A class of their own … seven years on

Seven years ago Ray Martin went out to the Darling River town of Wilcannia to bring you a 'good news' story. It was about the first student - an aboriginal girl - to ever finish high school at Wilcannia.

It was also a story about a great bunch of teachers who were really making a difference to the school and the town.

But, spend an hour or two in Wilcannia, and you discover that alcoholism, bashings and sexual abuse against children is ripping the place apart.

Transcript

RAY MARTIN: James Hackett is Canadian-born and bred. He is a Mr Chips in joggers.

JAMES HACKETT: I came to Wilcannia because this is where I wanted to be. A principal has to be a dreamer. You have to have a vision and a dream of where your school is going to go, and share that.

RAY MARTIN: Angela Bonham is a schoolmarm with attitude.

ANGELA BONHAM: I feel I belong here and the kids - it is the kids that keep you here - their spirit, their sense of survival, their sense of humour. Everything about the kids.

RAY MARTIN: And Alison Johnstone is a Barkindji woman, a teacher who wants her people to get off their backside.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: They have got to take the bull by the tail themselves.

RAY MARTIN: How about you and Angela and James together? Fairly fearsome trio.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: We are. 'Three Stooges'.

RAY MARTIN: 'Three Musketeers'.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: Yep. Yep.

RAY MARTIN: And, together, these three musketeers are trying to save a generation. They are giving hope to a town that was written off as pretty hopeless, turning out lively, laughing kids with smiles as broad as the Darling River in flood.

JAMES HACKETT: No-one is going to come to Wilcannia and snap their fingers and fix things. It took a long time to get this way and the school has made a dramatic improvement and will continue to do so. With this generation of students that we have right now, all of them will go through Year 12.

RAY MARTIN: With its faded colours and its white sandstone memories, Wilcannia once boasted 13 pubs. Today, there is just one and, to many locals, it is one pub too many.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: It is destroying the culture. When I say 'culture', you know, the family culture, the kinship. The welfare mentality has taken hold and has crippled it.

RAY MARTIN: As a teacher, would you like to see the pub closed? Would you like to see Wilcannia as a dry town?

ALISON JOHNSTONE: Yes.

RAY MARTIN: Would that help?

ALISON JOHNSTONE: Yep. I honestly believe it would.

RAY MARTIN: Wilcannia survives on the weekly welfare cheque. There are few jobs. So, Thursday means a big payout for the pub and a pay-off for the kids. For some kids, it is their only chance to buy food. Thursdays, is that the money day?

GIRL 1: Yep. That's money day. We always go downtown.

GIRL 2: You see the drinkers down there drunk early in the morning, waiting until the pub open.

GIRL 1: They go down there about 9 o'clock and the pub opens at 11.

RAY MARTIN: So when do you go down to get your money?

GIRL 2: We go down at recess and lunch.

RAY MARTIN: So when you get the money, what to do with the money?

GIRL 2: I buy dim sim with gravy because that's nice.

GIRL 1: Hot chips, ice-creams.

GIRL 3: Ice-creams, drinks, whatever in the shop.

JAMES HACKETT: When we have a parent interview, it is usually a grandparent that comes up to the school for the interview.

RAY MARTIN: Where would Mum or where we Dad be?

JAMES HACKETT: Depends on the day. The pub. Sleeping.

RAY MARTIN: It can't be easy, though. You're a man as well as their headmaster. Does it make you angry when you realise that the parents aren't taking responsibility for their children?

JAMES HACKETT: It gets frustrating. I get angry. It's very painful.

RAY MARTIN: And what is so admirable is just how honest these good teachers are.

JAMES HACKETT: I guess if a girl growing up in Wilcannia can make it to 18 and not be pregnant or have a child or two already, to not have been a victim of domestic violence or interference, very rare and I'd say a special person.

RAY MARTIN: And that's remarkable, isn't it? For a girl to reach 18 and not be pregnant and not be bashed up is a rarity, is a shocking indictment.

JAMES HACKETT: The police, they tell me that almost all of our children are interfered with.

ANGELA BONHAM: My secondary girls say things like, "If your boyfriend doesn't bash you, he doesn't love you," and they have heard that on the street, they have heard that at home.

RAY MARTIN: So, if your boyfriend doesn't bash you, he doesn't love you. If you're not pregnant by the time you're 18, you're not a woman.

ANGELA BONHAM: Not a real woman.

RAY MARTIN: But if you look at the school attendance records in Wilcannia, you'll see that the 'three musketeers' have made a difference. At the beginning of last year, only 20 kids were going to school regularly. Today, there are 160. There are no school blazers here and no school badges, but there is a school breakfast. What would these kids do if you didn't give them breakfast? They would go without?

JAMES HACKETT: About 50% of our students don't get fed from Sunday through to Wednesday. Wednesday is usually when the money starts coming in to town. So, if the school didn't feed them breakfast, recess and lunch, about half of them would be really struggling to get a feed.

RAY MARTIN: Heidi Bugmy is the school's greatest success story so far - the 'Wonder of Wilcannia'. A shy, but determined, 18-year-old, Heidi is the first local girl or boy to ever finish high school. The State made Heidi the 1999 Student of the Year. And the town has made her both hero and role model.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: Heidi and I walked around the first couple of days and every time I'd see her I'd say, "Toast of the nation, hey?" And she would go, "Go away!" Toast of the nation. Chase your dreams, you can do it and I will support you all the way, and so have all the other staff. We have got faith in all of you. You have all got it to do it. If I can do it, you can do it.

RAY MARTIN: And when it comes to role-models, well, the unstoppable Alison Johnstone is pretty hard to beat. She was a single mum who faced all the hard knocks that life could dish out, but she chased her dream and became a teacher.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: I am pushing my son to be a lawyer, I'm pushing him to become a doctor. He is going to be a level above. I'm not going to take second-best.

RAY MARTIN: The NSW Government has made Wilcannia a priority town, pumping millions of dollars into housing and health and education. Still, suicide, disease and despair is killing these people. The life expectancy of an Aboriginal man here is just 33 years of age. Along with the pub, the cemetery is the busiest place in town. But these kids, like kids everywhere, are incredibly resilient. They are great little survivors.

ANGELA BONHAM: They just have the most amazing spirit and strength. I think if I grew up the way that most of these children grew up I would not be the way they are. They have so much potential and so much ability, and they have so many people here that love them and would help them and tutor them and do whatever it took.

RAY MARTIN: Will they be?

ANGELA BONHAM: Will they be? I like to say 'yes'. I don't know. I hope so.

RAY MARTIN: And as for the 'three musketeers', well, they show no sign of running out of puff. Watch them in action and there's no good telling them to stick to their day job. This is their day job - every day of the week, for as long as it takes.

JAMES HACKETT: You only get one kick at the can, and that's the same opportunity for the students. They only get one chance at life and to miss out on their education, they'll be walking the streets of Wilcannia in poverty for the rest of their life without an education. So, yeah, that's my dream, that everybody feels welcome at school and they have got a fair chance to get an education and to get a job.

RAY MARTIN: Are you realising that dream?

JAMES HACKETT: Absolutely.

RAY MARTIN: Now, remember, that was seven years ago. It was one of the most controversial stories that I've ever done. We took that story to PM John Howard, along with the highly respected Aboriginal leader Dr Evelyn Scott, who told her own tragic and graphic tales of sexual abuse against women and children. Both of them agreed that something had to be done. Nothing happened until this week, when Mr Howard made his move. As for Wilcannia, seven years ago, people out there erupted in anger, accusing 60 Minutes of, once again, "bashing the blackfellas".

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Just because we live in an isolated community, that doesn't mean that we're dumb. We're not dumb blacks, and that's why we've called this meeting.

RAY MARTIN: A public meeting, 100 members of their community upset and angry, especially about claims by the teachers that children had been neglected and abused.

DOUGLAS JONES: And I don't abuse my kids or molest them, and that's it. And when it comes to feeding the kids, you ought to see my son, my baby. I feed him more than once a week, I can tell you that.

ABORIGINAL MAN: How do you think a kid's gonna feel if he gets taken away up to Mudgee, up to Lismore for sports and what-not and the kids are gonna ask, "Where are you from?" "Wilcannia." "Oh, that's the place where you get molested, you get raped." I mean, that's how I feel after that 60 Minutes report.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: And we need an apology from those 'three stooges', and we need their resignation. I know all about 'em.

RAY MARTIN: In the week following our story, there were calls for the teachers to resign. They also faced physical and verbal abuse, simply because they told the truth.

DOUGLAS JONES: You should have seen - you should have been here yesterday and seen how many parents were at that school taking their kids out because of what was said about their kids.

RAY MARTIN: It was Douglas Jones who led the Aboriginal parents pulling their children out of school.

DOUGLAS JONES: The age of consent in NSW is 15, and that's when you're allowed to have 'em. Right? And don't come in saying that all our kids have been abused and all of that. When our kids have kids, they're about 16, 17, like everyone else out there. That's it.

ANGELA BONHAM: Unfortunately, a small element of people have decided to focus on the negative and not recognise the achievements - and not recognise the success of their own children, and that's been just so disappointing and incredibly heartbreaking.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: I just want to say to this community my heart is shattered and it will take a long time to rebuild it.

RAY MARTIN: In the emotional wash-up, Alison decided to leave. Soon after, Angela and James were forced out and they're now teaching on the North Coast. The school children of Wilcannia are the losers.

ALISON JOHNSTONE: I have no regrets. I still stand by what I said that our people are strong people and they need to, you know, think about what our future is going to be.

ANGELA BONHAM: They've been caught up in the momentum, I think, and they don't understand what's going on. And that's the greatest tragedy.