A birth registration was found for Lionel P Welsh: Mother's Maiden Surname: Hark; Date of Registration: Jan Feb Mar 1936; Registration district: Newcastle T; Registration county:; Cumberland, Northumberland/Westmorland; Volume Number: 10b; Page Number: 111.

In 1947, L. Welsh, 11, arrived at Fremantle, Australia, in a group of 24 boys from Nazareth House, St. Ann's Hill, Carlisle, Cumberland, England. Lionel was placed at Bindoon, Western Australia.
r n"Geordie," as Lionel was called, recounted in his second book that at Bindoon, the boys were expected to work in bare feet building the buildings. Reinforcing steel was old railway lines, lifted one at a time by several boys, at great risk. Concrete, mixed by hand, was taken by the boys up ramps in wheelbarrows.

Punishments included hits with the walking stick of Brother Francis Keaney, punches, and strappings on the bare backside.

On one occasion his leg was broken while he was out rabbit-shooting with "Pinky" Hayes, an adult visitor from Perth. He was forced to sit up in the kitchen for hours to instruct other boys how to prepare meals, before it was decided to take him by motor vehicle to Royal Perth Hospital to have his leg set and put in plaster.

One of the cruelest aspects was psychological. Those who ran Bindoon never told him about his mother, nor that she had put him into the orphanage because she had contracted tuberculosis (TB). He found out her existence only by breaking rules by peering into a register kept by the orphanage.

In the book, After voice from the Stars, by Tom and Laurel Scotland (1998), they told of the "Boy from Bindoon"
r n"Our vehicle now enabled us to visit friends on distant farms. Loving the quietness of the night and the friendliness of the stars, we travelled in darkness with Rod and his baby brother asleep in the back. On the road to Morawa, in the northern seatbelt, we were hailed from the roadside at one o'clock in the morning. A diminutive figure asked, 'Can you give me a lift to Moora, mister?'
r n'Where are you from?'
r n'Moora.' The boy, with head down, spoke the thick Geordie accent of a migrant and I did not believe him, but he looked scared as he shivered in the darkness.
r n'Hop in then.'

He eased himself into the back seat, pushing away the legs of Rod and Peter who slept on soundly. The boy's story came out as we travelled. Named Lionel Welsh and aged fifteen, he had actually run away from an orphanage at Bindoon. He fell asleep and we woke him at Moora, but he wanted to go on.

Daylight came and we observed his pale, pinched face and skinny body. He was dressed in an oversized army jacket ad ballooning shorts, out of which his think legs poked into big boots. Scars marked his body and our concern for him increased, for he said he had been treated cruelly and often beaten by the orphanage. He seemed proud that he could light a fire and make a billy-can of tea, while we prepared breakfast by the roadside. At Morawa, we interviewed the police and they saw no problem in us finding him a job. He didn't really appear suited to farmwork, but we had friends in Morawa who agreed to employ him.

Three months later, a smiling Lionel came to live with us in Perth. He had never known family life and loved having Rod and baby Peter around him. He became indentured to a plasterer; his emaciated body filled out and he became a strong, wiry teenager. He gradually relaxed, gaining trust in us and revealed more about the deprivation of orphanage life. He adored Georgina, a girl from church, and she seemed good for him. However, after a year, he came to tell us he would be moving into an East Perth house with a group of ex-Bindoon boys. 'I just have to hear the breathing of those lads around me at night. I miss them a lot.' [pages 16-17]

The building skills he learned at Bindoon allowed him to e