At the age of 13 he became a clerk in the Standard Bank of South Africa at Umtali, and two years later, tried to enlist for the Boer War, failing because of malaria, which he had contracted in Mashonaland.

The visit deeply affected him, as he observed the contrast of malnourished and impoverished children living in the London slums with the under-populated open spaces of Rhodesia.

During this time Fairbridge started developing the idea of a scheme to bring poor children from London to South Africa where they could be trained as farmers.

I saw children shedding the bondage of bitter circumstances and stretching their legs and minds amid the thousand interests of the farm.

He was informed by the Rhodes trustees that if he passed the Oxford entrance examination his application would be favourably considered, and in 1906, he went to England to be privately coached.

Fairbridge was rebuffed by the British South Africa Company, which informed him that they considered Rhodesia too young a country in which to start child emigration.

[1] In March 1912, the Fairbridges sailed for Western Australia aboard the Afric, arriving at Albany on 15 April 1912 with capital of £2000.

After several months of searching for suitable properties around Albany, Denmark and the Warren River near Manjimup, a property of 65 hectares (160 acres) was located and purchased near Pinjarra about 97 kilometres (60 mi) south of Perth, with the Western Australian government agreeing to pay £6 for each child towards the cost of the passage money.

[6] Towards the end of the Second World War, many Dutch children from Indonesia and Singapore moved to the Pinjarra school, after having been interned in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.

During World War II, a ship carrying child emigrants from England to Canada had been torpedoed with large loss of life, and this in part had caused the British Government to start bringing the practice to an end.

Fairbridge suffered considerably from malaria, sciatica and lumbago and in the last few years of his life endured pain and general ill-health.

He died at the age of 39 on 19 July 1924 in Perth, while recuperating from a minor operation related to a lymphatic tumour.