In 1928, Joseph T. White, 7 (along with brother, William W. White, 11) arrived at Fremantle, Australia in a group of children from the Child Emigration Society, The Strand, London, England.

Joe White said that his years at Fairbridge had an enormous, but negative, effect on his life. "Organisations of that kind tend to attract a bigger proportion of people included to be more sadistic than ordinary people," he said. He told of sexual deviance and abuse towards the boys with whom he resided.
r n"The farm consisted of a number of cottages, each containing 14 boys and presided over by a cottage mother. If you were lucky you got a good cottage mother; if you weren't, like me, you got a religious maniac. There is nothing worse in this world than a religious maniac."

In 1988, Joe White published his first novel, Pringle's War, which was reviewed in Australia by Martin Stewart:
r n"Joining army was a release

If a nation were to design an upbringing for its sons that would steel them mentally and physically for the rigours of military life, then this autobiographical novel could serve as a manual.

The initiative and resolve of White's character [in his novel, Pringle's War], Joe Pringle, is born of the brutality of an orphanage life, and there's no mistaking the identity of the orphanage which fostered such burning hatreds in this WA author's pen.

From the cover, Pringle's War is a war story set in the western desert, but in truth it's as much Joe White's battle with authority, pomposity and prejudice. As such it's a biting indictment of his minders at Fairbridge, where he was consigned at a tender age, and a bitter assessment of the British class system as it manifested itself through its military graduates.

Joe Pringle's war did not begin in 1939 but the day he was born. The attitudes founded in the indignities and deprivations of orphanage life carry on through his adult years; child as father to the man.

Joining the army for Joe Pringle was a release, his first glimpse that he was a normal human being with a mind equal to, if not better, than the next.

He is the epitome of the Digger and his story is told in the language of the Australian soldier -- crude and colourful. He distrusts authority in any shape or form, the stiffer the officer's uniform the stiffer the bristles on the nape of his neck.

He relies on his instincts and his mates. rules for survival that served the author well. Jose White survived the desert and the jungle and in reality has lived to tell some of his tale through this book. ...

Take from his Manchester home and family at the age of two, Joe White found happiness in his post-war marriage and a farming life near Dardanup.

He later founded the Rats of Tobruk Association, has had several short stories published and is now retired in Perth. He pulls no punches in this book, merely veils the targets by the simple expedient of writing in a novel form. But the real objects of his wrath are there for all to see."

Joe published his autobiography in 1993, and an article was written by Bruce Butler about it and Joe's life:
r n"War survivor reveals the human side
r n'War is a very confusing business,' said Joe White, 72. He has seen more of life and death than most.

For much of his youth, Joe could be excused for thinking life itself was confusing. After his father died in 1924 leaving a young wife and seven children, Joe and his older brother Wally were fostered out, then shipped to Australia. Joe lived eight years at Fairbridge, near Pinjarra.

He left at 15, joined the army and served five years on the front line in some of Australia's bloodiest campaigns at Tobruk, El Alamein and the Pacific islands.

In the madness of Beirut he briefly met a brother he never knew. They spent just one night together, in 1942. That bro