Roelands Academy: How Les Wallam and Syd Jackson turned a Stolen Generation relic into a work of healing

A few kilometres outside of Bunbury, Western Australia’s “second capital”, the green ridge of the Darling Scarp yawns over the horizon. Down in the valley below Seven Hills Road appears exactly as any other pastoral byway. Bitumen runs to orange peagravel. Behind the fences, rows of orange trees line the banks of the Collie River. Corrugated tin sheds are scattered about the hills. Then the road reaches a dead end. At the last lot on the line, there is no gate, no sign, nothing to indicate that during the 20th century, this property housed three generations of stolen Aboriginal children; just a cattle grate and a no-through road marker. Around the bend, 15 cottages in various states of repair are tucked into the hillside. This is Roelands Village. It was once Roelands Mission, an Aboriginal children’s home run by the Protestant church. From 1938 to 1973, it housed more than 500 forcibly removed Aboriginal children, including the Federal Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt. Some were taken from as far away as the Pilbara and the Goldfields, severed from kin and culture to be brought up by strangers. Les Wallam and Syd Jackson were two of those kids. Today, Les manages Roelands Village, Syd is its public ambassador. They’re two from a group of ex-mission kids who have banded together to transform a terrible past at Roelands into a brighter future. They’ve converted the mission into a centre of healing, where Aboriginal culture can be rediscovered, opportunities can begin to grow, and the shadowy era of Australia’s stolen generations is preserved as a crucial part of Australia’s shared history. Les’ story begins in Bunbury in 1952. Shortly after his birth, his parents split up and he was sent to live close by with an uncle and auntie. One day, when Les was four years old, there was a knock at the door. Two child welfare authority workers stood on the step. They took Les from his family and sent him to Roelands, where he would be legally obliged to remain as a ward-of-the-state until his 16th birthday. As soon as he was old enough, Les was set to work. For most of his childhood, he was brought up on a regime of Christian fellowship, schooling, and farm work. Kids being kids, they made the best of a bad situation, but their wellbeing was at the mercy of the missionaries, he says. While some genuinely cared for the kids, other “mongrels” delighted in meting out regular physical punishment, and worse. “We had our good times here. I would have preferred not to be in the place, but there are many, many stories about this place,” Les says. “There are kids who loved this place, they called it home, they still call it home today. And there are others, to whom just the bare mention of Roelands Mission, they break down and cry they’re so traumatised. “The kids who loved the mission, they were fortunate enough to have had missionaries with very good intentions, who did the best they could to care for those kids. At another house, maybe right next door, there were monsters. A lot of terrible stuff happened. The beatings, horrible beatings, were nothing compared to a lot of the stuff that happened.” Les admits he was one of the lucky few — during his years at Roelands he maintained irregular contact with his parents. His mother moved nearby, staying two farms down the road in a leaky tin shack and working odd jobs with the hope she might occasionally see her son. Sometimes, Les’s father came to visit him at Roelands. “The earliest memory I have here was when my dad turned up here with my uncles. They came out in this big black car. And I remember standing outside the junior boys’ house, and they pulled up there. The missionaries came down and were talking with ’em, told them to go along. I remember crying out to Dad saying: ‘I wanna go with ya. I wanna go with ya.’ And they couldn’t take me,” Les says. He ran away from Roelands seven times. Often, he was quickly apprehended by police or the missionaries, returned to Roelands and punished; but just after his 15th birthday, Les ran away for the last time with two other boys. They walked through 15km of bush, all the way to Brunswick Junction, and out on the highway they went their separate ways. Les flagged down a truck and hitched a ride 100km to Mundijong, where he knew of an uncle and auntie who worked building a railway. This time, the missionaries let him go. One thing Les credits the mission with was the strong work ethic it instilled in him, and for the next few months he had no trouble finding odd jobs: fruit picking, brick-laying, farm work. Eventually, he found himself staying with an uncle out at Roleystone, in the Perth Hills, where he tried reconnecting with his father’s family, but he was plagued by feelings of confusion, detachment and anger. “I had a chip on my shoulder for a long time from this place (Roelands). At the mission, they taught you that Aboriginal people were no good. After so many years of that, you come to believe it. I ended up getting into a lot of fights. “One day I had a fight with my uncle. He said: ‘Ah, you don’t know your own uncle? You’re supposed to know all your own mob.’ And I go: ‘Well where the hell were you when I was in the mission?’ Next thing you know we’re having a stand-up fight,” Les says. “I was an angry young fella for a long time, but it wasn’t until later on in life that I came to terms with that, came to understand more how this impacted our people: our parents and grandparents, and the rest of the Noongar community. How it still impacts our people today, generations on.” Ten years before Les’ time, in 1941, welfare authorities took a four-year-old boy and his two sisters from their family in Leonora. They brought them 900km to the Moore River Settlement, a kind of remand centre for repossessed children. Here they remained together for a few months until the boy was sent alone to Roelands Mission. Along the way, he was given the name Syd Jackson. Syd never knew his real name, or his birthday. He never saw his mother again, and it was 30 years before he reconnected with his sisters. Roelands became his home, the other 100 boys and girls his family. Like Les, he grew up on chores, school and church, and spent his spare time jostling for the footy with the other kids. “It was a tough life. It definitely taught you discipline, being here. We were kids and there was nothing we could do about it. We made do with the cards we were dealt,” Syd says. Fierce competition for the footy among the mission kids fostered a prodigious talent in Syd. After leaving the mission at the required age of 16, he played for a local club team in South Bunbury, and was soon selected to play for East Perth in the WAFL. Eventually, Ron Barassi relocated him to Melbourne, where he won two premierships playing for Carlton, and after football served as the chief executive of the National Aboriginal Sports Foundation. Then, in 2004, Syd heard from a group of ex-mission kids about the impending sale of Roelands Village. Roelands had remained in the possession of the church since assimilation policies were retired in the 1970s, and for 30 years it had been run as a commercial orchard and a boarding house for Aboriginal students — but that was all about to change. Syd joined Les and 50-odd ex-mission kids as public ambassador in their protest at the sale. Aboriginal history is traditionally recorded orally, Les says, and they were compelled to maintain and preserve their history for future generations. Instead of the trauma Roelands represented, they saw opportunity. “All us ex-mission kids, we all banded together, even the ones who didn’t like it,” Les says. “There were two parts to it: there is the historical part, but the other side to that was the potential this place offers, the space, training, employment. We saw a chance for all of us make good with our past, and to change the futures of our young people too.” They didn’t have a lot of time to act — a number of groups had expressed interest in the auction. Les, Syd, and the others merged with Woolkabunning Kiaka, an Aboriginal corporation founded by ex-resident Alan Kickett. They developed a proposal to run and manage the village as their own, and lobbied the Indigenous Land Corporation for its purchase. Within a few weeks, ILC had bought the 227ha property for $1.92 million. They leased it to WKI with a view of divestment, but with one caveat — they had to prove they could run it as a self-sufficient operation. Monday morning, and Les and Syd’s eyes glitter with the promise of a new working week. Standing by the railing of a shiny jarrah deck, they look out over the village, beyond the homes of 12 permanent residents, past the neat refurbished dormitories capable of accommodating school groups and corporate conferences, out past the citrus and stone fruit orchards, and off into the distant hills. Inside, from what was once the laundry and food store, the tang of a simmering pickling solution wafts from the commercial kitchen, drifting through the dining room-cum-conference centre and out to the rustle of newly planted native trees. Syd, who has his carpentry ticket, has led scores of Aboriginal youngsters to laboriously restore the village to commercial function. Les is now chief executive of Woolkabunning Kiaka, and he and Syd work with Roelands’ young caretaker, 31-year-old Junior Bulley, to deliver the academy’s alternative, culturally sensitive re-engagement program for Aboriginal youth. Many are referred from local schools, TAFE campuses, juvenile justice, or other government departments, and Les says progress and healing are only possible after reconnecting young people with their history. “Everything we do, we start with all the cultural stuff first. That disconnection has been passed down through generations, so we show them their connection to this place. We’re all connected,” he says. “These young people, you know them through their parents, their grandparents. Often, we are able to tell them more about their families and their history than they know themselves. It’s about family, purpose, belonging, identity; things these kids don’t get taught in the classroom.” The Roelands Academy is part of a larger, national not-for-profit organisation, the Outback Academy, whose mission is to heal, educate, and employ. Syd is a public ambassador, alongside Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, Kevin Williams and Darryl Kickett. Junior is a facilitator of the academy program, and he works with partner organisations and the elders to deliver its core component, the RESPECT program, which certifies young people in leadership and hones their prospective skills in agriculture, hospitality, carpentry and horticulture; but its structure isn’t strictly regimented. After lunch, at the cattle pen down by the entrance, Syd and Junior work with local pastoralist Glenn Coucher to herd 55 Murray grey cows and three bulls onto an awaiting truck. Observing closely is Jamieson Bennell, a 16-year-old from Bunbury getting his first taste of herding stock. “It’s good this. I’d like to do more, maybe work in agriculture one day. Good fun being out here,” Jamieson says. Two years later, and Jamieson is now 18 years old. He has just obtained his driving licence and is one of 11 successful land management trainees who started work with a Roelands Village Academy works crew his month. Junior says the RESPECT program is about accelerating economic freedom and boosting the wellbeing of young people. It works in an isolated environment, with the support of elders, and taps into the intrinsic motivations of Aboriginal people. “We had 12 young fellas out here looking for feral pigs yesterday, all coming out voluntarily on a Sunday,” he said. “We mix it up, do a bit of cultural stuff out on the land, a bit of work. They get a taste of what’s happening out here and they just want more. Jamieson, he’s been coming out weekends and holidays. “It’s about us as a team, not us as bosses. The kids love it. They love being out in the bush.” Roelands Academy’s model of re-engagement has been recognised as a success by Department of Education program co-ordinator Jane Smith, who says she has seen a huge turnaround in the re-engagement of referred youth at Roelands, and hopes to expand the program further in the future. “What works really well at Roelands, is they adapt to the needs of the students, rather than trying to mould the student to the needs of the institution. It’s about connection. We would love for schools ... to look at alternative models of engagement like this,” she says. Roelands also work to reconcile with former residents, and regularly hosts community and cultural events. The coming months will see construction of an interpretative bush tucker trail and memorial garden that pays tribute to the 500 children who grew up here, and beyond that, plans for a native food cafe and mountain biking trail are under way. But their work of healing goes beyond the Indigenous community, Les says, and he hopes Roelands restores greater unification among all Australians. “We have a lot of schools, community groups, universities come out here. We take people on our journey. We make it clear, you know, we’re not looking for sympathy. These are things that have actually happened in Australia’s history,” he says. “We want this place to be open and inviting. It really belongs to everyone. Us ex-mission kids, we’ve got a history here at Roelands, but the mission and reserves and settlements and things, they’ve operated all around Australia, it’s part of Australian history. “By opening this up, we want to encourage people to get involved and to be a part of that. “It belongs to everybody.”