#hsty3902

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Recommended viewing: Documentaries relating to the experiences of  Operation Babylift

Though they don’t have a specific link to the Q-station, these two linked documentaries provide a fascinating insight into the lives of those directly in the operation both in Australia and th USA.

Al Jazeera's journalist Cath Turner reflects on her life as an Operation Babylift child, as she describes “an Asian child growing up in white Australia”.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2012/10/201210101123347249.html 

Mayday Air Crash Investigation ~ S07E05 Operation Babylift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aceKrb67W9U

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So what are your thoughts?

This post marks the end of my research for this project. I hope you found this as insightful and as fascinating as i did! Please do not hesitate to comment or submit anything relevant to the topic discussed!

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Picture of Nan Bosler at Q-station from Mia Mia article. Taken by Judy Keneally, April 1975. 

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Personal Stories Part Two: Nan Bosler

 At the event, I was extremely fortunate to meet a lovely woman named Nan Bosler. Nan was kind enough to share an article she had written for Mia Mia, the journal for the Mothers union Anglican Church. The full article published in the July/August issue of 1975, (which is attached to this post below), also contains a series of photographs she took during her time at the Q-station. Like many members of the Creative Leisure Movement (CLM), she ‘volunteered to help the war orphans from Vietnam-armed with Christian love and concern’ (1a).

Just to give a little background history: CLM was formed out of the Children's Library and Crafts Movement in 1970 ‘after the death of Doris Rivett and her sister Elsie’ (2).

 Nan was responsible for the day care of the Children at the Q-station as Northern Beaches Supervisor for CLM between the 9th-17th of April of 1975. Many of the CLM volunteers had a very active and important role concerning the day to day welfare of these children. As Nan explains in the article, ‘we helped to dress and feed the children, to escort them to Manly Hospital for x-rays, to take English lessons…to become part of their day in whatever way we needed’ (1a). They ‘arrived each day at breakfast time and stayed until the last child was tucked into bed’ (1a)

 Medicinal Care

 As Nan explains, ‘any child found ill was transferred to hospital’ (1a). Many of the children who had arrived had been the ‘victims of Polio.’ Treatment was also given for a variety of ‘minor skin problems’. She stated that the volunteers ‘exercised to establish correct feeding for the babies’ where the youngest was only 10 days old (1b)!

 A Creative bunch!

By the fourth day, Nan recalls that the CLM volunteers brought ‘boxes of materials paint, paper, clay, wood, glue, brushes and crayons’ (1a) for the children, only to be used as soon as breakfast was over! They were initially ‘anxious’ because of the language barrier that had existed between them.  However, ‘within five minutes we were completely surrounded by children eager to paint and try all we had to share with them’ (1c). Painting, in particular, had been the ‘most popular activity’ (1c) for the children aged between 2-17.

 “Their Greatest need was love”

 One of the greatest needs for the children during the first couple of days at the Q-station was ‘reassurance and love’ (1b). These children loved to ‘share and help each other out’ (1c). They had a sense of being cared for, being accepted and reassured that ‘they were safe’ (1c).

Nan recalls that she was ‘close to tears when a lad of ten held up the bus taking the last group of children from North Head, just to find me and say goodbye’ (1c).

Nan also answered a couple of quick questions pertaining to:

1. How did the children arrive at the q-station?  In buses

2. Where were they placed at the Q-station?   Organised into (approx.) age groups and housed on site.

3. How long did the children stay there for?  About 10 days

To read the full article, read the attached images of the scanned article below!

 Front cover of Mia Mia  containing Nan’s photographs

(1a) Page 1

(1b) Page 2

(1c) Page 3

More of Nan’s Photographs at the end of the article  

References:

 (2)    http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE0060b.htm

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"Flight crew from No. 37 Squadron tending to orphans at Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon prior to the Operation Babylift flight on 17 April 1975."

I will make a little reference to these missions in my speech for this event:

https://wordvine.sydney.edu.au/files/1652/10591/

Hope to see you there!

Photo reference:

https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/53/bullard_after_the_fall/

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A history revisited: Whitlam at the Q-station? Whitlam’s initial response to the intake of Vietnamese orphans and refugees in April 1975

Though the Whitlam government is credited with establishing a number of reforms regarding immigration since its abolishment of the White Australia Policy in 1973, Gough Whitlam himself was initially hesitant in taking in refugees from the Vietnam War.  This included the orphans who were later brought along by Operation Babylift.

Clyde Cameron, a former minister for Immigration under the Whitlam government, explained in his 1980 book Communism and Coca Cola that originally Whitlam had little to no ‘sympathy for refugees in Indochina’ (1). He recalls a moment when Whitlam ‘exploded when the issue of immigration was discussed in a cabinet meeting in 1975, declaring that he was “not having hundreds of fucking Vietnamese Balts coming into the country” (1).  This antagonism towards Vietnamese refugees, many believe, may have spawned from his need to stop further Australian involvement in the affairs of Vietnam, as well as ‘was partly motivated by a “care for the attitudes of North Vietnamese communist leadership” (2).

However, in a series of correspondence letters between the former Prime Minister and Gerard Henderson, a political commentator and executive director for the Sydney Institute, in 2002, Whitlam stated that Henderson was not the ‘first commentator’ (2) to reference Cameron’s claims. Instead, he reassures Henderson by mentioning that at the time he supposedly said that, he had sent ‘RAAF planes (which) brought more than 200 Vietnamese war orphans to Sydney on Saturday 5 April 1975’ (2). Most importantly, he mentions that ‘On the front pages of the SMH and Australian of 7 April there are large photographs of me nursing a 7-month orphan at North Head quarantine station’ (2). Whitlam subtly insinuates that he had rather initially supported certain policies regarding the intake and settlement of Indochinese/Vietnamese refugees/asylum seekers from the beginning. However, interestingly, Henderson recounts that Whitlam never disputed those claims made by Cameron.

In search for THOSE photo-ops Whitlam was referring to, I scoured through the internet for a couple of days until I had found one on someone’s twitter page:

 Link: https://twitter.com/rod3000/status/524336141265158144

This discovery then led me to this link: http://consumer.fairfaxsyndication.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2ITP1GO0LM0L

This specific Photo is titled “Mr Gough Whitlam visits Vietnamese refugees at North Head Quarantine Station in Sydney, 6 April 1975”. (SMH Picture by K. Berry). 

This link provides a number of other photos of Whitlam at the Q-station, the ones he was referring to! (So exciting)!

This photo greatly captures how North Head and these children alike became, in a sense, these symbols of change regarding Australia’s stance toward immigration coming from South-East Asia.

 Why do you think Whitlam referenced these  specific photographs?

References:

(1)   Mares, Peter. "Borderline: Australia's response to refugees and asylum seekers." In the Wake of the Tampa (2002): page 73.

(2)   Henderson, Gerard. "The Whitlam Government & Indochinese Refugees." The Sydney Institute Quarterly 7, no. 1 (2003): 12-18.