The first fire swept past Merv McCasker’s farm early last year – “and that was frightening enough”. And then, in September, it returned with a vengeance he still finds difficult to comprehend. “It just came at us with such ferocity and speed,” says Merv. “Definitely the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It came roaring at us and we had no idea what we’d be left with at the end.” Merv breeds horses and cattle on a small block a short drive out of Tenterfield, up in the high country of northern NSW. The fires came as the town was busily preparing for its biggest event of the year, the annual Peter Allen Festival.

Tenterfield is surrounded by dramatic granite hills and two imposing outcrops – Mt Mackenzie and Dairy Mountain – loom on either side of the town. McCasker’s house sits on a flat below Dairy Mountain and his paddocks run up its steep and timbered rocky slopes. He and his partner Jan could see smoke billowing off Mt Mackenzie in the distance and he thought, “Well, by the time it gets to us they’ll have put it out.” He was wrong. There were fires everywhere and the local brigades couldn’t keep up; the McCaskers would have to fend for themselves. “Within a few moments it was on top of the hill and rushing towards us at a great rate of knots.” They scrambled to open gates and release terrified stock. He scurried to the creek to fill a tank on his ute. “I was overcome by smoke and dust; it was just horrific,” Merv says. All he could do was hose down the house and hope for the best. The house was saved but his farm was left a blanket of black.

Then, when the rains did eventually come and the grass did finally grow green, Merv, 65, was unable to restock as his boundary fences were a mess. He got some help repairing some fences, but up on that rugged hill… nobody wanted to take on that job and Merv has liver cancer. He was desperate to get things in order. Out of the blue, he got a call saying there was a mob of young fellas travelling up from Armidale who wanted to help and weren’t too worried about a steep granite hill.

“We thrive in that shit country that no one else wants to touch,” says Murray Lupton. “The steeper, the rockier, the shittier the better.” Murray is a sheep and cattle cocky turned social worker. For months now – right through the Covid shutdown – he’s been leading teams of youths into the ­rugged country on the slopes of the Great Divide, helping desperate farmers like Merv McCasker. The boys were granted an exemption as essential rural and bushfire recovery workers. “We were in ­Torrington, where they’d lost 14 houses,” Murray says. “One farmer lost 14km of fencing. It was just devastating. We spent five weeks there and people were just so appreciative. They baked cakes and scones and dropped off soft drinks… they’ve invited us back for a community dinner when this Covid thing is done and dusted.”

But this is not just about fixing damaged fences. The mending goes both ways. “My life was headin’ down a big dark road that you don’t want to be headin’ down,” says James Boland, 17, as he sheathes his pliers and takes a break from the fence. James had been suspended from school more times than he can recall. “I was like constantly drinkin’ alcohol, constantly smokin’ weed, doin’ drugs, and all that shit.” But for the past few months he’s been out in the scrub, repairing fences and bumping elbows with appreciative cockies. “It just makes me feel real good, helping people out that need it… before I was just makin’ a complete arse of myself and lettin’ my family down.”

His saviour has been BackTrack, an innovative program for troubled youth, many of them indigenous kids like James. It was founded in the northern NSW town of Armidale 14 years ago by former jackaroo Bernie Shakeshaft, who was honoured as 2020 Local Hero in the Australian of the Year Awards. “He and his extraordinary team have helped more than 1000 children reconnect with their education, training, families and community, offering them love and support to live out their hopes and dreams,” reads his citation for the gong. More than 85 per cent of these kids have gone into employment, or back into education and training. “It has helped decrease Armidale’s youth crime rate by more than 38 per cent, saving millions of dollars and keeping children out of correctional systems.” It’s living up to its creed: Keeping kids alive, out of jail and chasing hopes and dreams.

Now BackTrack and Bernie Shakeshaft are providing a template for youth programs around Australia. “Over the years there’s been so many communities looking for a hand to get started,” says Shakeshaft. “We are happy to share our story and what we are doin’.” BackTrack is now actively mentoring similar programs in the NSW towns of Dubbo, Broken Hill, Windsor, Moree and Lake Cargelligo and other towns are lining up to copy the model. It held a three-day conference 18 months ago and 36 people from 20 communities around Australia attended to learn what they could, and how they could fund it, with the aim of setting up their own programs. There are another 120 communities on a waiting list. “These communities have to own their own structure and we help them out in whatever way we can,” he says. “There’s not a town that we’ve been to that doesn’t go, ‘Shit! We need a BackTrack.’”

The Black Lives Matter movement has beamed a harsh light on Australia’s appalling rates of ­Aboriginal incarceration. Twitter was set ablaze and crowds have taken to the streets, but how do we actually stop our troubled kids, black or white, from ending up in the back of a paddy wagon? The issue was highlighted with placards, but can it be fixed with a pair of pliers and roll of wire?

Lana Masterton’s “we need a BackTrack” moment came five years ago, not long after she moved to Lake Cargelligo at the geographical heart of NSW, 600km west of Sydney. Lana, 30, had been working as a loss prevention officer, down on the NSW coast, when her partner, police officer Emma Dyball, was transferred out west. “When we first moved out here we thought, ‘Right let’s get our three years done out here and get our golden ticket back to the coast’,” Lana says. “But we have just fallen in love with this community. We’ve pulled up stumps and are never leaving. It is like nowhere else I’ve ever been.”

While Lana loved Lake Cargelligo, she was also deeply troubled by the problems in the hardscrabble town of 1400, including a large indigenous population. “My partner was regularly ringing me up saying, ‘Lana, I’m not going to be home for dinner tonight. I’ve got to do a prisoner run and take another kid down to Wagga.’” Lake Cargelligo doesn’t have a lock-up to incarcerate children and the nearest place that does is Wagga Wagga, 280km south. Lana thought it was terrible that so many kids should be getting locked up in the first place. “I kept thinking ‘Frickin’ hell! There’s not that many kids out here!’ It’s a tiny place. The stats didn’t make sense to me.”

Some weeks the paddy wagon would make five or seven trips to Wagga Wagga with a kid in the back. “The levels of juvenile crime and youth incarceration were just through the roof,” Lana says. “Whatever they were doing to deal with the problem just wasn’t working.” She decided to try something different and, inspired by BackTrack – and with the backing of her community – four years ago she set up the youth program Down the Track. It now has 32 kids, aged between 10 and 20, and a long waiting list. Some attend full time instead of school, some part time, and they’re all given the chance to get work skills, trade certificates and employment though two social enterprises. “One is with rural work where we take the kids out to do shearing, fencing, ­mustering and that kind of stuff,” Lana says. “The other is a catering business. Back before Covid we were averaging three or four gigs a week. Big gigs too; we catered for 250 people at a Fanny Lumsden concert.”

To make it work, Lana says, you need a solid plan. “But you’ve also got to have that key ingredient, which is commitment. I live and breathe this. The last thing I think about before I go to bed is, are these young people OK? Who’s had a feed tonight? Who’s got warm blankets? Who’s up waiting for other people to go to bed, before it is safe for them to go to bed? When I wake in the morning it’s who’s had breakfast? Who’s going to school today? My door is open 24/7. I have young people knock on my door at 4am saying, ‘Look I need some help, I’m about to flip out, can you talk me through it?’ This is not just a job. For some of these kids this is life and death. People think it is just a youth program, it is so much more than that… You just invest so much making sure that every opportunity that a young person can take to thrive is available to them.”

Is it working? Well, the local police sergeant reckons it has made his job a lot easier – locking up kids is not the reason anyone joins the police force. “Youth crime rates in Lake Cargelligo are low and I believe have fallen significantly since the inception of the Down the Track program,” says Sgt Ben Munro in an email. “It is uncommon now to have young people involved in breaking into houses and stealing cars, which has not always been the case.” The simple fact that many of the kids who were committing these crimes are now engaged in work and training programs at Down the Track has not only bolstered their self-esteem, it has minimised their propensity to be involved in crime. If you get a kid up at 5am to shear sheep all day, you can pretty much guarantee they’ll not be out roaming the streets that night, looking for mischief. It’s now a very rare occurrence, Sgt Munro says, for the paddy wagon to make that grim six-hour return journey to Wagga Wagga.

A couple of times a year, Lana, her youth workers and her kids will travel to Armidale to view the BackTrack programs. “You see this incredible organisation that Bernie has built and you see these young people that are being everything they want to be. It is incredibly motivating and inspiring,” Lana says.

Skye Trudgett, a researcher from UNSW, has been evaluating the effectiveness of these BackTrack offshoots for her PhD, looking at how Bernie’s Armidale model can be replicated. The five key components of the model, she says, are engagement, case management, diversionary ­activities, personal development (identity and team identity), skills development and leadership. “You can tailor a program to suit your own community,” she says. “But if you can successfully deliver on the five key components, it will work.” Her data, she says, is yet to be properly analysed but it appears to confirm that programs like Lana’s make a positive difference. “The kids are engaged,” she says. “They are doing meaningful things.”

Skye is an indigenous woman who grew up in Dubbo; her family came from Walgett. She says the beauty of these programs is they are built around the needs of the kids, rather than trying to shoehorn them into a mainstream school ­system and then judging them when they fail. ­Studies by the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) found that when BackTrack was set up in Armidale there were ­significant reductions in the four most common crimes. “It is ­interesting to note that the reductions in crime appeared to be immediate,” the NDARC study says. “This suggests that something about the ­program appears to have had an instantaneous impact on young people. For example, enrolment and involvement in the program may encourage young people to develop a more pro-social attitude, including a reformed identity that differs from their previous one which may have centred on antisocial behaviour and crime.”

Back in Tenterfield, I’m bouncing about in BernieShakeshaft’s ute, trying to locate some of his boys working on a fence in rugged, hilly ­country to the east of the town. Bernie says all these boys are employed under a program called BackTrack Works. “This is for the older kids,” he says. “Once they’ve done their training, learnt to weld and whatnot, we start to introduce them into the concept of work by taking them out on fencing jobs, marking lambs, baling hay or whatever. These kids thrive when you get them out in the bush.” The aim is to make BackTrack Works self-funding by winning tenders for rural work. The bushfire recovery work is being funded by local service clubs and a donation from Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation.

The boys learn about turning up on time, work ethic and skills. “While they’re learning, we deal with all the shit that an ordinary employer wouldn’t put up with – ‘I couldn’t find my work boots’, or ‘My alarm didn’t go off’, ” Bernie explains. If they don’t turn up they don’t get paid, but they don’t get sacked. “We just want to get the kids right before they’re ready to work, there are no time frames.”

The BackTrack Works program began two years ago. “What we were finding was we’d get these young fellas off and into jobs,” he says. “They’d get sacked after two or three months, or six months, and they’d be back with us. So, I guess we’ve identified all those small things that make it difficult for some of these kids. Some of them just need a little bit longer on the tools, learning how to fill out time sheets, ­getting the concept that if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. You know, teaching them you can’t pick and choose what you want to do.”

These are kids who started life a long way behind the starting blocks. One of the boys I spoke with had been living with his grandparents – his ­parents had gone off the rails on the drink and the drugs and he has no idea where they are now. When his grandfather died, and his grandmother couldn’t look after him, he was separated from his siblings. For six months he lived in a motel room with two social workers. “It was like jail,” the boy says in a whisper. “It was horrible.”

A concerned teacher begged Bernie to take the boy into BackTrack. “When he first came to us he never said a word, not a single thing. We tucked him under the BackTrack wing with other boys. He’s still extremely shy, but growing in confidence.” The number one priority is housing – the organisation owns a house on a small farm, just out of town, that sleeps six people. “You can’t do anything until they’ve got somewhere safe to sleep.”

“They call these kids the fringe dwellers,” Shakeshaft continues. “These are kids who are on the suspension cycle at school and at risk of jail.” Following the closure of schools due to Covid-19, he says, more kids have been pushed into this fringe zone; he fears thousands will have permanently severed their links to the school system. “I don’t think you’ll see many of those kids back at school ever again, and so we are expecting a bit of a tsunami. What do you do with these kids who just don’t fit? I think that’s why there’s been so much interest in our program because we offer an alternative.” The program gives the most ­troubled kids more time. “These are kids who, for whatever ­reason, things haven’t worked out for ’em. They’ve been pushed down their entire lives and told they’re not good enough. You put them out here in the bush in these communities and, you’ve seen it, people are pattin’ them on the head praising them. They’re learning skills, they’re getting paid, they’re giving back to the community… pretty f..kin’ good model, I reckon.”

We eventually locate the boys on a steep hill. Marcus Potter, 25, is leading a small group of boys, including James Boland, 17, and Jack Ackling, 18, along a fence line. Using chainsaws, they cut burnt limbs and fallen trees off the fence before propping up posts, driving in new steel pickets and straining the fence back into life. It’s hard, backbreaking work. The boys respond to their supervisor, knowing he used to be one of them.

Marcus was 14 when he first came to BackTrack. “Dad owned a house, but it wasn’t goin’ real good – the house was falling apart – and so he sold it,” he says, summarising the ­family’s descent into poverty and homelessness. “We had nowhere to go and so for about four years we lived in a tent and in the car as we travelled around from Guyra, to Glen Innes, Dorrigo and Armidale. We never had a fridge and so we couldn’t carry meat or ­anything and so we did a lot of fishin’. One night we caught four little redfin and we had to divide them up amongst the five of us – I remember bein’ real cranky ’cause it wasn’t much of a feed.” He went to eight different primary schools. “My ­biggest regret is that I never learnt to read and write properly,” he says. And then, in his senior years, he never went to school much at all. And when he did, he’d get suspended.

Marcus says he had his “fair share” of run-ins with the police and with juvenile justice. It was a juvenile justice officer who suggested he attend BackTrack. “I bloody loved it from the moment I arrived,” he says. He stayed in the program for three years and then, at the age of 17, he was invited to a CSIRO farm outside of Armidale, to give a talk about his life and his time at BackTrack. They were so impressed that they took him on as a trainee to work on their farm. He loved rural work and after completing his traineeship he became a jackaroo, working on remote properties in central Queensland and western NSW. “It was the best thing,” he says. “I just absolutely loved it.” And then he had a serious motorcycle accident on the farm and returned to Armidale. “I was only home about a week and I got a message from Bernie. He said he was starting up this new program called BackTrack Works and he asked if I’d be interested in working as one of the supervisors. I jumped at the chance.”

Bernie says employing former BackTrack boys as supervisors in the program has been highly ­successful. “The younger fellas see these blokes who’ve been through the program. They hear their stories about jackarooing up in Queensland, or working out on farms, and it becomes the norm.” The narrative is one of hope: where are you going to work when you finish at BackTrack? What are your hopes and dreams?

Marcus says if it wasn’t for the program his life would have taken a different course. “I reckon, for sure, I’d be in jail.” Instead, he now owns his own vehicle and is saving for a deposit to buy a house. Why does BackTrack work so well? “’Cause it’s like a family to these boys,” he says. “These kids know that they can have a go, but if they make a mistake it’s OK, they are still going to get another chance, that it’s not the end. They know someone’s always got their back.”

The two boys working on the fence under his supervision, Jack Ackling and James Boland, soak up Marcus’s jackarooing tales. They see that he’s just bought a vehicle. He tells them how he’s ­saving for a house deposit. He’s just a few years older than them and in Marcus they can see their own brighter futures. “I always had my nose in a bit of trouble,” says Jack.

“Every day when I went to school the first thing I had to do was go to the deputy principal’s office and report in.” It was not the most positive start to the day.

Jack dropped out of school at the end of Year 10 and moved to the northern beaches of Sydney. “One night in Sydney we all decided to get on the piss and we went down to a park and we were swearin’ and drinkin’ and some adults told us to cool it down.” Then there was an all-in brawl. “It made the news and everything.” He decided to come back to the country to sort himself out and his mum encouraged him to go to BackTrack.

“It’s just… we are like family down here. We’ve all got each other’s backs. If someone is in trouble we are just a phone call away. It kind of just stops you from getting involved in dumb shit.” Jack now has a bunch of trade certificates under his belt and will soon complete his traineeship with BackTrack Works. “I’m thinking of becoming a youth worker,” he says. “So I can teach kids and steer them away from what I’ve been through.” Either that or he reckons he might start his own fencing business. “It’s funny, you know, when I moved back from Sydney I couldn’t turn on a lawnmower. I didn’t know what a choke was. I never knew what a pair of pliers or strainers were. Now I know what they all are and I can use them to get a job.”

They are skills, too, that can be harnessed in times of need. These kids can be called on to help rebuild shattered communities in the wake of fires, floods and cyclones. “The new boss-man for the bushfire recovery [former NSW Rural Fire ­Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, now commissioner of Resilience NSW] is coming up in a few weeks to see what we are doin’,” Shakeshaft says. “There is enormous momentum for this stuff, having these kids chip in and help while they are getting their qualifications. These kids love getting’ out there, rollin’ up their sleeves and helping out.”

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