{"id":1053,"date":"2016-02-29T21:50:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T10:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:25:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T02:25:03","slug":"all-the-little-travellers-the-children-of-morningtown-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mikejonesonline.com\/contextjunky\/2016\/02\/29\/all-the-little-travellers-the-children-of-morningtown-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"All the little travellers: the children of ‘Morningtown Ride’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is co-written with Sarah Green, and was first published on the Find & Connect web resource blog<\/a> on 29 February 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sarah Green<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a sad fact that many people who were in care do not know what they looked like as children. When I was the Find & Connect Client Liaison Officer (2011 to 2014), I received many emails from people desperately searching for photographs and video footage of themselves and their relatives. These images are so highly prized and there are so many researchers looking out for them – Care Leavers, historians, archivists, genealogists, to name only a few –\u00a0 it seems impossible that there would be any on the public record that haven\u2019t already been discovered. Stories such as the woman who found photographs while cleaning out her Aunt’s house<\/a>\u00a0seem to suggest that new discoveries are more likely to come from private collections.<\/p>\n

So you can imagine my surprise when I accidentally stumbled across a video of children in care, in the most public of places: YouTube!<\/p>\n

One weekend in January 2016 I was browsing YouTube videos \u2013 well, I was watching The Seekers \u2013 and I came across a video clip of Judith Durham and her bandmates performing Morningtown Ride on Puffing Billy<\/a>. The train is filled with young boys, plus two girls sitting on the performers\u2019 laps. The children look bored and uncomfortable, which made me wonder where on earth they came from. At the bottom of the video was a caption:<\/p>\n

Uploaded on Nov 10, 2011<\/p>\n

Filmed on ‘Puffing Billy’ near Melbourne with the kids from a local Children’s Home. I recently had an email from one of them, now in his 50s, after he recognised himself on the video!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This set in train (pardon the pun) a detective hunt to find out which Home the children were from. I chatted with Cate from the Find & Connect web resource and we brainstormed a few ideas. Blackburn Cottages? Sutherland Homes? Orana? None of them quite fit the age range and the date of 1966.<\/p>\n

In many ways it reminded me of when we would get emails to the Find & Connect web resource with a rough description of a Home which we’d try to identify through a process of elimination. I sent a tweet to Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) and Frank Golding, sure they would be able to help sleuth out the answer. They joined the hunt and soon there was a whole bunch of us trying to track it down. I wrote to the poster of the video, as well as to Open Place, the Victorian service for Forgotten Australians, but still no answers. Burwood Boys’ Home kept coming up as it had been mentioned on a few different forums, but it didn\u2019t quite fit the bill.<\/p>\n

I reckon most researchers love a good detective hunt and it\u2019s this type of mission that reminds us why we do this work. I was beside myself with excitement at the idea of someone out there being reunited with video footage of themselves as a child, even if it was of them looking a bit bored.<\/p>\n

Mike Jones<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sarah told me the story of the Seekers clip over a drink in January. Like others who heard the story, I was immediately curious; and, as the former Lead Archivist on the Find & Connect web resource project (2013 to 2014), like Sarah I knew the immense value of these sorts of records. But, despite time spent searching the web and trying to follow the trail, I didn\u2019t make any more progress than those already on the case.<\/p>\n

As a regular Twitter user (@mikejonesmelb<\/a>) I had found my Twitter contacts useful in the past, so put the word out.<\/p>\n

\n

#twitterstorians<\/a> and #seekers<\/a> fans – can anyone ID the children's home the kids were from in this 1966 Seekers clip? https:\/\/t.co\/BCOHvG4avg<\/a><\/p>\n

— Mike Jones (@mikejonesmelb) January 21, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n