PIN JARRA By Ruby Fairbridge
Pinjarra (Oxford University Press, 7s. 6d.) is the story of the founding of the first Fairbridge Farm School told by Kingsley Fairbridge's widow. The idea of taking destitute children and fitting them for life in the dominions came to young Kingsley Fairbridge one day in Rhodesia. Here was a country needing settlers ; in city slums were children needing homes and careers. But he realised that town-born children must be acclimatised from early days to the country, and so he made it his life's work to found farm-schools in the dominions which should be, as well, homes, quite unlike the usual Homes of. charitable institutions. Though he only lived to found one such - school at Pinjatra in Western Australia, its success started the movement which flourishes today under his name. Like all accounts of pioneer work to which a man has given his life, Mrs. Fairbridge's book is really a biography. Kingsley Fair- bridge's fight for support, for money and for official recognition ; his struggle to turn, often single-handed, a derelict farm into the school of his ideals, and to keep the good will of his impatient cemtnittee in London ; his refusal to give in to despair, ill-health and poverty and his final success, make a most moving and inspiring story.
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