After a six-year court battle, the former residents of the farm settlement near Orange were offered a $24-million provisional compensation payment, the largest to victims of institutional abuse in Australia's legal history.

The offer and apologies came as The Fairbridge Foundation, the NSW Government and the Federal Government admitted they had failed in their duty to protect the children.

For many children at Fairbridge Farm there was nowhere to turn despite the Fairbridge Foundation and the Australian Government being alerted to school's shortcomings seven decades ago. Complaints from children who ran away to escape beatings raised no more than cautious bureaucratic concern and the abuses continued unchecked.

After being sent from the United Kingdom with the promise of a new life, the children were confronted with harsh conditions, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, and a life that would see them isolated from the rest of the rural community in an environment akin to child slavery, according to some former residents.

Boys were roused at 2.30am in sub-zero conditions to work in the dairy as part of a long working day where they juggled milking shifts, other chores and schoolwork, a harsh daily routine for the children with concerns brushed aside by the Fairbridge Foundation after they were identified in a child welfare report in 1958.

Unsupervised house parents thrashed young children with riding crops and electrical cords and the principal Frederick Woods used a hockey stick to discipline children he felt broke the rules.

Ron Simpson, who had his back broken after a beating by Woods, still carries the scars of that injury and of a sexual assault by another male staff member.

"It was a big relief when the abuse was finally acknowledged – when you were beaten and sexually assaulted it's with you all the time. When I heard the case was over I started crying – I couldn't believe it," he says.

Parents in England believed their children were coming to a land of opportunity as part of a British government migration scheme devised by Kingsley Fairbridge, an African colonist's son who, lamenting the unrealised potential of Rhodesian farmland for want of white settlers, advocated collecting poor children in England and relocating them around the British Empire.

Instead, many children, some as young as four, were shackled by the burdens of inadequate education, poor literacy, poor social skills and the memory of harsh beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of incompetent, untrained and uncaring staff.

David Hill, a former ABC chairman, who lifted the lid on Fairbridge in his 2007 book The Forgotten Children, said he escaped abuse at the school after his mother emigrated and collected him and his two brothers to start a new life, but the stories told by people traumatised by abuse were disturbingly similar.

Ian "Smiley" Bayliff, who ran away from the school when he was 16 never to return, says it was often the youngest and smallest children who suffered the most and were at the mercy of staff who were cavalier and cruel in the way they punished the children.

"I remember one of the smaller boys who was only four tried to run away up to the back paddock but he was dragged back. He was stripped naked in front of us and beaten with a riding crop at least 40 times in front of us all as a warning," Bayliff said.

Bayliff said girls at the school also suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of some staff who were social misfits, alcoholics and paedophiles.

Lynda Craig says she will never forget being humiliated and beaten by her house mother for the first time at the age of five.

"I was told my mother was dead and I started wetting the bed. I would be dragged out, beaten with an electrical cord and made to stand naked holding up my sheet," she said.

David Hill said it was the name of principal Jack Newberry who became principal after Frederick Woods was sacked in 1966, which repeatedly came to light when women spoke of their sexual abuse experiences at Fairbridge.

According to Hill, Woods was sacked by the Fairbridge board for "besmirching the name of Fairbridge" after his notice of intention to marry one of the house mothers, following the death of his wife Ruth in 1965.

Woods left the school in 1966 and was replaced by Newberry, who had been supervising the Fairbridge vegetable garden at the school. Within three years the board quietly sacked Newberry for sexually assaulting several girls in his care.

Bayliff said following this week's announcement he hoped other former child residents would come forward to be involved in the compensation payout.

"Many I have spoken to didn't think they could go into a courtroom and tell their awful story, but now they just have to send off a letter about their experiences and they can be included," he said.

Solicitor representing the claimants, Roop Sandhu of Slater and Gordon, said the six-year battle in the courts to fight for justice for the former child migrants of Fairbridge Farm would hopefully bring some peace to those who have suffered.

"When the official apology was delivered by the NSW Government recently in Sydney to many of the claimants, it was an incredibly moving experience," he said.

"Everyone was in tears as it was a very genuine and heartfelt apology from the government through the NSW Department of Family and Community Services."

Former child residents have until July 24 to register their intentions with Slater and Gordon to be considered in the record payout.