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If Only – Series 1 Episode 5 (2003)

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clip Facing the demons education content clip 1, 2

Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Georgina was a state ward from the age of 3 until she was 14 years old, when she was sent as a domestic to work in a family until she turned 18. Her mother wouldn’t release her for adoption, which is why she spent all her young life in institutions.

Curator’s notes

What a courageous woman and what a terrible story. The filmmakers allow us to feel her distress at her not knowing whether her mother is alive or dead, so she can never get to the bottom of the mystery of why she was put in an institution. Thank goodness the story has a happy ending because she finally found a terrific partner with whom she has a beautiful daughter of her own.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows Georgina telling of her life as a ward of state and her daughter describing what a wonderful mother Georgina later became. It opens with Georgina revealing the effect of her mother’s refusal to sign adoption papers. While looking for the house where she worked as a young adult, Georgina tells of the work she did there as a domestic servant. Then she and her daughter are shown looking at photographs of herself as a young mother. The clip concludes with Georgina describing her father’s death and speculating on whether her mother is still alive.

Educational value points

  • Georgina’s story highlights the longing for home and family that children removed from their families and made wards of state can experience. Such children often lack information about the circumstances of their removal or what became of their family. Many, like Georgina, have no photographs to record their childhood. The love, encouragement and support that she provides her own daughter compensate to some extent for what she did not receive herself.
  • The clip does not explain why Georgina was removed from her family, but there were two main possibilities at that time – either the government welfare authorities had decided that there was the risk of significant harm to the child from within the family home or one of the parents had applied for the child to be made a ward of state. Wards of state were usually placed in government- or church-run orphanages and then sent out to work at the earliest possible age.
  • Georgina’s story comes from a time when children in Australia were taken into state care in much larger numbers than today. Governments in the 1950s and 1960s were concerned to protect children from neglect and abuse and this could include being orphaned or poor, the family being disrupted by illness or desertion, physical or sexual abuse or a parent’s inability to cope. The authorities believed that orphanage care or live-in employment would be better for the child.
  • The domestic service that Georgina was employed to perform from the age of 14 to 18 was a common experience of children in institutional care until the 1970s. After the age of 14 children who were state wards could be required to earn a living, girls as domestic servants in middle-class households and boys frequently as farm labourers.
  • Although Georgina was later able to achieve a happy family life despite removal from her family in childhood, not all people made wards of state have been so fortunate. There has been evidence since the early 1970s that the cycle of institutionalisation can be self-perpetuating, that is, that some of the children of state wards ended up in care themselves.
  • This touching story enforces its point through the visual style of the filmmaking and through Georgina telling the most terrible truths about her life – ‘no-one was going to have me’, ‘I was never going to have a home’ – quite matter-of-factly. The viewer goes on the journey with her as she seeks answers about her past. The love between Georgina and her daughter is obvious and photographs of Georgina as a young mother underline the loss of love in her own childhood.

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australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

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