Bindoon, Western Australia

Bindoon is a town 84km from Perth city on the Great Northern Highway within the Shire of Chittering. The name Bindoon is thought to be Aboriginal in origin and to mean "place where the yams grow". The name has been in use in the area since 1843 when an early settler, William Brockman, named the property he had surveyed as Bindoon. The townsite was gazetted in 1953.Christian Brothers' establishmentThe locality is most notable for the Catholic Agricultural College at Bindoon, which was previously called Keaney College after its former principal Br. Paul Francis Keaney, who used young child migrants as forced labour to construct the college's huge stone building. The name was changed after revelations of institutionalised cruelty to Australian and migrant children.In 1989, Senator Jean Jenkins, the Australian Democrats senator for Western Australia, raised the issue in the nation's Senate on behalf of the Child Migrant Friendship Society of Western Australia and a number of individual former child migrants who had asked for her support. In 1994, the Parliament of Western Australia was presented a petition with 30,000 signatures which demanded an inquiry into the sexual and physical assaults that took place in Bindoon. Other institutions run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers in Castledare, Clontarf and Tardun were also named in the petition. The child abuse that took place at Bindoon is alluded to in the 2011 film Oranges and Sunshine which portrays the dedication of British social worker Mrs Margaret Humphreys in seeking justice for child migrants.