I’d heard a million stories like it, of course, and especially around that time, which was just after the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, had made his apology to what he called the ‘Forgotten Generation’. Most of them were young British orphans who weren’t really orphans, and who got shipped out to the colonies after the war.

I picked up the old advertisement from The Times again – The Fairbridge Society proposes taking 120 children to Australia – and I’ll admit it wasn’t exactly clear to me what the Fairbridge Society was. I’d heard of the Christian Brothers bringing child migrants to Australia but not the Fairbridge Society. Ruby explained that the society was a private charity, named after Mr Kingsley Fairbridge, who sailed to Australia for the first time in 1912. He had two thousand pounds in his pocket and was intent on buying land to build a farm for orphans. I’ve done a fair bit of research on him since, mostly at the Mitchell Library on Macquarie Street, which keeps files on the Forgotten Generation, and the land he found was near Pinjarra in Western Australia. It was remote as remote got in those days. He put up tents, and that was the start of it. Over time the Fairbridge Farm School grew until there were 3200 acres with cottages and a dining hall; farm buildings and a small stone chapel; a milking yard and a chicken coop; an orchard and an old red telephone box; and a rope swing by the natural pool in the river.

Ruby said that her mum remembered being given new clothes for the voyage to Australia, including a grey woollen blazer with the Fairbridge crest, and new shoes and socks, which was amazing to her because she’d only ever had one pair of shoes in the orphanage. She was also given what they called ‘Mementoes from the Old Country’ – an apple, a postcard with a red St George Cross for England, and a Bible, which Ruby had tucked away in her folder marked ‘Mum’.

I asked if I could hold the Bible and Ruby nodded. It was a wonderful old thing from the British Bible Society, with a cover made of mother-of-pearl, and yellowed pages, some of which were loose. On the inside cover, someone had written:

Be strong and of good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest –Joshua, 1.9

I couldn’t think what to say when I read that, but Ruby said, ‘I wish she had that Bible with her now.’

I moved the conversation on, saying, ‘Do you happen to know what ship your mum came out on?’ And of course she did, it was the SS Ormonde, and that ship is going to be familiar to a fair number of people because it’s the ship that a good percentage of all British migrants came out on after the war. Mrs Moore’s voyage began in Southampton on 10 October 1947. Reading reports of it makes you feel like you were there: a brass band played for two hours before the streamers on the shore broke. The Fairbridge kids travelled first class, meaning they went from scraping by in the orphanage to eating in a dining hall with velvet chairs and a giant chandelier and a stag’s head on the wall, and there were waiters in starched uniforms serving up creamed sole and buttered egg, and Leicester pie with wine jellies, and tea.