David Wenham inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame

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David Wenham inducted into the Australian Film Walk of Fame

7 June 2025

Talking of the erstwhile Australian Film Festival, as I was earlier this week, word has reached me that Brisbane based Australian actor David Wenham was admitted to the Australian Film Walk of Fame in February 2025. The induction coincided with a screening of Spit, Wenham’s then most recent work, at the Ritz Cinema, in Randwick, Sydney.

Anyone who has seen Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, 300: Rise of an Empire, or Elvis by Baz Luhrmann, will have seen some of Wenham’s work. Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach, was one I particularly liked. The pavement outside the Ritz is adorned with the plagues of the twelve Australian actors who have so far been inducted to the Walk.

(Thanks Stef AKA Coffee Girl)

Oranges and Sunshine, a film by Jim Loach, with Emily Watson, David Wenham

10 June 2011

Oranges and Sunshine, trailer, a drama set in 1986, is the debut feature of British TV producer Jim Loach, and is based on the book Empty Cradles by British social worker Margaret Humphreys. Her book chronicles efforts to expose the British government’s child migrants program of the 1950’s and 60’s, where over 130,000 children were forcibly sent overseas.

Many of these children — who came from struggling, or single-parent families, and sent to Australia, and other former British colonies — were under the impression their parents were dead, and that a happier life awaited them elsewhere. The reality was anything but; many were abused by their new carers, or became child labourers.

Humphreys (Emily Watson) is a Nottingham social worker caring for orphaned children. She first becomes aware British children were sent overseas when a woman from Australia asks for help tracing her mother. While searching for the woman’s mother, Humphreys uncovers numerous instances of children being sent overseas.

After learning that Nicky (Lorraine Ashbourne), a woman in a support group she convenes, has a brother Jack (Hugo Weaving), who was sent overseas as a child, Humphreys travels to Australia. There she soon meets many hundreds of others who were taken from their families, including Len (David Wenham), who is trying to find his mother.

It soon becomes apparent that it wasn’t just the children who were lied to. As Humphreys continues to reunite now adult children with their families, she learns the parents, whose children were often forcibly removed from their custody, were also lied to. They were often being told their children had been adopted locally, not sent overseas.

Humphreys’ work however is an uphill battle that takes a physical and emotional toll on her. The British and Australian governments are unhelpful. Meanwhile, the charity and church groups who took the children in are angered by the allegations of abuse levelled at them, which results in Humphreys being threatened by their supporters.

Oranges and Sunshine is an intimate and personal portrayal of a dark chapter in our history. In 2009 then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to the British child migrants, or Forgotten Australians as they are also known. His British counterpart, Gordon Brown, did likewise in 2010.

A compassionately made film that is neither sentimental or sensationalistic, Oranges and Sunshine is a moving, harrowing, and emotional drama. The lid is lifted on a government policy that aimed simply to save money — care for children was cheaper in Australia than Britain — and one that had no regard at all for those the would-be program purported to be helping.

Originally published Friday 10 June 2011, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.