Geelong teacher Rob Hunter recalls chilling moment convict Edwin Eastwood kidnapped class
A Leopold schoolteacher has recalled the day his classroom was kidnapped at gunpoint by Geelong’s most infamous prison escapee in a tale so chilling it belongs in a Hollywood screenplay.
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A Leopold schoolteacher has recalled the day his class was kidnapped at gunpoint by Geelong’s most infamous prison escapee in a tale so chilling and outrageous it belongs in a Hollywood screenplay.
The name Edwin John Eastwood – one of Victoria’s most notorious criminals – will forever be connected to Ocean Grove grandfather Rob Hunter, who after 45 years has relived the day “all hell broke loose” inside his rural classroom.
It would be almost three months after Eastwood’s Shawshank Redemption-style escape from the Geelong Prison that their paths would cross – an ordeal that shaped the life of the humble grandfather of five.
“IT WAS PRETTY CLEVER”
Eastwood, 26, was serving a 15-year stint for the 1972 kidnapping of a teacher and six students at Faraday, near Castlemaine.
He escaped Pentridge Prison to commit that crime, as Geelong Gaol curator Rob Wynne explains.
“He took a female teacher and the kids hostage, he removed them from school and put them in a cave,” he said.
“He had crazy demands and wanted 12 of his mates released from Pentridge, money, he wanted drugs and a helicopter.
“Pretty much everything he was not going to get, he asked for.”
He was captured and returned to jail, eventually shifting to the Geelong maximum security prison, on the corner of Myers and Swanston streets, where he would repeat the crimes four years later.
Eastwood ran the prison’s radio station – a reward for good behaviour – and the chance turn of events would form part of his stunning escape plan in December, 1976.
Inmates were able to listen to music in their cell “either on speaker or through a headset” between the hours of 4pm and midnight.
“Edwin pretty much controlled the noise level in jail,” Wynne said.
“It was pretty clever.”
Alongside prison mate Michael Pantic, a violent bank robber housed in the cell next to him, they hatched a daring plan to escape.
It took them two weeks to tunnel through their walls using a stolen butter knife from the prison kitchen, slowly grinding the mortar out of the bricks.
“They took the bricks out and put them back in place every night, using toilet paper as mortar and paint they had stolen from the workshop,” Wynne said.
Pantic was able to tunnel into Eastwood’s cell and the pair crawled through another together, leading to a passage way.
Using a hacksaw blade they pinched from the workshop, the pair cut through the only lock needed to get out of the jail.
“And they were off,” Wynne said.
Pantic would be captured relatively quickly, but Eastwood remained on the run for three months.
“I’LL F***ING SHOOT YOU”
Hunter, 65, said it was a normal Monday morning on February 14, 1977 at the Woreen Primary School when his life would change forever.
The then 20-year-old had just left university and was in his ninth day as the school’s only teacher when Eastwood walked into his classroom with a shotgun.
“I let the kids out at 10.30am for recess and moments later they came racing back inside saying ‘Mr Hunter, Mr Hunter there is a man outside with a gun,’” he said.
“I went to the door and this balaclava hooded man wearing dark, scary looking clothes was pointing a shotgun directly at my chest.”
Eastwood coldly told the frightened teacher “I’ll f***ing shoot you.”
“I thought I was crash hot and was going really well those first eight days,” he said.
“But then all hell broke loose.”
He chained the nine schoolchildren up together and bundled them into the tray of a one-tonne dodge utility truck with a canopy over the back.
Hunt was gagged, blindfolded and shoved on the floor of the passenger seat with his hands tied behind his back, at gun point.
“I thought my life was going to end,” he said.
“I was thinking he would probably shoot me and throw me out of the vehicle and just leave me on the side of the road and then he would have the kids to himself.
“These were the initial thoughts running through my mind.
“I thought I was dead meat.”
“HE WANTED IT TO BE NOTORIOUS”
They would drive for two-and-a-half hours, with Eastwood divulging his ransom plot which involved demands of $7m USD, 100kg of “pure Latin American cocaine”, 100kg of heroin and the release of 17 prisoners from the Victorian Government.
“During that time he engaged me in conversation, and he started talking about ransoms and all kinds of stuff,” Hunter said.
“It was strangely reassuring, because I started to think maybe he wouldn’t kill me.”
Eastwood crashed into the rear of a truck driven by 25-year-old logger, Robin Smith, who was also taken hostage alongside his brother.
Four more innocent bystanders would be tied up and taken – two women and two men – after they stopped to assist in the crash.
The now 16 hostages were driven to a bush camp near Yarram in a Kombi van owned by the female hostages.
The five male adults were tied around a tree and the women and children piled into the van.
Eastwood would continue to outline his fanciful plans.
“He had grandiose thinking. He wanted it to be the crime of the century,” Hunter said.
“His words to us all around the camp that night was the government would be at his mercy, he wanted the press to be all over it.
“He wanted it to be notorious.”
Hunter said the heroics of Smith would eventually set them free.
The logger managed to loosen his chains while Eastwood rested, running 10km through the scrub to a farmhouse to alert authorities.
He returned alongside the police and, after an intense chase and shootout, the career conman was shot in the leg and collared.
He was sentenced to 21 years, with a minimum of 18, and released from jail in 1993.
KIDNAPPED TEACHER TALKS
Hunter, who has lived in Ocean Grove for the past five years and is the chaplain of Leopold Primary School, said the ordeal has had a profound impact on his life.
He wrote and published a book “Day 9 at Woreen” in 2018 and is the founder and presenter of a seminar series, Kidnapped Teacher Talks: Health After Hurt, which he says has been invaluable for his healing.
He said everyone involved “stewed in their own pain” before meeting on the 40th anniversary of the crime.
“It can tear a person up, but I tried to focus on how grateful I was for how it unfolded,” he said.
One of his former students had reached out to him before the reunion which he says “unlocked the gate” to speak openly about the trauma.
The father of four said he was now happy to talk about his experience.
“It took me a long time to go public and I had to bide my time,” he said.
“But it’s a bloody good story.”
Indeed, it is.
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Originally published as Geelong teacher Rob Hunter recalls chilling moment convict Edwin Eastwood kidnapped class
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