Bernie Shakeshaft – a former dingo tracker and jackeroo – knew he was onto something when he smuggled a litter of border collie pups into his TAFE class. “That was the first time I saw wild kids and feral pups sitting quietly together,” he says. “It was just magic stuff.”

It was 2005 and Shakeshaft had moved back to Armidale, the town in northern NSW where he grew up, and ended up teaching a course for year 10 kids who’d been identified by their schools as unlikely to finish.