RISING incongruously from the scrubland 80km north of Perth is the cold, monolithic main building of what was once known as Bindoon Boys Town. Here, on a research trip for his new film Oranges and Sunshine, actor David Wenham was astonished to learn that much of the enormous Catholic complex had been built by deported British orphans as young as 10. "It's smack bang in the middle of nowhere, like this building had just been launched from outer space and just landed there," he says incredulously, on the phone from Sydney. The children were forced to mix concrete and dig up the earth with pickaxes. "You couldn't quite believe that these kids were forced to build these structures."
The real-life child migrant that Wenham plays in the film was his guide, showing him around the property as well as the Child Migrants Trust in Perth, while regaling him with tales of his tough and brutal upbringing. "It was extremely touching and moving, listening to him describe it in great detail," he says.
Today, Bindoon looks like a pleasant agricultural college, but during the 1950s and '60s its isolated location, the harsh punishments and the horrific sexual abuse meted out by the Christian Brothers, made it a nightmarish prison camp. "A lot of those kids felt like that because they did try to run away, but where could they go?" Wenham says.
The new Glenside home of the SA Film Corporation doubles for Bindoon in Oranges and Sunshine, which was made in Adelaide and the UK last year by first-time director Jim Loach and producer Emile Sherman (The King's Speech). It's based on the book Empty Cradles by Margaret Humphreys (played by Oscar-nominated actress Emily Watson in the film). Humphreys is the British social worker who in the mid-1980s uncovered the scandal of the illegal forced deportation of tens of thousands of British orphans to Commonwealth countries in the decades following World War II. Her work saw her awarded an Order of Australia medal, and she was mentioned by former PM Kevin Rudd and former British PM Gordon Brown in their official apologies to the child migrants.
The film's title Oranges and Sunshine is ironic - taken from a description of the wonderful life the children were told awaited them in Australia. Wenham says he was only vaguely aware of the story, which has previously been told in the 1992 ABC mini-series The Leaving of Liverpool. But it wasn't until he read the screenplay and Humphreys' book that he realised its true scale. "The figures are pretty alarming," he says. "130,000 kids were sent to Commonwealth countries and many suffered pretty traumatic experiences, both physically and mentally. I wasn't aware of the extent of it and I certainly wasn't aware of Margaret Humphreys and her incredible story, or how one person could do so much. She's the one who brought this story into the public's consciousness and the amount of children she's put back in touch with their parents is pretty remarkable."
Indeed, one of the most shocking aspects of the scandal was that many of the "orphans" actually had living parents back in Britain. "Their parents were told in many cases they'd been orphaned out to other British families," Wenham says. "And for the children to find out later, when they were adults, that their parents, who they thought were dead, may be alive - what that must do to someone's head one can only imagine."
Wenham plays former child migrant Len, now transformed into a brash Australian bloke who has an initially antagonistic relationship with Humphreys before he teams up with her to help her with her work. Len deals with his traumatic childhood by erecting barriers between himself, other people and his past. He comes across as something of an emotional cripple.
"The man on who it's based would probably take issue with that, but I know exactly what you mean," Wenham says. "When I first read the script I couldn't quite wrap my head around the character because he doesn't react in the way one would expect. I sort of understand it now, the way he's chosen to cope with it. There's a line towards the end of the film where he talks about how he learnt not to cry at an early age, and I think that's very telling. He wouldn't describe himself as a victim."
The real-life Humphreys says that Wenham and Hugo Weaving (who co-stars as another orphan) brilliantly captured their real-life counterparts. "David and Hugo have really got into their characters so well that when I saw the film I could recognise the people I knew," she says. "They're terrific performances that convey a whole range of things about the experience of child migrants."
Wenham's own upbringing couldn't have been further removed from that of Len. "We were a very close family and I grew up in an extremely loving environment so it was difficult to understand the effect on kids who were taken away (from their relatives) at ages as young as three," he says. In fact, he says, his father sacrificed his own career prospects for the sake of the family. "My father was in the same job at the same company for 48 years, clerical work," he says. "He had opportunities to advance and to go to university but he always thought that would take away his time with the children, so he put that first. He earned just enough money to give him that extra time to be with his kids."
Wenham senior certainly must have loved children, as he had seven of them, with Wenham the youngest. "Look, the five girls above me would probably say that I was spoiled - and I probably was," he chuckles.
They certainly were supportive of his decision to train as an actor - even if he says his mum would have preferred he stuck with his first job selling insurance. Although he worked at various times as a bingo caller and in outbound telesales, Wenham soon began to pick up regular stage work. He debuted on television in 1987 as a debt collector on Sons and Daughters and for the next decade appeared in a steady stream of small roles on Police Rescue, A Country Practice and the film version of Cosi.
It wasn't until 1998 that he really hit the public's consciousness, thanks to two projects released almost simultaneously - the feature film The Boys and ABC series SeaChange. The roles couldn't be more different, one a violent psychopath and the other a much loved sex symbol. While most actors complain about getting typecast, Wenham had the opposite problem. "It can confuse people because they don't know where to put you in the filing cabinet," he says. "But I quite like that." Wenham went on to star in some of the better Australian films of the noughties, including The Bank, Gettin' Square and Three Dollars and also made the leap to large scale Hollywood productions, including Moulin Rouge, two films in the The Lord of the Rings series, Zack Synder's 300 and Public Enemies.
Just like his Lord of the Rings and Oranges and Sunshine co-star Hugo Weaving, Wenham prefers working on smaller productions, even if they're not as good for his bank balance. "To be on a smaller budget film is a joy because you're spending the majority of your time on set, doing what you want to be doing - interacting with other actors and having that captured by a film camera," he says. "The bigger films have more money and therefore a lot more people and a lot more downtime waiting for people to set up shots. Sometimes you feel that you've peaked, you were ready five hours ago but for some reason they couldn't switch on the camera."
Wenham will hopefully be back on the small screen soon in the 10-part-series Killing Time, based on the life and times of high-profile criminal defence lawyer Andrew Fraser who was brought undone by his $1000-a-day cocaine habit. The series has been delayed by a court injunction related to the retrial of serial killer Peter Dupas. Fraser was the prosecution's star witness in one of Dupas' earlier trials. Wenham says the makers are champing at the bit for the program to finally screen and says it'll be worth the wait. "It's 100 per cent through the eyes of Andrew Fraser and it's really about the downfall and destruction of somebody who had it all. It's very Shakespearian in its scope."
From
here.
