Orphan started a new life at Dhurringile

And when the 15-year-old turned up at the Tatura Railway Station in 1953 and was greeted by a forbidding-looking man, wearing a black hat in a black suit and driving a black car, he wondered what was ahead.

His eight-year-old travelling companion later told him: “I thought this was the end”. It was only Bill Ponting, the head of the committee which ran the Dhurringile training farm on behalf of the Presbyterian Church.

The experience of the child migrants was so challenging, the Australian and British prime ministers would, one day, offer a formal apology.

Frank Irvine was just five years old when his father abandoned him to a Scottish orphanage.

His mother had died and his alcoholic father was unable to care for him and his brothers and sisters. His father visited him only once in 10 years.

Frank’s first recollections were living in the Scottish boys’ home in Dumfries. The superintendent of the home was an ex-Army man.

“It was just like the Army. Regimented. Most days there were 24 of us,” he said.

“When we ate we had six boys at four tables. The oldest boy was the squad leader. Second oldest was his subordinate.”

There was always porridge for breakfast and a slice of bread and a cup of tea.

The boys attended school and they returned to the orphanage for lunch.

“If we came home and we were lucky, it was potatoes and mince. If it was pea soup and junket you went back to school hungry.”

Inspired by stories of Australia’s international sporting stars like cricketer Don Bradman, Frank was excited about the prospect of going to Australia.

The five-week voyage to Melbourne in 1953 was “like a luxury holiday”.

Frank recalls meeting another orphan on the stairs of Dhurringile, shortly after his arrival, whom he knew in Scotland.

He asked Frank: “Have you got a sheila?” I said: “Who is sheila?”. His friend explained he was asking if he had a girlfriend.

In the 10 days he spent at Dhurringile he learnt how to milk cows and pick tomatoes. He also got acquainted with leeches while swimming in the irrigation channels.

“I nearly died. I had never seen one before.”

Dhurringile was purchased by the Presbyterian Church in 1947 with the intention of setting up a training farm for orphan boys growing up in post-war United Kingdom.

Frank’s first job, while still a teenager, was on a Katandra dairy farm where he was subjected to unrelenting work for an unappreciative host.

His second job was on Jim Phillips’ sheep property at Congupna, which he counted as a valuable experience, but unfortunately Frank hated sheep.

“I learnt about sheep and the bad stuff about sheep.”

He next moved to a dairy farm where he met the farmer’s daughter, Sandra, and took a liking to her. Their first outing together was the Shepparton Show. She studied nursing and later they married.

Frank tried herd testing and worked for the Rural Finance Corporation before going sharefarming.

He eventually bought his in-laws’ farm from them and farmed until his retirement in 2003.

In his memoirs, written for his family, Frank sums his life up this way: “I have had a hard start but from the age of 17, I have had a wonderful finish to life.”

He doesn’t dwell on the hardships.

Instead, he contemplates how fortunate he is to have his own family and his grandchildren. He lives in happy retirement at Katandra West, with his wife, Sandra.