Different time weren't they. I've heard tales of kids running away from orphanages to escape harsh beatings and sexual assault.
My Dad's Dad was a runaway.
My wife's Dad and his brothers were runaways too.
The Halfcaste problem has received deeper consideration and more advanced and enlightened treatment in the Commonwealth Territories than in any other part of Australia. The Commonwealth which you must recognise is trustee of the White Australia Policy, has viewed this matter nationally, and has framed its policy accordingly. Difference of circumstance as between Territory and State has again required special policy. In the States, the Halfcaste is negligible as a factor of population in a white community with equal distribution of the sexes. In the Territory, however, the preponderance of coloured races, the prominence of coloured alien blood and the scarcity of white females to mate with the white male population, creates a position of incalculable future menace to purity of race in tropical Australia, and the Federal Government must so regulate its Territories that the multiplication of multicolour humanity by the mating of Halfcaste with alien coloured blood shall be reduced to a minimum. Halfcaste females in centres of population where alien races are prominent unfortunately exceed males in number. If this excess is permitted to mate with alien blood, the future of this country may very well be doomed to disaster.
The Commonwealth has therefore endeavoured to elevate the Halfcaste to the standard of the white, with a view to his ultimate assimilation, encouraging the mating of white male and halfcaste female, thereby gradually eliminating colour and reducing one contributory factor in the breeding of Halfcastes. Will you, Sir, with no knowledge of local problems, make so bold as to say that the Commonwealth is wrong? Briefly, the Halfcaste policy in this Territory embraces the collection of all illegitimate halfcastes, male and female under the age of 16 years for housing in institutions for educational purposes. These with predominance of white blood are placed in separate institutions where they are reared as whites, in association with white children. All receive the statutory State School Education available to white children. On completion, the girls are taught domestic arts, and dress and clothing making, to fit them for a higher station as the wives of higher grade halfcaste males, or whites. The boys are trained in the pastoral industry by allocation to Stations, who are required to train them as white apprentices until such time as they reach the age of 21 years, when they automatically attain full white citizenship. On leaving the Home, the girls are placed in specially selected private homes, where they are cared for and trained by the ladies who employ them, and who are held responsible for their moral and material welfare…
Unfortunately, the practical application of this policy has run ahead of the financial means of executing it, and much of a highly derogatory nature is heard of the Half-caste Home Darwin. Nobody recognises the necessity for certain improvements there, more acutely than the Commonwealth Government, but the disabilities existing have been very grossly exaggerated. The charge of overcrowding is the commonest to be made. It is not generally recognised that each halfcaste child has 300 cubic feet of air space on a latticed verandah permitting continuous and free ventilation in all weathers… Meantime, the children are removed from the evil influence of the aboriginal camp with its lack of moral training and its risk of serious organic infectious disease. They are properly fed, clothed and educated as white children, they are subject to constant medical supervision and in receipt of domestic and vocational training.
