were never put down, no correspondence would be entered into, it was always over and done with.

His only links with the past were a Bible given to him by an aunt and his discharge certificate from the Royal Sovereign Shipping Co.

The Moreton Bay was one of the most modern ships on the England-Australia run and on George’s voyage, the 724 passengers included 31 boys sponsored by the Big Brother Movement.5 George, with his small suitcase packed with the bare essentials, was aware that he was different from the other boys, many of whom were from private schools and whose luggage included sporting equipment, evening wear and a few even had ‘western-style Colt six-shooters’. Rather than his fellow Little Brothers, George spent much of his time with a couple he met and particularly their ‘lovely daughter’, with whom he enjoyed a shipboard romance. George had left England with four pounds and he spent about half of that ‘on sharing ice creams and other treats with my girlfriend, falling in love was costly’. He spent another threepence on a ‘naughty photo’ (of a girl in a neck to knee bathing costume) in Port Said, so that he had the grand sum of £1 19s 9d when he arrived in Australia.

The Moreton Bay arrived at Fremantle on 18 November 1926. George went ashore and ‘At that time I became an Australian and abandoned all thought of ever returning’. He only left Australia once in the rest of his life and that was for a short trip to New Zealand.

On Friday 26 November Moreton Bay berthed at Station Pier, Port Melbourne. The Little Brothers were officially welcomed and then went their different ways, mostly not to see each other again. George’s Big Brother was Frederick Hooke, a senior partner in the accounting form of Hooke & Graham, whose offices were at 31 Queen Street. Hooke lived in John Street, Hawthorn, and George spent his first night in Australia with him and his family: ‘We had as expected a question and answer evening, and I was asked to say grace before dinner and thanks after’.6 The next morning Mr Hooke dressed for work in top hat and tails (most accountants still worked on Saturday mornings), and took George to Spencer Street Station ‘where the train was waiting to take me to Koroit, to a soldier settlement and a new world.’

The Soldier Settlement scheme developed out of the belief that the nation owed ‘a debt of honour’ to those who had fought to defend it in the First World War, combined with the ideal of ‘closer settlement’ that had led to the Selection Acts of the 1860s and, in Victoria, the establishment of the Closer Settlement Board in the 1890s. Between 1918 and 1926 many large estates, particularly in western Victoria, were purchased by the board and subdivided into small farms. Generally, the First World War soldier settlement scheme is seen as a tragic failure. This was undeniably true for most of the settlers placed on marginal land in the Mallee, but in the fertile, well-watered Western District many farmers were successful. George Alexander had one of the few strokes of luck in his early life when he was sent to work for one of the most successful.

3 Quoted by Geoffrey Sherington. "A Better Class of Boy: THe Big Brother Movement, Youth Migration and Citizenship of Empire', Australian Historical Studies, no. 120, October 2002, p.267.

4 Ibid, p.273.

5 The Moreton Bay was built in Barrow, England in 1921. She was the first of five sister ships which included the famous Jervis Bay. Her details were -13,855 gross tons, length 530.6ft x beam 68.3ft (161,73m x 20,81m), one funnel, two masts, twin screw and a speed of 15 knots. She was sold to the White Star Line in1928 and then the Aberdeen & Commonwealth Line in 1933 but continued in the same service. After war service as an armed merchant cruiser and troop ship, she returned to the England-Australia run until she was scrapped in 1957.

5 The Moreton Bay was built in Barrow, England in 1921. She was the first of five sister ships which included the famous Jervis Bay.

6 Frederick Hooke was senior partner of accounting firm Hooke & Graham of 31 Queen Street and a fellow of the Australasian Corporation of Public Accountants. He lived at 33 John Street, Hawthorn.

In late November 1926 the Western District was green and lush after good spring rains and George would have seen busy scenes of haymaking as well as numerous flocks of sheep and herds of cattle as he passed through Geelong, Camperdown and Warrnambool on his way to Koroit. He recalled that he ‘couldn’t believe there could be such a long train line’. He was nervous about recognizing his new boss among the crowds at the station, but he was the only passenger to get off at Koroit and there was only one person waiting – James Cozens, his new employer.

It was show day in Koroit and Cozens took George straight to the showgrounds. The local newspaper had anticipated that the show ‘promises to be the best for many years’ and George recalled that ‘the animals in their best show condition were something special’. The sideshows included Jimmy Sharman’s famous boxing troupe, a snake charmer and a fat lady as well as the usual swings, merry-go-rounds and dodgems, while the cattle exhibits were ‘the best ever seen in the district’. As usual, the prize for the best cow owned by a resident of Koroit was won by Father Galligan, the Catholic priest – George had arrived in the most strongly Catholic town in Victoria.7

James Cozens, George’s employer, was one of the most successful of the soldier settlers in the Koroit district. A dour man, he was a good farmer, who came from Yannathan in West Gippsland, and he had married into one of the wealthier local farming families, giving him a stronger financial backing than most settlers.

Cozens’s farm was on the Warrong Estate (also known as Woodlands), which at over 20,000 acres was the largest soldier settlement estate in the Shire of Minhamite.

Purchased from Andrew Baird in 1918, Warrong was subdivided into 62 blocks of between 100 and 900 acres – the variation being due to the varying quality of the land, all blocks being valued at between £2000 and £3000. The land was a combination of fertile, but poorly drained, mud flats, barriers of bluestone boulders (from the lava ‘river’ that flowed from Mt Rouse to the sea at Port Fairy), and some gently rolling old volcanic countryside. The Warrong Estate was extremely run down when subdivided for soldier settlement and the settlers arrived to find their blocks unimproved, unfenced and infested with rabbits. Most of the settlers opted to set up as dairy farmers, but for the first few years their income came largely from rabbiting.

James Cozens’s farm, ‘Willatook Park’ was at Willatook, the small settlement at the heart of the Warrong Estate, about 10 miles north of Koroit. Cozens was probably the only settler in the district to have a car – a Maxwell – and, after their visit to the show, they drove to George’s new home. George recalled:

I was shown to my quarters, a clean weatherboard hut, ten foot square, a bare wooden floor, a tin roof unlined as were the walls, the bed a wire base with a thin kapok mattress and pillow and two army blankets. The table was a packing case with one side removed and there was a chair and a small kerosene lamp. In view of the sleeping conditions I had known I had no complaints. This was heaven.

Cozens had a herd of about 30 dairy cows (quite large for the time) and a four-station milking machine, again unusual as most local dairy farmers still milked by hand. George realized he was fortunate to have been sent to a farmer who was relatively well off, with the nicest house on the settlement, well-kept fencing and established windbreaks.

George was paid 12 shillings a week, with one weekend off a month and two weeks unpaid holidays each year. The hours were ‘to start at dawn and work as long as you could see what to do’. Every day there was milking in the morning and evening, and during the day there were jobs such as fencing and haymaking.

George’s first job was to run a fence from the house down to the Moyne River about 700 yards away. He found he enjoyed jobs involving building or machinery more than milking. He taught himself about the farm machines, especially the engines. Most of these were simple kerosene combustion engines’ and he was surprised ‘how reluctant most of the farmers were to investigate mechanical equipment’.

The Cozens had no children and George found that ‘they had not the least idea of what a 16-year-old doing hard work could eat’. The servings at meals were meagre and he was ‘so often hungry I’d steal eggs from the hen house, put a hole in each end and suck out the contents’, take cream from the separator or even eat the oats and molasses used for feeding calves.

At first George found the evenings long and boring. To fill in the time he began to make things for the Cozens and neighbouring farmers. He made a Coolgardie safe for Mrs Cozens – there was no refrigeration or even an ice box in the farmhouse – and went on to make tank stands, stock troughs, gates and many other things. He even made an honour board for the Willatook hall, which is still there today. Later he took a course in ‘Station Book Keeping’ and ‘my evenings were passed close to the kerosene lamp finding out about double entry bookkeeping.’

Community life at Willatook centred around the local school (set up in 1922), which was also the community hall and, on Sundays, the church. George went to church with the Cozens and enjoyed the singing, as he knew all the hymns by heart from his time in the church choir at Cove. He recalled:

‘Listen, son, what about knockin’ off that singin’ a bit. It sounds a bit crook. Did ya voice break on the way out?’

… The next time I went to church was when I married.

Willatook School (2005). Life at Willatook was quiet for a teenage boy. There was the occasional dance at the local school, with one farmer playing the fiddle and another the drums. Sometimes a couple of local lads would come to George’s hut where they would wrestle or practice judo. George learnt to ride and ‘ sometimes he would steal away quietly at night, ambling along for miles.’ After about 18 months at Willatook, George felt it was time to move on. He did not enjoy dairy farming and there was not enough handyman work to keep him busy. He had saved up most of his pay – there had been little to spend it on in Willatook – and he wrote to the Big Brother Movement to ask if he could try wheat farming.

Willatook School (2005).