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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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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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Speech for ‘Quarantine Station Stories’ Talks on November 22nd, 2015 at the North Head Quarantine Station

As part of this project, I gave a speech today at this event I linked in the previous post : https://wordvine.sydney.edu.au/files/1652/10591/. I got asked a question by one woman asking if I had made any contact with any of the children. Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to as I took this project very late into the semester. As promised, below, I have attached the speech onto my blog for everyone to read! It aims to give the historiography behind Operation Babylift at the Q-station.

 Hello my name is Stephanie and I will be discussing some key topics relating to my area of research which is on “Operation Babylift” and its unique relationship with the quarantine station. I will briefly be discussing, firstly, the changing landscape of North Head in 1975, what operation Babylift was, how the Operation fitted into Australia’s changing relationship with Asia starting with the nation’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War to the Whitlam government’s dismantling of the White Australia Policy in 1973 and the role that this unique event in history played in shaping the experiences of the orphans arriving from Vietnam and those who were involved in looking after them. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the operation worldwide! I would just like to say that I feel very honoured to have the chance to tell such a unique Australian story.

The Quarantine station is a reflection of Australia’s constant changing attitudes towards immigration.  The station was officially in operation between the 14 of August 1832 to the 29 of February 1984. As is famously known, from the beginning the site was used to quarantine individuals who had arrived via colony or foreign ships that had or rather were believed to have been exposed to infectious diseases such as small pox, whooping cough or the Spanish flu.  

By the mid to late 1950s, North Head was used to accommodate both refugees and those arriving unlawfully as the station succumbed to the control of the Australian government’s immigration policies- policies that “most embodied the racialised immigration restrictions” (1) of the early White Australia era. This lasted for roughly two decades. It is important to mention that in 1950 the site was to be used as “a holding or detaining centre for persons about to be deported or repatriated from Australia,” (1) as proposed in an official government document that referenced the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 which has become known as one of the leading policies of the White Australia Policy era.

Because of these gradual top-down changes, by 1975, the station was turned into a temporary refuge centre, at the least, to be used as a form of emergency accommodation for people fleeing all sorts of disasters ranging from natural to man-made. Evidently, the site housed victims from Cyclone Tracy of 1974, to the Vietnamese orphans of ‘Operation Babylift’ as the Vietnam war was winding down after the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. As a result of this, there was a proposal made by Officers from the Departments of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in 1979-1980 “to have permissive occupancy of part of the North Head Quarantine Station for use as a migrant centre…to provide a) temporary accommodation of migrants/refugees who are required to undergo medical examination on arrival and b) accommodation of apparently well migrants and refugees for average periods of up to one month with a maximum of three months in any individual case.” (2)

Operation Babylift is essentially the name given to a government-sponsored program which saw the mass evacuation of approximately 2,500 to 3,000 children from South Vietnam where as described by some “dozens of planes were sent out” to airlift children to safety shortly after the fall of Saigon as the war was nearing its end in April 1975, as mentioned. It was primarily an American initiative which immediately saw its allies like Canada, Europe and Australia take part in this unique effort.

Australia’s efforts saw the Royal Australian Air Force dispatch two RAAF C130 ‘s or as known as RAAF Hercules make two trips to Saigon. First on April 2nd, when the Australian government announced to evacuate ‘some 200 orphans, in line with the US government’s announcement of Operation Babylift’ (3), and a second on April 17th were 77 children were evacuated.”  The Hercules flew these infants to Bangkok, where they were shifted onto a ‘chartered Qantas aircraft with three doctors and 20 nurses for Sydney.’(3)

As explained by Chris Sturt, a nurse and quarantine station volunteer at the time of operation at the station, in an article she wrote a few years ago for the Adopted Vietnamese International Website,  74 of these children were taken to Melbourne and 215 to Sydney. She continues to explain that “On arrival in Sydney, 100 of those children who had arrived in Australia were admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and the rest were taken to the Quarantine Station at North Head, Manly.” (4)

Just to get a sense of how the placement of these children looked like right here at the quarantine station, I will continue to quote Chris. She states that:

“Two former hospital wards were converted into a combined dormitory, eating area and medical examination area. Twenty nurses cared for the children on a shift basis, with assistance from the Station’s staff and volunteers who included Vietnamese students. The orphans remained there for about two weeks while homes were found for them. I remember that several adoption agencies were represented there – church, government, and non-government.” (4)

Inter-country adoption became one of the main features of this operation right here in Australia, as well as in the US and Canada. As a result, these children were later adopted by various people across these three countries.  It has been described as one of the biggest international removal and adoption of children that history has ever witnessed.

Whilst some saw this operation as a humanitarian act, others saw this as essentially the Americans asserting themselves as the heroes of humanity, as well as a form of continual invasion by the western powers. Interestingly, an article published by the Canberra Times on April 7th 1975 stated that the Vietcong believed that the Babylift “violated the South Vietnamese people’s right to self-determination as it aimed to sow “division and hostility among the Vietnamese People.”(5)

Operation Babylift fell on the cusp of Australia’s first major refugee response missions and was a part of a time of great social and political change within the nation. Two years prior in 1973, the Whitlam government had officially abolished the nation’s White Australia Policy. This time period, lasting for about sixty-three years, so from 1910 to 1973, comprised of a series of policies that intentionally favoured immigrants from other English-Speaking countries or non-English speaking Europeans who could fit into this mould of the ideal and potential Australian citizen. One of these policies was the 1901 Immigration Restrictive Act, as mentioned, an act which sought the effective exclusion of non-European immigrants arriving and immigrating into Australia. Whitlam replaced this highly restrictive policy with, as described in Whitlam’s official website, “the concept of a multicultural Australian society.“ (6) Essentially it paved the way for a series of immigration policies like the Australian Citizenship Act 1973, where “migrants from non-Commonwealth nations had to reside in Australia for five years before they were eligible for citizenship, whereas Commonwealth migrants could qualify after one year of residing in Australia” (6). These changes witnessed a shift in Australasian relations as it also paved the way to pursue better diplomatic relations between the two continents in order to pursue and promote political, economic and cultural cohesion within the region. Not only did that abolishment prompt the arrival of Asian refugees, it also allowed people from Asian countries to obtain tourist visas so they could visit Australia. 

Despite these long-overdue reforms, the Whitlam government was initially hesitant to take in immigrants and refugees. However, in this case, the government and the embassy in Vietnam were quote “pressured on these three issues: refugees, the evacuation of Australian embassy staff and the evacuations of orphans” (7) in Vietnam. As Australia had been involved in the war, it was in a sense their moral duty to salvage what was left after such a brutal event.

Forty years on, there have been a series of articles, documentaries and books published  pertaining candid interviews of these children, their adoptive parents and those involved in looking after them. Most of the Operation Babylift babies, as they are known, from across the world have expressed the desire to find their biological families in Vietnam. Though most have described that they have felt like they belonged to their adopted families, there is a need to find out where they came from, who they are. A recent article published by the ABC tells the story Chantal Doecke, na Australian woman who was on board one of the planes that took off on April 5, 1975. She like many others, returned to Vietnam to mark the fortieth anniversary of the evacuation. To quote, “Many were on a long quest to find their birth parents and some even turned to DNA testing for help.”(8)

As stated on the Quarantine Station website, the Q-Station is an ‘ideal place to examine the changes & evolution of a site over time. The history of the Quarantine Station parallels and reflects Australian & world history”. This is very true for a site which is home to a variety of stories situated within Australia’s colonial and post-colonial past. Operation Babylift saw Australia tackle various complex social, political and cultural issues, central to the issues of inter-racial adoption and one’s cultural identity. It also saw one of Australia’s most illustrious sites as home to this unique piece of Australian history.

References:

(1)   Bashford, Alison, and Peter Hobbins. "Rewriting Quarantine: Pacific History at Australia’s Edge." Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 3 (2015): 392-409.

(2)   Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, “Migrant Centres Branch: North Head Quarantine Station- Proposal to use as a migrant centre-” Files supplied by the National Archives of Australia.

(3)   “Wartime issue 53 feature article: After the fall:”https://www.awm.gov.au/wartime/53/bullard_after_the_fall/ “(Click here)

(4)   http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org/reflections/personal-reflections/chris-sturt-memories-of-north-head-quarantine-station/ (Click here).

(5)   Orphan flights resumed. (1975, April 8). The Canberra Times(ACT : 1926 - 1995), p.1  from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article116341524

(6)   Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University:https://www.whitlam.org/gough_whitlam/achievements/foreignaffairsandimmigration (Click here)

(7)   Fronek, Patricia. "Operation Babylift: advancing intercountry adoption into Australia.” Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 4 (2012): 445-458

(8)   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-02/vietnam-babies-still-searching-for-parents-40-years-on/6273284��(click link)

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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.

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Snapshot history: Media reaction to Babylift in America

“Newspaper headlines asked, "Babylift or babysnatch?" and "The Orphans: Saved or Lost?" And a Vietnamese orphan character appeared in the satirical "Doonesbury" cartoons of G. B. Trudeau.”

Reference: 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/peopleevents/e_babylift.html

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From Quarantine Station to possible Migrant Centre? The Changing face of North Head 1975: How the site came to accommodate the Operation Babylift children and how Babylift encouraged further changes to be made.

The Quarantine station is a fantastic reflection of Australia’s changing attitudes towards immigration.

Two decades prior to the accommodation of the children in 1975, the site had undergone a series of changes matched by fears relating to border protection and security (1) as the station had succumbed to the control of the government’s immigration policies. These policies were heavily influenced by and “most embodied the racialised immigration restrictions” (2) of the early White Australia Policy era.

Therefore, by the mid to late 1950s, a ‘largely empty’ (2) North Head was used to detain both refugees and those who had arrived illegally. As a result, the site was proposed to be used as ‘a holding or detaining centre for persons about to be deported or repatriated from Australia.’(2) “Non-criminal deportees,” as they were known, ‘were caught within migration rules and regulations, and increasingly complex visa systems’ (2). This lasted for roughly two decades.

As this was happening and with the Whitlam administration abolishing the White Australia policy in 1973, the station was turned into a temporary refuge centre, at the least, to be used as a form of emergency accommodation for people fleeing all sorts of disasters ranging from natural to man-made. Evidently, the site housed victims from Cyclone Tracy of 1974, as well as the Babylift children a year later. 

By 1979-1980, these top-down changes had encouraged the second and final proposal made under the Malcolm Fraser Administration. This time around, there was a proposal made by Officers from the Departments of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in 1979-1980 “to have permissive occupancy of part of the North Head Quarantine Station for use as a migrant centre…to provide:

a) Temporary accommodation of migrants/refugees who are required to undergo medical examination on arrival and

b) Accommodation of apparently well migrants and refugees for average periods of up to one month with a maximum of three months in any individual case.”

Under these new plans to re-purpose the station, areas like ‘A20, the “old detention block,” was hoped to be used as ‘temporary hostel and processing centre for migrants and refugees, particularly ‘boat people’ arriving from South East Asia (2).

However, these plans were unsuccessful due to a variety of reasons. Consequently, the site was shut down in 1984

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Scanned Images/files supplied by National Archives of Australia (A446, 1975/81482-North Head Quarantine Station-Proposal to use as a Migrant Centre, 1979-1980). 

(3a) Proposal letter written by Kevin Newman, Minister for Administrative services at the time under the Malcolm Fraser administration, to re-purpose Q-station into a welcoming centre for refugees.

(3b) Drawn up plans to re-purpose the site

References:

1)  Smith, D. "Bon voyage: An inquiry into Australian border protection and quarantine."

2)  Bashford, Alison, and Peter Hobbins. "Rewriting Quarantine: Pacific History at Australia's Edge." Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 3 (2015): 392-409.

3)  National Archives of Australia (A446, 1975/81482-North Head Quarantine Station-Proposal to use as a Migrant Centre, 1979-1980)

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Public reaction to Adoption of Vietnamese children in New South Wales

As I mentioned in a previous post, Operation Babylift was met with great support. Here is a little bit of information about how the possibility of adopting these children excited the general public in New South Wales. This excerpt comes from an article written by a woman named Allison Martin. Martin (as stated on the website) is the President of national support group Families with Children from Vietnam and manages the Adopt Vietnam, website. She and her husband have three children; their youngest was adopted from Vietnam in 1997. Click the underlined links for more information. 

An extract from the website:

 “These children received a tremendous welcome. For example, a 1983 study of adoptions from Vietnam in Australia reported that "once the news of the impending evacuation of Vietnamese children became known in Australia there was a rush of adoption applications. 

In New South Wales, where 14 children were available for open adoption, an astonishing 4,000 applications were mailed out in response to telephone inquiries and 600 were returned.” (1). 

Reference:

 (1)   ‘The legacy of Operation Babylift’ by Allison Martin http://www.adoptvietnam.org/adoption/babylift.htm

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Personal Stories: Chris Sturt and her experiences with the Children at the Q-station

I had the opportunity to ask Chris a couple of questions via email, a ‘q-station volunteer,’ who was involved in taking care of these seventy-four children at North Head at the time. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I was unable to do so. Luckily, however, she recommended that I read an article she wrote a few years back for the Adopted Vietnamese International Website where she reflects on her experiences at the site and with the children. She also recommended that I get access to a book called Heart of Stone written by Hoa Van Stone (Peter)-though unfortunately I did not get to access this book on time either. Stone was one of the orphans who stayed there, as part of Operation Babylift.

 How did Chris get involved?

I was living in the Manly Nurses Club at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. I wasn’t a nurse, but it was a bed sit type situation which suited me well since I had just returned from England. One of my fellow residents was a nurse at the Far West Children’s Home in Manly and she often called me into work as a ‘volunteer’ to help feed the babies…It was the Far West Children’s Home, along with the local hospitals that received the call for nurses to ‘come and help at North Head’.

How did the station come to be used as ‘the site’?

The Quarantine Station was asked to prove emergency accommodation following the Australian Government’s decision to rescue as many as possible of the children housed in Vietnamese orphanages before the fall of Saigon.

 What were the first few days like, what were the children like and how did they react to their new surroundings?

 The first few days were taken up with beds (lots of mattresses on the floor), baths, clothes and inoculations. Many of the children knew each other well and the older ones looked after the smaller ones better than we could hope to do. In particular, there was a group of teenage boys who were the wise ones and a lot of the unofficial information on the children came from them. We soon learned to take their advice when we were doing things wrong!

                                                         *****

One night, after the kids were all in bed and the nurse had gone for her break, I was sitting on the inside veranda having a nice quiet smoke – a much MUCH too quiet smoke! There was not a sound from the ward! I crept in to have a look and the ward was empty! Not a soul – from the 3-4 year olds to the 14-15 year olds! All gone! How could I have lost so many? Had they run away? Were they trying to get home? I was terrified…….I ran all around the building (the middle one top picture) – down the sloping lawn to the cliff top – not a sign. I hurried back up the hill to get some help and entered the dormitory by the back door, near the nurses quarters – and heard the giggles………I opened the bedroom door…….nothing…….I opened the bathroom door and was deafened by the shout of “HAPPY NEW YEAR” by my charges, covering every square inch of the tiny room, all squashed in, standing on the toilet and even hanging from the cistern! To this day, I have never heard so many children collapse in giggles at one time!

To continue reading about Chris’s experiences at the quarantine station, please do not hesitate to read the rest of the article located: http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org/reflections/personal-reflections/chris-sturt-memories-of-north-head-quarantine-station/

First image: Stone’s Heart of Stone  

Second: Picture of Chris and a little girl named Kim Chi which appeared on the front page of an Australian newspaper. (Image located from website referenced above)

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What was Operation Babylift, Australia’s efforts and its link to intercountry Adoption?

Operation Babylift is the name given to an American government-sponsored initiative that ran from April 3-26, 1975 which saw the evacuation via airlift of around 2,500-3,000 Vietnamese children after the fall of Saigon as the Vietnam War was winding down in April 1975. This year marked the 40th anniversary of the event in April.  In an instant, it saw America’s allies like Canada, France and Australia take part in the effort to evacuate these children to safety. Most of the children rescued were orphans as a result of the war and had come from a variety of orphanages within Vietnam. However, some were not orphans. A small number of these children were put on these planes by their families in an effort to send them to safety. The list of orphanages is provided in the link below:

http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org/searching/orphanage-lists/

As a result, Inter-country adoption became one of the main features of this operation right here in Australia, as well as in the US and Canada. The adoption of these children following Babylift saw the institutionalisation of Intercountry Adoption Australia (ICA). Though it was met with criticism, ICA saw Western governments engage in government-sanctioned adoptions (1). It has been described as one of the biggest international removal and adoption of children that history has ever witnessed.

Not all of the children who were evacuated via the operation were babies or toddlers. Whilst most were under the ages of 2 at the Q-station, the eldest ranged from about the ages of 17.

 The children who had survived the trek, as “most of the ‘airlift’ children were suffering from some illness, trauma, malnutrition or other deprivation on their arrival”(2), were later adopted by various families across these participating countries. 292 children arrived in Australia “amidst a media frenzy (1).” The government’s actions were generally well received as it met was met with a generous amount of public support.

As explained by Chris Sturt, a nurse and quarantine station volunteer at the time of operation at the station, in an article she wrote a few years ago for the Adopted Vietnamese International Website,  74 of these children were taken to Melbourne and 215 to Sydney. She continues to explain that “On arrival in Sydney, 100 of those children who had arrived in Australia were admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and the rest were taken to the Quarantine Station at North Head, Manly.” (3)

I will make reference to Chris’s insightful experiences at the Quarantine station in a separate post.

References:

(1)   Patricia Fronek (2012) Operation Babylift: advancing intercountry

adoption into Australia, Journal of Australian Studies, 36:4, 445-458, DOI:

10.1080/14443058.2012.727845

(2)   ‘The legacy of Operation Babylift’ by Allison Martin http://www.adoptvietnam.org/adoption/babylift.htm

3)      Chris Sturt, ‘Memories of North Head Quarantine Station.’ http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org/reflections/personal-reflections/chris-sturt-memories-of-north-head-quarantine-station/

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Hello! My name is Stephanie and I am in the process of completing my history degree at the University of Sydney. This is my first post for my public research project for my class HSTY3902: History Beyond the Classroom. My work will be based on Australia’s own version of ‘Operation Babylift,’ an American government-sponsored initiative, and its unique link with North Head Quarantine Station  located on the north side of Sydney Harbour at North Head, near Manly, a suburb of Sydney in Australia. Above are two exterior (1) and interior (2) shots of the site at hand (referenced below):

In addition, this project will reference a little bit about the history of the changing nature of the site, Operation Babylift as a unique historical event in history and how it has shaped Australia’s immigration/refugee history. I have created this tumblr blog to present my research and findings and to make them accessible as possible for interested individuals!

Just to provide a little background on the location:

The Q-Station was in operation between 14 August 1832 to 29 February 1984. From the beginning the site was used to quarantine people who had arrived via foreign or colony ships that had or rather were believed to have been exposed to infectious diseases, such as small pox, whooping cough, the Spanish influenza, etc.

By 1975, the station was turned into a temporary refuge centre. The site housed victims from Cyclone Tracy of 1974, to Vietnamese orphans of ‘Operation Babylift’ from the Vietnam War in 1975 (which will be the focus of my research). The site continued to operate until its closure in 1984. Nowadays, the station is home to a conference centre, hotel and restaurant complex and forms part of Sydney Harbour National Parks. It is also runs one of the most famous paranormal tours in Australia. The Station is allegedly haunted by the ghosts of former staff and patients. Evidently, some visitors have witnessed various paranormal occurrences throughout the site.

 If you have questions or would like to submit information relating to the matter at hand, please do click the ask and submission links above!

Edited: Q-station Education has also expressed an interest in my research (11/11/2015)

 Image one: Exterior shot of the station as you get off the ferry.

Image two: “The Boilerhouse,” Quarantine Station, North Head, Manly, Sydney - one example of the interior of the complex.