BackTrack kids on the straight and narrow in Armidale
HOW do you give hundreds of wild country kids the chance to shine? Apply a bit of bush wisdom …
HE starts on one hand, moves to the next, and then starts again on the first as he counts the people living in Nanna Pearl’s house in Armidale, northern NSW.
“Let me see,” says Trey “Ducky” Weribone, 17, in an accent that ebbs and flows with the lovely remnants of a now dead native tongue. “Nan, that’s Pearl, and Mum, they call her Amy, then Uncle Geoff an’ Tyisha, Lexene, ah Victoria … Tashanta, Makeesha, little Amy, Rhonda, Deacon … oh yeah, an’ me.” That’s 12, I say. “Yeah, 12, at the moment.” There are five bedrooms in the brick government house and Nan has a room to herself, as does Tyisha. The rest of them share what space remains.
Nanna Pearl is the matriarch of a mob that fans out through western NSW, up to Moree and Mungindi and along to the coast at Lismore. She takes in grandkids and cousins when their parents bust up, or when someone is having a bad run on the grog or the drugs, or is in jail. Ducky’s old man is in the lockup; not that he’s seen all that much of him since he split from his mum when he was about five. Ducky usually sees his father a couple of times a year, when he’s not in jail. How does that go? “Yeah, all right,” he says glumly. “I just don’t really like ’im much.”
By the time Ducky arrived in Armidale, around the age of 11, he’d been to five or six schools in Moree, Queanbeyan, Goulburn and a few places in between. When he started at Armidale High he couldn’t read and by Year 8, “I was just muckin’ up all the time. Tryin’ to fight people for no reason. I was jus’ tryin’ to get suspended so I didn’t have to go to school.” How do you go about getting suspended? “Jus’ punchin’ someone in the face.” Getting suspended was the one thing he excelled at; he was out of school more often than he was in it. Ducky Weribone was, as they say, coming to the attention of the local police and magistrate.
And then, a few years ago, he met Bernie Shakeshaft. In 2006 Shakeshaft, 47, a former Territory jackaroo who fell into social work, started a program called BackTrack in Armidale for kids like Ducky. “School wasn’t workin’ for these kids,” says Shakeshaft, who begins many of his sentences with a long, deep rumble in the throat, like a contented cow. “Uhmmmmm so I thought I’d try somethin’ different, the opposite of what wasn’t workin’. Just because you’re no good at readin’ and writin’ it doesn’t mean you can’t f. kin’ learn.” Shakeshaft is unvarnished, funny and direct. He’s also endlessly optimistic and patient with these troubled kids and, in return, they’d walk over hot coals to please him.
More than 400 kids like Ducky Weribone have been through the program and 85 per cent of them have gone on to full-time or part-time work, often as apprentices, or into further study. Researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at University of NSW and the University of New England have been evaluating the program’s effectiveness and are soon to publish a number of peer-reviewed papers. What they’ve discovered is that since BackTrack began, there’s been an incredible decline in Armidale’s crime rate. The four offences most commonly committed by teenagers — break and enter, trespass, assault, malicious damage — have dropped by 52 per cent. In nearby Tamworth, over the same period, the rates for the same crimes increased by about 90 per cent.
“There is no doubt in my mind that he has saved literally dozens of kids from ending up in jail,” says Jim White, the recently retired New England region director of education. “I just wish we could clone Bernie and send him all over Australia.” The President of the NSW Children’s Court, Judge Peter Johnstone, has travelled to Armidale several times to inspect BackTrack and says it is one of the most innovative and effective programs he’s seen.
BackTrack operates out of an old council works depot on the edge of town. One of the sheds is fitted out for metalwork and it’s where kids learn to weld and make gates, barbecues, metal art, dog boxes and ute trays for farmers, which they sell to help fund BackTrack. It’s a terrific way to bolster concentration, says Shakeshaft: “An angle grinder in the hand tends to sharpen the focus of the mind.” There’s a classroom in one of the sheds where, a few days a week, a teacher comes in to instruct the kids in basic numeracy and literacy.
Dogs are integral to the program and each child is given responsibility for a sheep dog. Every other weekend a dozen or so kids and a truckload of dogs go off to agricultural shows across the country to compete in working-dog jumping competitions. They are the current Australian and world champions and are eagerly awaiting confirmation from Guinness for what they believe is a world record jump, 2.9m, set at the 2013 Royal Melbourne Show with a kelpie bitch called Bindi. “The dogs don’t judge the kids,” Shakeshaft explains. “They don’t care if they are black or white or fat or can’t read or have had a f. ked-up childhood.”
Teams of kids are sent out to work in shearing sheds or on farms, fencing, drenching sheep or baling hay. They attain trade certificates. “Our aim at the end of the program is to have them work-ready,” he says. “But we also want ’em to be happy and confident; to be good people.” There’s no time limit on how long these children stay at BackTrack. It’s not just a work-ready program — it is preparing these kids for life, giving them a leg-up from the cycle of poverty and dysfunction that seemed to be their destiny. And it works because of Bernie Shakeshaft and his unconventional, caring, rule-breaking style.
He takes calls at 2am. “If it was your kid, wouldn’t you want someone they could call if they were in serious shit?” He fronts up to court with them, making sure they’ve ironed their shirts. He’s not too concerned if they jump on a farm bike without a helmet. He teaches each and every one of them to look you in the eye when they shake your hand. He puts them up in his own house if they’ve got nowhere to sleep. He writes them references for jobs and badgers employers to take on kids he reckons are ready.
And he’s taken the local community along with him. There is enormous pride in Armidale in BackTrack — it has the backing of the council, local businesses, police, the magistrate, schools and farmers. Teachers love it because it removes disruptive kids from their classrooms. Parents of children in the program get to see their kids in the papers for good reasons: winning dog-jumping competitions, meeting the PM, helping flood-ravaged farmers.
Ducky Weribone is in no doubt about its benefits — he reckons he’d be in jail without it. “It’s been like a family to me.” And what do you reckon of Bernie Shakeshaft? “He’s like a father to us boys.” Kids like Ducky can imagine a different future for themselves, thanks to Shakeshaft. In Armidale, they call him The Kid Whisperer.
Shakeshaft was one of five kids in an academic household; his mum was a teacher and his dad a well-read social worker. One of his brothers is now a professor and he has a sister who’s a speech pathologist. “I had dyslexia … couldn’t spell for shit. I got so far behind I knew I’d never catch up and so I started gettin’ into punch-ups in the playground and waggin’ school. Like so many of the kids I see, it was better to be bad than dumb. And then I lost my two closest mates, killed in car accidents. Hahmmmmn they were pretty tough years for me.”
In his early teens the family moved from Armidale to Sydney and he went to a Catholic high school. He struggled. The school chaplain had spent decades as a missionary in India and every few years he’d take a group back there. He noticed young Bernie was doing it tough and so, in Year 11, he took him to India for a couple of months and put him to work in Mother Teresa’s hospice for the dying. For four days young Bernie sat with a 16-year-old boy who had a horrible infection in his leg — maggots had eaten away most of the flesh. He held the hand of this boy, the same age as he was, as he slid into death. “That’s when I learnt what being tough was really all about,” he says, holding back his emotions. “I met Mother Teresa — couldn’t understand a f. kin’ word she was sayin’ — but mate, she had an aura about her.” He’s not religious, but it fertilised his budding social conscience.
He returned to Australia, quit school, got a few odd jobs and completed his HSC at TAFE at the age of 20, doing quite well in a different learning environment. And then he went bush and ended up in the Northern Territory on one of Kerry Packer’s vast cattle spreads. “I loved it,” he says. “I could just go wild, ridin’ horses and doin’ stupid stuff — there were no rules.”
It was during this time in the Territory — he spent 14 years there — that Shakeshaft started working with wayward kids. He had a job with Parks and Wildlife and would often take Aboriginal kids out bush. “These were kids who were always in trouble when they were in town. When you got them out bush they’d just thrive,” he says. “You’d get to see the beauty of them, ya know, away from town.” He learnt how to communicate with kids; get the best out of them.
Shakeshaft had a job as a tracker, trapping feral animals and attaching radio-trackers to dingoes for research projects. He got to work with a couple of old Aboriginal bushmen who taught him how to track dogs. “I use the same principles they taught me about wild dogs with these wild kids,” he says. “If you want to catch a dingo you have a quick look at what he’s been up to, where he’s been, and then you go to where he is today and what he is doing. You can’t chase ’em; that’d never work. You go out in front and draw him in with calm body language. It was pretty freaky to watch these old blackfellas; they’d get wild dingoes come right up to ’em in the bush; they’d lay them down quiet in the shade, like a domesticated farm dog.”
About 10 years ago, his ex-wife Jayne moved back to NSW to be with her father, who was dying, and so Bernie moved too, to be near his kids, James, 24, and Maeve, 17. He came back to Armidale in 2005 and got a job at TAFE, working with unruly Year 10 school boys on a supposed job-ready program. Over a beer at a Christmas party he got chatting with Kevin Dupe, the CEO of Community Mutual, a credit union headquartered in Armidale. “I’d had a few beers and I must have been pretty passionate about it,” he says. “I told him I wanted to start my own business, to work with these kids properly, and that all I needed was a shed.” Dupe called him a few days later and said he had got him a shed, the old council works depot.
Shakeshaft got the backing of an influential group of community leaders; they sent out media releases and the folk of Armidale responded. Local businesses and builders donated welders and workbenches and power tools. He started two days a week, volunteering his own time with seven kids, The Magnificent Seven. All of them went on to get jobs, mainly as apprentices. It grew and grew, with outreach programs in nearby towns and plans to expand to Queensland, and now survives on about $600,000 a year from public money and private donations. They make about 25 per cent through labour hire and metalwork.
“We don’t worry too much about their past,” says Shakeshaft of his approach with the kids. “We can’t change it so let’s not waste much time there. We look at where they are now and then look at where we want them to be, just like them old blackfellas with the wild dogs. What we are doing is putting opportunities in front of kids and for every kid it’s a different opportunity.” One of the core values of BackTrack, summed up in a motto fashioned by the kids themselves, is: “You f. k it — you fix it.” It applies equally in the workshop, in the paddock and in life.
“OK, does everyone wanna be here?” asks Shakeshaft as he stands in the middle of 15 boys for the morning circle-work session. “We’d like you to be here, but if you don’t wanna be here you can leave.” All the hands go up. “Hummmm, on a scale of one to 100, what sorta day are you havin’?” Seventy five, says one. Ninety four point five, says another. He makes his way around the circle. Someone says they are having a 10. Shakeshaft delves; there’s trouble at home. He makes a mental note. He’s not afraid to ask probing, personal questions and the kids respond — they trust him and he teaches them to trust each other. If the boys know someone is having a bad day they’ll lay off him and someone will be assigned to look out for him.
One of the boys who is having a rough trot is Zacariah Craig, 16. He’s a tall, charismatic boy who wears dozens of colourful rubber wristbands on each arm. He’s a natural leader and the other kids gravitate towards him. Zac originally came from Alice Springs but drifted east to Gunnedah in NSW as his family fragmented. Three of his older brothers have been in jail and Zac was on the same path. He’d used up all his chances with the law and was on the school’s “pending expulsion list”. He moved to Armidale about six months ago, on the advice of his deputy school principal in Gunnedah, to live with an aunt and to attend BackTrack.
“Since I moved here I’ve never even talked to the coppers at all,” he tells me proudly. He loves travelling away to the shows with the dogs to compete. “The dogs, they just help us in so many different ways. If you are ever feelin’ down or sad you just go and chill with the dogs; they bring ya energy straight through the roof.” Zac is getting trade certificates and has trained as a volunteer for the Rural Fire Service, to refuel and load firefighting planes during bushfires.
Shakeshaft has high hopes for him. Zac was recently asked to speak to an audience of several hundred at a conference on the Gold Coast and explain BackTrack. They put him up in a five-star hotel. “It was mad-arse,” he says. “They had heaps of freaky things; at breakfast I asked for a cuppa tea and they bring me a whole teapot full of tea. Just for me! You had to strain the leaves through this thing and I didn’t know what it was.”
But there is trouble brewing. Zac says there are “some family dramas” going on and he figures that maybe he can help sort them out. He goes into the details and Shakeshaft cuts in: “Let me take a wild stab. I’ve seen this for years and years: when someone starts to get their shit together, and they’re feeling good about themselves, other people, who are toughin’ it out in the same pile of shit they’ve always been in, guess what they try to do?” “Bring you back down,” replies Zac. “You got it. Your brother’s been asking you to come back, hasn’t he? Mate, I can see you runnin’ into a quicksand trap — you’ve never been able to sort out the family’s shit before, why would you now?” Shakeshaft continues: “Let me take a guess at somethin’ else. Things have been getting a bit bumpy here at Aunty’s house … she’s gettin’ a bit sick of your drinkin’ and who you’re hangin’ out with. So you’ve been driftin’ around a bit, stayin’ at different houses?” Zac nods. “OK,” Shakeshaft says. “I need to come up with a left-field plan.”
He needs to find somewhere safe for Zac to live for a while until the storm has passed. “If I just had a block out in the scrub, an old shearer’s quarters,” he tells me later, “I could sort out a lotta shit. These kids thrive when you get ’em out bush. I gotta come up with a plan for Zac — if he stays in Gunnedah for too long he’ll end up in jail. Once they’ve gone to jail … well, there’s not much you can do for them.” How do you handle all this? I ask. “Sometimes I just go out into a paddock and cry,” he says. He also meditates, practises mindfulness and spends time with his dogs. “And, I sink a fair bit of piss.”
The following day Ducky Weribone and I and a troop carrier-load of other kids head out to a farm. The property is owned by a gruff, big-hearted farmer called Murray Lupton. He has been involved with BackTrack since its early days. He sends a crew of kids off with his father Ian to dig a trench, while he and Ducky load up his ute with corn to feed his drought-ravaged stock. “It is bloody amazing to see the changes in these kids,” Lupton says as Ducky releases a load of corn to a mob of grateful sheep. “When they first start they can hardly look you in the eye; then, over time they just seem to blossom. Once they know you, they open up — some of their stories bring you to bloody tears, they really do.”
In 2011, after the devastating floods in Queensland and northern NSW, they took a team of kids up to Bonshaw, just south of the border. “The farmers were a bit wary when we first arrived and 20 rough-headed kids jumped out of a truck,” Lupton says. They stayed for two weeks, doing stock-work and repairing sheds. They rebuilt 42km of fencing. “The boys worked from dawn until dusk — you couldn’t stop them,” Lupton says. “At the end they held this civic reception for the boys in the community hall. Farmers were in tears, the boys were just so proud — it was incredibly moving. They went up there as boys and came back as men.”
We stop at a gate and Ducky jumps off to open it. “What was it like up at the floods?” I ask him. “It was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he says as a big grin lights up his face.
Lupton says he can’t go into town now without seeing a former BackTracker, working as a mechanic where he gets his truck fixed or in a bakery or a butcher shop. “My heart swells with pride when I see them,” he says.
On another day, Shakeshaft and I and a couple of BackTrack kids head down to nearby Uralla and the Phoenix Foundry, a thriving small business that makes brass plaques for headstones around the world. The foreman is one of the original Magnificent Seven, and 20-year-old Stephanous Olsen, another BackTracker, has just started work there. Bernie is checking up on how he’s going and hoping they’ll soon take on another of his boys.
“There was this kid called Freckles,” he tells me on the drive back. “Real f. kin’ wild unit. Anyway, I got him onto a traineeship and he got sacked, so we picked him up again. Same thing happened with three or four other employers, and then one day he just sorta come good.
“I hadn’t heard from him for a long time when I got a call out of the blue; he wanted to shout me a beer and I thought, ‘Here we go, he’s f. ked it up again’. Anyhow, we sat down for a beer and he went through his story. He’d got a job up in the mines in Queensland. He’d paid off his $10,000 tool kit. He’d paid off his $30,000 car. He turned to me and said, ‘Bernie, do you reckon I should buy a house?’ ” Shakeshaft put him on to Kevin Dupe at the credit union and Freckles, the wild unit, hasn’t missed a payment.
Shakeshaft drives on for a bit with a satisfied grin on his face, lights another Winfield Blue and says, “Hmmmmmn, I gotta sort out a f. kin’ plan for Zac.”