‘This will save lives’: Mildura wins decade-long fight for drug support

The Mildura community has welcomed funding for a new drug and alcohol rehab centre, which it hopes will prevent more deaths.

The Mildura community is celebrating the announcement of a new drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility after more than a decade of campaigning.

In last week’s budget, the Victorian government announced it would allocate $36 million to a 30-bed facility for the rural town.

For Mallee District Aboriginal Services chair Vicki Clark, the announcement was bittersweet.

“As we stand here today, there’s a young man from this community who’s being buried. He died in a car accident (affected by) drugs and alcohol,” Ms Clark said.

“Hopefully we can stop that happening to our future generations,” she said.

“This new centre is going to save lives.”

It is a story that is all too familiar in the town of 50,000.

A drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility was first championed more than a decade ago by former police inspector and Mayor of the Mildura Rural City Council Simon Clemence, who supported his son Geoffrey through a years-long battle with drugs and alcohol until Geoffrey took his own life in 2019.

The coroner’s report into Geoffrey Clemence’s death noted the challenges families in Mildura faced supporting their loved ones recovering from addiction. Mildura’s high suicide rate and high rates of substance abuse were compounded by a lack of drug and alcohol support options in the region – the nearest drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility was in Bendigo, more than four and a half hours away, the coroner noted.

Ricky Proctor, co-ordinator of the MDAS healing centre Nathan Kelly, and Zach Widdicombe at the announcement of a new drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre for Mildura. Photo: Else Kennedy

For Zach Widdicombe and Ricky Proctor, the new facility in Mildura means 30 more desperately needed beds in a state with long wait times for drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Both men have experienced these wait times first hand.

For Mr Widdicombe, the wait was nearly 12 months to take part in a rehabilitation program at Warrakoo Station, on the Victoria-NSW border. Mr Proctor waited two months.

Ms Clark and independent MP for Mildura Ali Cupper said the Warrakoo program showed the difference drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs could make to people’s lives.

The facility, which offers counselling, life skills, short courses and farm activities on a 15,000ha livestock property, has helped Mr Proctor get back into a work routine.

Out on the station, he was able to take time away from the “temptations” of town and city life and get back into work, Mr Proctor said.

“The farmers around there (Warrakoo Station), they want us to go and help them work, so it gets us back into work and gets us into a routine. That’s what we haven’t had for a long time,” he said.

Mr Widdicombe said since starting the program, he had reconnected with his family, who he lost contact with three years ago.

MDAS interim chair Vicki Clark, Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley and independent MP for Mildura Ali Cupper at the announcement of funding for a 30-bed drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre in Mildura on Friday, May 6. Picture: Else Kennedy

While other communities might have opposed a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility on their doorstep, Ms Cupper said the Mildura community was “absolutely, totally, united” in its support for the new centre.

“And part of that, I think, is because so many of us have been touched by drug and alcohol addiction. We know that this can happen to anyone,” she said.

“Our Aboriginal elders have been at the forefront of this push. Their leadership has been extraordinary. But our elders have also been very, very clear that this is not just a facility for Aboriginal people, this is not just an Aboriginal problem. This is a problem that is far, far more broad, far more widespread. And this is a facility for everybody,” she said.

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