Sexual abuse, 'slave-like' conditions and a student with a broken back

More than 70 years after Ron Simpson was raped by a chef and had his back broken with a hockey stick by another man, he still suffers nightmares about the abuse he endured at NSW's Fairbridge Farm School.

The 86-year-old is one of about 150 former residents of the school at Molong to settle a $24 million claim with the foundation that ran the school and the NSW and commonwealth governments on Monday.

It is the largest payment for mass child abuse survivors in Australia.

The compensation, to be paid into a fund, flows from a claim that the Fairbridge Foundation and governments knew of abuse but made insufficient efforts to protect children while the school was open between 1938 and 1974.

Lawyers said hundreds of British migrants, some as young as four, arrived at the school in the New South Wales town of Molong and often never saw their parents again.

Many told of being physically and sexually abused by staff.

The number of child migrants sent to Australia is not known, but the government estimates that from 1947 to 1967, between 7,000 and 10,000 children arrived, the vast majority from Britain, with most placed in institutional care.

Speaking to reporters, Ron Simpson said he spent three years in hospital with a broken back after a former principal beat him with the stick for milking the cows late.

'He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and he hit me and I went into this big black bath,' an emotional Mr Simpson, who was 14 at the time of the attack said.

'He pulled me out, hit me again and knocked me through the doors of the house.'

'I had gravel up my arms and on my knees and then he said, `get back to work'.'

Mr Simpson returned to the school, in the central west of NSW, after hospital and was sent to work, which exacerbated his back issues, on a sheep station.

Two other members of the class action, which started in 2009, have alleged former governor-general Sir William Slim abused them in his car during visits in the 1950s.

Another victim Lynda Craig, who was also hit with a hockey stick, said conditions were akin to 'slavery'.