Australian
Screen

A World for Children conveys the experience of arrival for European immigrants who have come to Australia. The Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre in Victoria was the first and largest migrant reception centre in Australia. It offered temporary accommodation and services to immigrants whilst they were waiting to be resettled and find employment. This film was made by the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement, and the emphasis is on the children’s experience of the centre. We follow siblings Maret, Juri and Yanni throughout the grounds in the course of a typical day. Along the way, the viewer gets to see the services and facilities (including two churches, a hospital, kitchen and dining rooms, a games room, a school and a creative leisure centre) and the expanses of nature (trees, lakes and fields) that surround the centre.

Accompanied by cheerful, carefree music and narrated by a gentle female voice-over, A World for Children portrays the Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre as an ideal place for newly arrived migrants to stay while they settle in and adjust to life in Australia. The migrants in the centre are largely of European descent: the children have fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. The documentary ends with the children playing down by the lake as the voice-over recites the first few lines of William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence.

The Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre operated from 1947 to 1971 and received over 300,000 postwar migrants. For many families, some of whom stayed a few weeks, others a few months, the time they spent at Bonegilla Migrant Reception Centre was influential in shaping their experience of Australia.