The new BBC/Stan coproduction, Ten Pound Poms (2023), includes a story about the Child Migration Scheme between Britain and Australia.

‘Ten Pound Poms’ is Australian for those 1 million Britons who migrated to Australia between 1945 and 1982. The adult fare was £10 (children travelled free) and ‘Pom’ is Australian slang for British people, usually used in a derogatory way.

The six part television tells the story of several families who migrated to Australia in 1956 and the appalling conditions they faced as they were accommodated in shoddy hostels, expected to take on work Australians didn’t want, and were discriminated against because they were English.

One woman in the series migrated to Australia in order to find the son who was removed from her and shipped out to Australia when he was 5 years old.

Between about 1912 to the late 1960s, around 7000 child migrants were sent to various orphanages and children’s homes around Australia.