The Mentor

Psst. We’ve self published this, so if there are any typos etc. go easy on us ... we battle at the best of times. This copy is one of a raw, unedited, non-mainstream published (yet), ‘underground’ limited edition.

You are so underground right now... enjoy.

“Why should we give this scholarship to you and not someone else?”

Think quick, kid.

“Well I suppose that’s your decision but one thing I can tell you is that if you do give this to me, I’m going to want to put something back, and if I do anything with my life, I’m going to do something big.”

Silence around the interview table.

Nailed it!

I walked out and jumped into our 1990 Subaru with Mum and my 2-year-old sister, Ruby Rose.

“How’d you go?”

“I got it.”

“Jack, you can’t say that!”

“I know I got it, Mum.” We drove off through the gates of The University of Sydney, a place that was set to become my home and the birthplace of an idea that would light up the nation for years to come. An idea that may potentially change the whole world. …

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

— Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone I was seventeen when I wandered through Sydney University’s ridiculous Harry Potter-style buildings on my way to that scholarship interview. I felt like Harry walking along to Platform Nine and Three Quarters at Kings Cross Station for the first time, wearing my suit that didn’t really fit from 1

my Year 10 formal. I don’t really understand wearing suits every single day – so expressionless, where’s the colour? Often walking through big cities it’s like wading through waves of grey – people dressing up for work all kind of looking the same. I think you should wear what makes you feel comfortable, then be good at your job. There’s a novel idea.

The scholarship was the brainchild of a group of bankers from ANZ who wanted to build a Rhodes (Oxford) style scholarship for an Indigenous person to go to Australia’s oldest university, The University of Sydney. The applicant had to show acumen in academic, social, political, sporting and cultural fields.

The recipient would win a scholarship into one of the most prestigious residential colleges in Australia, The Women’s College (if the recipient was female), or St Paul’s College (if the recipient was male). Tuition would be covered by the scholarship and an allowance provided, meaning the recipient wouldn’t need to work while studying for their degree.

It was a big deal.

I’d finished high school a few months before the interview and was running around loving my holidays, playing a heap of sport and having a lot of fun with a fake ID. Can I say that?

Obama said he smoked weed so surely it’s open season.

Mum sat me down at the computer one day in between my third and fourth pieces of Vegemite toast and said, “Read this.”

As I read through the scholarship ad one thought jumped out immediately – was I the most deserving Aboriginal person who could get this? Maybe I wasn’t disadvantaged enough.

My Aboriginality comes through my Mum’s side. Our family is from a place called Lionsville in Northern NSW, part of the Bundjalung nation, which is one of over 200 different Aboriginal nations across Australia. Before colonisation 2

Australia was a lot more like Europe. A continent with a myriad of different nations, language groups and customs.

In fact, Australia is home to the oldest continuous surviving culture in the world. Ponder that for a moment.

Grouping all Aboriginal people together is like saying Polish, French and British people are all the same. It’s been one of our challenges on the road to establishing a treaty, compared to say New Zealand, which has one Indigenous voice for their Maori people, while we have a couple of hundred.

What happens if I walk into the interview and they look past me expecting an Aboriginal person to walk in? Why the self doubt? Well my skin’s not black for a start, so that provides some doubt up front. Would I be Aboriginal enough for them? Is that even a thing? I’d had people tell me I don’t look Aboriginal. Would they think I was taking this for a ride?

I grew up really proud of my family history. As a kid with white skin and very blonde hair I would look at pictures of my grandfather Billy Bancroft, knowing I was part of his family, but it was sometimes hard to see how. There is a picture of us standing side by side together with me holding a cricket bat and it’s black and white, literally.

So how do you grow up with a white and black history, white and black genealogies, look white, and then identify as being Aboriginal. Confused? So was I. I grew up with an Aboriginal mother, Bronwyn Bancroft.

Mum’s family has both Scottish and Aboriginal heritage. My father, Ned Manning’s family dates back to five generations Australian. They came out on the boats as convicts of Scottish and British descent. Aboriginal and convict heritage; I’m really covering the full spectrum of Australian life with the old DNA. 3

I have two grandfathers I never got to meet but, upon reflection, their spirit has definitely found a way to come to life through me.

Albatross, my Dad’s father, ran for the Labor Party in the same era that Gough Whitlam built the groundwork for a prime ministership that would shift the course of Australia, almost like no other. Albatross was godfather to Gough and Margie’s daughter. They holidayed together and were very close, but later had a falling out, though Albatross stayed close to Margie. There was a tension around the Manning household, as my Grandma Margot, who I also never met, was a Body, one of Australia’s finest Merino sheep breeding families. They didn’t look too kindly on Albatross running for the Labor Party in the seat of Lawson in Western NSW. He ran three times, in 1949, 1951 and 1954 – the last of which he only lost by 200 votes. My old man told me, “As Chifley was dying the only person he went out to campaign for was Albatross.” But standing for the Labor Party came at a great cost. He lost friendships, was shunned by his mates and many of his wife’s family thereafter. A black sheep, if you will.

Bill Bancroft, Mum’s dad, was born on December 9, 1922 at Lionsville, near Grafton. Bill moved with his family to Tenterfield in 1958. There were a couple of Aboriginal families living in town. This made life difficult at first but Bill dedicated a lot of time volunteering and using his skills to benefit the community. The whole town, shops included, closed for his funeral. Tenterfield was the place Mum grew up, and where Henry Parkes delivered a rousing address in 1889 calling for an Australian federation to be formed. Bill’s spirit shines through Mum, every single day.

Dad has been a huge influence on my life. He’s a great mate, an actor, teacher, leg spinner, writer and storyteller – 4

especially after a few glasses of wine. Mum is an incredibly successful artist. By the time I was born in 1985 she was well and truly entrenched in the Aboriginal art scene and was fighting for the rights of Indigenous people in Australia.

Throughout my childhood and to this day I have watched Mum on her own journey with her identity, unlocking new elements, becoming more at peace. I’ve learned that we are all on that road, discovering pearls of wisdom along the way, as Jeffrey Eugenides eludes to in Middlesex: I hadn’t gotten old enough yet to realise that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father.

From there it’s only a quick jump to your grandparents and then before you know it you’re time travelling. In this life we grow backwards. It’s always the grey-haired tourists on Italian buses who can tell you something about the Etruscans.

I don’t believe wisdom is interlinked with age. I’ve met 15-year-olds with more wisdom than some 55-year-olds.

Experience creates wisdom. But one thing age does do is mellow people and sharpen the question, “Who am I?” Throughout the course of my life I’ve watched my Mum become more and more at peace with an identity of two completely different worlds – black and white.

If I went for this scholarship, my identity, my Aboriginality, who I was a person, was about to be put on show. …

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die ’Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky It’s been a long, a long time coming 5

But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.

— ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’, Sam Cooke Growing up in Balmain, in inner city Sydney, my sister Ella and I were the only Aboriginal kids in our school. I played the didgeridoo at a school assembly in primary school, people knew who Mum was, it was pretty simple really.

At 10, that all changed.

Mum and Dad split when I was five years old. Love is such a powerful force, when it’s broken there is pain. For everyone.

I was the eldest child. As a by-product of the split I got to go to university as a five year old. Over the next ten to fifteen years, before I left home, I completed my undergraduate, Masters and PhD in negotiation.

One of the big moments of change in my childhood, which upon reflection helped spur AIME many years later, was when I got home from school one day.

Mum: “We’re going to move back to Lionsville (where our Aboriginal family is from, ten hours drive north from Sydney, from Dad, from friends and life…). I want to get back to my country to be inspired again and give you kids that connection to who we are.”

Jack: “Mmmm. What about Dad, and sport, and friends, and life?”

Mum: “We’ve gotta do this Jack.”

And that was that.

I had an awesome relationship with my Dad, still do.

Leaving him hurt. He was one of my best mates, my sporting coach and my Dad. So here’s the scene. It’s the end of 1994. The car is packed, so are our bags, Dad rolls up the street in his 1970s white Kombi van. I was pretending to play cricket for Australia 6

in the backyard, knocking a ball back and forth that was hanging from the clothesline in a sock, waiting to hear the rattle of that Kombi bouncing through the streets of Balmain, signalling it was time. You could hear it from miles away, that distinct rattle. This time I didn’t want to hear that rattle. It spelt the end of the world as I knew it.

Once we were strapped into the Kombi, we set out to dinner and a movie – where we loaded up on chocolate, popcorn, ice cream, soft drink… last night together for a while, at the least it was an excuse to cash in on the treats.

Into the cinema we strode. And this is where it all went a little pear-shaped. The movie we took our seats in was Mrs Doubtfire. A story about a marriage split. A story where the Dad is told he can’t see his kids anymore. A story where the Dad then sets out on an elaborate plan to dress up as a woman and apply to be the maid and nanny so he can see his kids. Probably not the best choice Dad. We cried so much in that cinema. As we left the tears were dried by a breeze of odd questions, the headline being, “Does this mean the next time we see Dad he’ll be dressed as a woman baking us cakes?” …

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.

— Unknown There’s a track that winds back on the road to Gundagai, and then there’s the dirt road where you fly over cattle grates on the road from the Copmanhurst pub to our new home at Lionsville. A route that my Uncle Sonny got me to drive home 7

as a 10-year-old after he’d had a few too many beers. Our house at Lionsville was perched on the Washpool Creek, the birthplace of our ancestors. Uncle Pat, the oldest remaining member of our family was 10 minutes down the road in his shack, still running a small lot of cattle at 73.

“Stand up there,” Pat nodded to the space over by the pear tree, “and hold that potato chip in your hand.”

I stood up.

“Walk away about 10 more metres.”

Uncle Pat picked up his whip. What was happening!?

“Stay very still.”

Crack.

The chip exploded from my hand.

Uncle Pat passed away at Christmas a couple of years ago.

I was very young when Mum lost her Dad and Pat became like a grandfather to me and a second father to Mum. I delivered his eulogy and here are the notes Mum sent to me so I could prepare.

Pat Bancroft was born on August 22, 1920.

Pat’s father was Arthur Bancroft and his mother was Annie Alice Bancroft.

Pat’s brothers and sisters are George, Stella, Annie and Artie, Mick, Dulcie, Bill and Toby.

Named Gordon Kellmond, over time a name change occurred, which was not unusual for the family and he became Pat. Born at Lionsville, Pat was working at the age of 12 in the gold mines for Arthur Bancroft and he made his first whip at the age of 10.

He reckons his first whip was pretty rough in the finish but he spent a lifetime perfecting the art of creating them.

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The family worked hard and Pat stayed at Lionsville for all of his life. He had moved to Southgate but went home to Lionsville regularly.

Respected by everyone, Pat was legendary for his knowledge of the local area, the historical facts, reeled off with infinite ease, often straddling 2 centuries.

Renowned for his incredible skills of bush engineering and his skills with animals, which were unique. He was a brilliant blacksmith and made all of his horseshoes and many tools for use in the bush.

Pat went to war in WWII. He enlisted when he was 21 years old on March 25, 1941 and he was discharged on March 1, 1946. He served with the 2nd/4th Pioneer Battalion. His Australian Army number is NX71927. His battalion had been sent to Timor, but sailed back into Darwin Harbour on February 18. The next day the battalion’s boat was sunk and the unit defended the area for 13 months.

Pat served in the following arenas: Morotai, Borneo, Darwin, South West Pacific. He was awarded the following medals: • • • •

Pacific Star Defence Medal War Medal Australian Serviceman’s Medal

Pat was a very proud veteran and held all of his mates in high esteem.

After the war, Pat returned to Lionsville. He ran cattle and prospected. Pat also worked fencing, droving and in the asbestos mine at Baryulgil. Pat inherited 750 acres from Dave Hepburn, who was the family’s tutor. He rarely missed a 9

cattle sale, rodeo or camp draft, not only as a spectator but a participant in his younger days.

His passion for mining ran through him like a gold seam through quartz. He always took a ticket in the Lotto, as he wanted to resurrect the old pub at Lionsville, put in a bridge across the Washpool and open the area back up for small claim prospectors.

Pat was a man who had time for everyone.

He loved a yarn and the Pear Tree at Lionsville was a site for many conversations.

Pat was held in the highest regard by all who shared his journey.

He was brave but humble.

He loved his cricket and was a consummate cricketer and was respected for his performance by his peers. Many a wicket went with his particular spin bowling.

Pat lived through the Depression and is quoted, “There wasn’t much in the depression days in the ’30s. You’d go and do whatever you could…. trap rabbits in the winter, cut girders.”

It is difficult to summarise 94 years of life. Especially for a man who endured so much but never complained. His face would light up when he saw his family and friends.

As we have gathered here to remember a wonderful man, Pat Bancroft, let your memories hold his story close to you and your families.

Lest we forget. …

“Hey guys, I’m Jack from Sydney, I’m Aboriginal too.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Mmm, yes I am.”

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“No, you’re not.”

“Mmm, yes I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well, Mum said I was.”

Welcome to my first day at Baryulgil Primary School, a school where all the other kids were Aboriginal and everyone else was darker than me, except for one other kid, nicknamed ‘Snowy’. I went home and spoke to Mum about what had happened. My Uncle Alan politely chimed in saying that the next day I should punch them in the head, to which I replied, “Uncle, I’ve won every fight I’ve ever been in, by 100 metres.”

Mum went for the Vienna Convention route. She spoke to the school, which organised for some of the local Elders to come in and talk about how the Bancroft’s fitted into the picture. I remember sitting in that small school listening to Aunty Charn explain to the kids where my Aboriginal family is from. The Bancroft’s. The Lionsville story. The story of the Bundjalung nation. The Australian story. My story. I went home that night and looked at the photo of me and my Grandfather, Billy Bancroft. I started to see more similarities in our eyes than I ever had before. The similarities in our souls.

The Australian Government defines Aboriginality as: 1. Having Aboriginal heritage 2. Identifying as Aboriginal 3. Being accepted by the Aboriginal people, whose nation you are a part of.

For me that was the Bundjalung nation, and I was part of the Djanbun (Platypus) clan. The third point Mum lived through 11

as a kid. She knew where we were from. Mum’s dad was also black. His skin was black.

You can’t run away from the security it gives you in understanding where you come from. It’s weird when someone says, “Oh, so you’re a blackfella?” and you don’t have black skin. I’ve explained it many different ways in my mind about how I identify and have explained it to heaps of people as well. But there’s one thing that you can’t get past – you don’t have black skin. How does that make you black?

We had Aboriginal people around us all the time in Balmain, but it was different to that experience in Baryulgil.

They’d come to the house because they knew Mum, her story, her art, therefore we always felt Aboriginal. I hadn’t been deeply challenged about my Aboriginality until going to school in Baryulgil.

However, they say the night is always darkest just before the dawn and there was indeed light to be found during that time. Even though my skin didn’t change colour, as I met cousins, aunties, uncles and was welcomed as family, I started to see where I belonged. Living with family who people would look at and say “Oh yeah they look Aboriginal,” as a 10-yearold, made me feel more legit. Being challenged by those kids at school forced me to learn the truth, to dive deeper into who I was. And to learn to be at peace with my skin colour, even if for years after, Ella and I would have contests every summer to see who could get more tanned, so by the end of summer when we said we were Aboriginal, people would go, “Oh okay, I can kinda see that.”

The second piece that stayed with me from my time at Lionsville and lay dormant for a number of years, was the lack of opportunity. In my school, very few of the kids, if any, made it through to Year 12. Many fell pregnant or 12

ended up in crime. The closest high school was an hour’s bus ride away. The closest fresh food store, an hour away as well. To play competitive sport you’d need someone to drive you an hour for training and to ‘home’ games three times a week. ‘Away’ games could be as far as a six to eight-hour round trip.

In all, I only ended up spending a year at Lionsville before returning to Sydney. I missed having sport next door to me, I missed my friends, my Dad, and I wanted to be able to get ready for high school. There were so many kids in that Baryulgil school that had more talent, spirit and insight to offer the world than I did. But I was going back to a place where I’d have all the opportunities available and accessible.

That just wasn’t fair. …

Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.

— Euripides It was 1995 and after I’d spent a few months with Dad, Mum returned to Sydney. We dropped back into a rhythm. One of my closest primary school friends, Tom Andrews, recalled 1994 to 1995 as, “Oh, Jack’s gone. Oh, Jack’s back.” Gotta love childhood memories.

It wasn’t just at Baryulgil that I couldn’t settle, I battled to fit in back at primary school in Sydney as well. I’m not sure what it was, but I always seemed to be butting heads with the ‘cool’ kids and not quite being able to find my place. Maybe I tried too hard.

How about that being an early lesson? Try less hard, have more friends!

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To the ‘cool kids’ out there, who have teased and laughed at kids for having a go, and who have been apathetic to everything; you guys are the true losers, not the kids you’re belittling.

You lose, because you never try. You lose because for a small window the gates of primary and high school protect you. It’s ‘cool’ to skip class. It’s ‘cool’ not to care. Well, guess what? When the show’s over and there is no audience left for you at school and no parents to bail you out of trouble, guess who doesn’t care then? Everyone else. At that point no one will give a shit and you’ll be alone and afraid of trying for the rest of your life. You’ll be paralysed by a fear of failure because you never took the chance during your formative years, when you had the safety net, to try, to care, to have a go.

In retrospect I’m glad I tried hard, and still try hard – I’d rather walk that path and be where I am now, no matter how lonely it is along the way.

My folks, in different ways, taught me so much about true friendship. One phrase they both passed on to me was, True friends are like diamonds precious and rare. False friends are like autumn leaves found everywhere.

My ‘cool’ factor at primary school was never more evident than at the Year 5/6 dance when the girls were asked to pick the boys for the final dance. It was odd numbers. One left over. You guessed it, looks like little Jack is dancing with his Year 3 teacher, Mrs Elwood. I was a pained kid, but was offered a glimmer of light, a ray of hope, that truly meant so much to me at age 11 when I received my final report card from my Year 6 teacher, Penny Hand, which read: Don’t worry Jack, your time will come.

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…

I hated every minute of training, but I said, ’don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’

— Muhammad Ali High School. Balmain High. Week One. Crazy fight between a couple of kids on the stairwell. One kid almost gets his brains smashed out on exposed brick. Science class. What’s that smell? Oh, a 12-year-old is smoking weed up the back. Story checks out. Lunchtime. Year 12 students approach, quick, bow your head like Mowgli does to the elephants in the jungle to show your respect. They’re slowing down upon approach.

Wait, what are they doing? Oh yep, that guy is grabbing you by the undies and lifting you to the sky… you’re flying… wedgied. High school sucks. Over and out.

Bring bring, bring bring.

“Hello Jack, this is a collect call from a lifeline, would you like to accept?”

“Sure thing.”

“Now, Jack, as you know you made it onto the C waiting list for Sydney Boys High, an academic selective school, which deep down you selected because you wanted to be able to play sport against all the top private schools.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well we may have a vacancy for someone like you and were wondering if you could make the time to come in for an interview.”

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, that was Donald Duck on the tele. I’ll be there, sir.”

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Sydney High used to be a powerhouse all-rounder school with a great sporting identity to match its academic one. The sports side of things had faded a little in the last ten to fifteen years as the academic bar continued to rise.

As an 11-year-old kid I walked into my interview, told them I could play every sport under the sun, and got the gig. …

Day one. What are the codes? How do you get around?

Where are the cool kids? Why am I wearing a blazer and tie? I’d caught the bus in with a couple of guys I knew from Balmain. One of them was Alex McCauley, a childhood friend whose house I spent almost every afternoon at playing backyard cricket and pretending to be Shane Warne and Michael Slater.

Alex welcomed me; “Mate I’m in the chess club, do you want to join that?”

“Okay?”

Off to debut in my chess career. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. Location? Sydney Grammar School.

Opponent? Someone who had obviously played chess before.

Result? After receiving a creepy grin from said opponent I moved decisively with my pawn. He moved his pawn in reply.

I moved my horse. He checkmated me. Well that was fun. I could comfortably cross being Bobby Fischer off the list.

I was drifting through until September when cricket season rolled around. I remember being selected for the 13As. After I read the selections I ran up to the sports office during lunchtime to speak to the sports master.

“Sir.” 16

“Yes, Jack.”

“Who’s gonna be captain of the 13As?” “How about you?”

“Perfect.”

Ask and you shall receive. Leadership felt comfortable for me. I wanted the ball in pressure situations. I wanted to win the game. I wanted the responsibility.

We went well in the cricket and won some games. As I moved into Year 8 it was time for rugby season. I’d never played rugby before and weighed in at about 45kg fully clothed and dripping wet – I could never put weight on. The number of times I’d see family or friends, actually it still happens today and seems to be open currency for anyone I know to throw out the opening line, “Jeez Jack, you’re looking skinny, have you lost weight?” “No. I’ve actually never been a big guy.”

Back to rugby. I made it into our A team and entered our first game with headgear, shoulder pads, mouthguard and any other protection I could find. That was the trade off to convince Mum to let me play. In that first game I remember kicking two goals from the sideline. The boys slapped me on the back, the coach praised me, my confidence grew.

Midway through the rugby season we had our school holidays. The coach set an offseason training schedule. I did everything. Every day. We returned for our first training session after the break and were asked to do a run.

For whatever reason, when I was growing up I couldn’t run properly. I’d go in the athletics carnivals and try to do the 100-metre sprint. “On your marks, get set… ” I’d pump my arms and squint my face, urging my body to move quicker but the legs just sorta waddled along awkwardly. Think Forrest Gump pre breaking the shackles.

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Well on this day, when we set off on the run, I had my ‘Forrest Gump shackle breaking moment’. Three laps. Go. I found this extra gear that I’d never had before, ‘hey that training stuff’s working’. We kicked into the third lap and I finished first. I was stunned. The coach named me the captain of the rugby A team as a result. Hard work gets results.

I was solid at school, good at Physical Education, okay at Maths, above average at English and History. Overall I was at the back of the pack, but at this school that was still okay.

I wasn’t pushing myself too hard academically. I spent a lot of my class time drawing field settings for my bowling in cricket, or thinking about who we were playing on the weekend.

At 14 I got asked to go on a tour with our 1st XI cricket team and thought, ‘maybe I could be really good at this game’.

The year after, something clicked.

Let me try to unpack this for people who don’t understand cricket (you are definitely not alone). I was a bowler, which meant I threw the ball to the batsman, with the goal of getting him to either miss it – so the ball could hit the stumps and he would be out (like a strike in baseball), or getting him to mis-hit it into the air so one of my team could catch it before it hit the ground and he’d be out as well.

I bowled leg-spin, which is probably the hardest of all bowling styles. It involves walking five to ten paces to the bowling mark, then circling your straightened arm backwards from your hip, up and over the top of your shoulder, and letting go of the ball as your arm comes down and forward – like a one-armed butterfly stroke – while you flick your wrist and fingers as you release the ball, sending it 20 yards in a straight line to land it on a specific spot in front of the batsman. Easy, right?

It felt impossible and got me hooked. Every day I’d go home, make four slices of Vegemite toast on white bread then 18

head to the nets and bowl until dark. I bowled during lunch and recess. I bowled before school. One afternoon as the sun was setting over Sydney’s harbour I was up the road at my old high school in Balmain, by myself bowling towards a piece of wood and out of nowhere it all came together. I found the ‘zone’ and could suddenly send the ball dancing out of my hands, spinning a web through the air and landing on a coin.

For the next year I flew through life. I stood equal with the best of the best cricketers in my state. I walked through school and teachers asked me how I went on the weekend. My name was in the paper. I was ‘somebody’.

After this taste of success I set my sights on carving out a future. I wanted to try and play cricket for Australia. That goal and dream dominated every choice I made around diet, training and discipline for the next five plus years.

I didn’t play for Australia. But I did have a goal that was so outrageous it forced me out of my comfort zone and made me a better person. I learned to wear my heart on my sleeve. I learned to fail and get back up, again and again. I learned that if I was willing to work hard enough at anything, nothing could stand in my way. I learned to sacrifice going out on Friday nights, missed friends’ weddings (which I do now regret) and learned that if you shoot for the moon, even if you miss you’ll land amongst the stars – a mantra I still live by today.

I played cricket on and off until 2015. If I had dedicated my twenties to chasing cricket, maybe, at a stretch, I could have scored a professional game or a second tier match. But the reality was, the moment that I grew out of that 15-yearold Jack, where sport defined me, where winning and losing changed my mood for the following week, where beating someone else gave me power, I lost the eye of the tiger and 19

lost that drive to try and crush someone in a contest. When this happened my sporting days were numbered, at least for any professional opportunities. I had one more window when it all clicked like that moment at Balmain High. The year was 2005, but as fate would have it I broke my leg and as the cricket door closed, I returned to life, on crutches, and made my way through another door featuring the letters A-I-M-E. …

We don’t need no education We don’t need no thought control No dark sarcasm in the classroom Teachers leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

— ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)’ Pink Floyd I got dropped from the 1st XV rugby team three months before our trial exams for our Year 12 certificate. I remember sitting at home devastated and then making the decision, “Fuck it, I’m gonna give this school shit a shot.” It was probably the first time I’d gone all in with study. To the State Library we ride!

Viv Paul and I would rock out from 7am to 7pm like it was a badge of honour. Mum kicked me $10 a day for lunch and I made the cash talk. Every few days I’d order a large fries from the fish and chip shop, eat half of them, take my hat off, drop a few stray hairs into the fries, then take them back pretending I was about to vomit and ask for my money back.

My grades improved dramatically. I finished school and got 87.6 out of 100 for my final UAI (a combined score for all 20

subjects, which is then ranked against all the other Year 12 kids in the state). I was so upset because 90% of the school got over 90. But I remember one of the guys from our rugby team saying, “Mate we all got 70, if you’d stuck with us that’s where you’d be”.

I still didn’t believe I was smart but I started to think that if I could apply myself I might be okay, maybe I could be a sports journalist or PE teacher.

I left high school a different person. I was confident. I’d captained teams. I’d led people. I’d risen out of failure to succeed. I’d surprised myself. I’d got my braces off and starting hanging out with girls (that’s another book… or a paragraph…). I felt like life was on the up. This trying hard business was starting to provide a return on investment. …

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

— Marcus Aurelius It was time to soak it in as I looked around our house in Balmain, colours exploding off the walls, floorboards with artworks and stories, a shower that didn’t quite work, fabric as doors. You couldn’t escape the colour and creativity in my life. It was time to think back to when I’d sat in Mum’s shop window as a baby and ate dinner in the lounge room while the dining room table flooded with canvasses bellowed ‘you are not welcome here’ and consider how much Mum’s art coloured our world.

On this day, after finishing school, I sat and looked at Mum. I looked at the art and the stories all around us. In our house of dreams, colour and imagination, I took an inspired 21

breath, reflected on my life and decided, ‘right, I’m going for this scholarship and, if I get it, there’s no way I’m taking it for a free ride. I’m doing this for the kids at Baryulgil, I’m doing this for my Mum and my family. I’m doing this for the kids who deserve this scholarship more than me, who have had tougher lives but never got the lifeline. I’m doing this for my Year 6 teacher who believed in me. For the coaches that backed me. For my Dad. For my friends. I’m doing this because I got the chance. I won’t waste this shot. I already know it is bigger than me.’

After leaving the interview and telling Mum I “nailed it”, my suspicions were confirmed and I was offered the scholarship. I was on my way to study at Australia’s oldest university and I was heading to St Paul’s College to live. The year was 2003. …

We’re going streaking!!!! We’re going streaking through the quad and into the gymnasium! Come on everybody!

— Frank the Tank, Old School St Paul’s is the oldest residential college in Australia, founded during the 1850s at the height of the Australian gold rush.

It’s a place seeped in history, tradition and rules. A combo I struggle with.

Paul’s is an all-male college and the next stop on the journey for the cream of the crop from the Sydney private school system.

As you know my sporting career didn’t take off, but there was a window when I was between 15 and 17 and had that ‘eye of the tiger’ mentality. My school was the only state 22

school that played sport in a system called the GPS. We played against seven other private schools. To say I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about privilege was probably an understatement. It was more like a potato farm.

I’d enter every sporting game thinking I was Robin Hood and each victory was a win for the Merry Men. As I mentioned, our school had struggled in sport 10 to 15 years before I got there. One area we did turn it around for a stint was cricket. I remember the shock on some of the private school kids’ faces when we started winning. A parent from Sydney Grammar turned to my Dad during our game and said, “Your boys are putting up a good fight for Sydney High.”

We ended up winning. As we headed off to the Kombi, Dad quipped as we walked past that same parent, “Your boys put up a good fight for Sydney Grammar.” Like father like son.

During cricket season I’d abuse people for being rich, for being arrogant (may have been throwing a few stones in a glass house with that one), and I’d basically suggest they should get off my field. Sammy Hinton, who would later become an early AIME mentor and great friend, was one of the most gifted cricketers I’d ever seen and was like a god in the schoolboy system. Royalty. Later when we became mates, he said, “I remember playing you, thinking, ‘who is this kid with shit hair giving me rubbish all day?’ Mate, you were public enemy number one.”’ To be fair, I did bowl him out, but then again he later played 1st grade cricket and was in the Australian Under 19s, so maybe he had the last laugh.

When I rolled up to St Paul’s College on that fateful day in February 2003, the only people I recognised were the five to ten people I’d played cricket against.

If looks could kill.

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…

Um… This is a work in progress. So, uh…

Slam poetry!

Yelling!

Angry!

Waving my hands a lot!

Specific point of view on things Cynthia!

Cynthia Jesus died for our sin-thee-uhs Jesus cried, runaway bride Julia Roberts!

Julia rob, hurts Cynthia! Mmmm…

Cynthia You’re dead You are dead, bap boop beep…

You’re dead That’s for Cynthia, Who’s dead. (Drops mic on floor and exits stage) — Schmidt, 22 Jump Street College is weird. Uni is weird. Slam poetry is weird. O Week parties are weird. Hiding from pub crawls with your new Tongan mate Dan Halangahu, a pro footballer by night and nerd by day, is weird. People trying to suss out – as Napoleon Dynamite would put it – ‘if you have any sweet skills, like nunchuck skills?’ is weird. Having to give a speech in your first week of uni at 17 talking about how you are going to change the world is weird.

It was time to walk the talk. Scholarship Launch.

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Dress code: Tie, blazer, academic gown.

Paul’s has a formal dinner every night, five nights a week where you have to wear a tie, blazer and academic gown, as a three-course meal is served. It was a bit different to burgers on the floor of Mum’s house, in front of the telly.

I was in my room, looking out across the quadrangle, thinking about how old this joint was. And then I had the horrible thought, “Man these guys are definitely not going to think I’m Aboriginal. They’ll think I’m a fraud.”

I wandered down to the room next to our dining hall where they were hosting the scholarship launch and found the head of my course, senior representatives from the College, Mum, Dad, the bosses of the University and the Bank respectively and a couple of other heavy hitters. I was scared.

When I delivered my speech I blurted the words out nervously from notes. I made it through by speaking of how I was doing this for my grandfather and for the people who hadn’t got the chances that I had today. When in doubt, speak from the heart.

After the ceremony we headed into dinner. Hogwarts eat your heart out. I remember sitting at the high table and listening to the warden, Ivan Head, our Dumbledore, speak about me and my scholarship. All eyes in the room locked on me. I felt like they were looking straight through me. I saw my insecurities in their eyes. Mirror, mirror on the wall, indeed Mrs White… The only thing I thought they were thinking was, “Man this guy isn’t Aboriginal.” …

Boy: Hey Billy! Hey Joey! Come on in. There’s plenty of room. Sorry, not you, Homer.

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Homer: Why not!? [boy points to sign, ‘No Homers Club’] Homer: But you let in Homer Glumplich!

Homer Glumplich: [pops head out window] Hyuck hyuck!

Boy: It says no Homers. We’re allowed to have one.

Homer: Ohhhhhhhh!

— The Simpsons Part of the gig for my scholarship was that they helped me get into the course I was shooting for. As I mentioned, I got 87.6 for my UAI. The course I got into was Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications), which required 99.6 UAI. I was set to go into class with the smartest kids in the state, if not the country and I didn’t get the same score as them, and I felt like a fraud, I wasn’t part of the ‘club’.

I walked in and sat up in the back corner. I think people thought that I was ‘too cool’. The reality? I was shitting myself about them realising I was dumb and didn’t belong.

I hate self-doubt with a passion. It tears you apart.

Against this backdrop of insecurity there were people who believed in me who were fuelling my better angels. One of them was Catherine Lumby, the head of my course, who praised my insights – almost a little too positively (if that’s possible), but it helped. It helped me settle in. I knew she was in my corner.

Not too long into the course I met Kabir Dhanji, this is how Kabs recollects our first meeting: “I walk into this lecture theatre. Our course had 95% girls and there were only five or so dudes in the class. Up the back corner was this guy with weirdly bleached hair, a disgusting self-painted tie-dyed singlet, I think he’d cut slices into his eyebrow and hair and he was sitting by himself.

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Now I’d been to Oxford for a stint, did some training in Paris as a cordon bleu chef, I’d been born and raised in Nairobi and spent some time with a fair amount of different people. So I was like, ‘Okay let’s go see what this guy is all about.’

I went up and sat down next to him and said, ‘Hey man what’s up?’

He mumbled in reply something like ‘not much’, then shot me a look that said, ‘Don’t fucking talk to me.’

I remember thinking, ‘Hey buddy, you’re the one with stripes cut in your hair wearing a singlet that looks like Dr Paint has had a big night out and woken up to let out the world’s greatest hurricane of barf featuring colours that were never meant for public display… it seems you’re gonna need all the friends you can get.’”

I was just a scared little kid who was fronting, hard. It was a way of covering my tracks. I was miles off being my true self at this point in time. I did my own thing, that’s for sure, but I wasn’t at peace with who I was, not at all.

If you want to be truly happy, let alone have the ability to lead people, you’d better take a long, long, long hard look in the mirror and know who you’re looking at. To thine own self be true, indeed Will.

I had to prove to myself that I could be smart, that I could belong with these guys who had been ranked so much higher than me.

Outside the course I was lacking confidence in my Aboriginality. I didn’t know where I was welcome or where I belonged. Hiding in the shadows, you can’t even see yourself.

That was how I felt when Kristy Kennedy, one of the few other Indigenous students at College, kept asking me to come down to the Koori Centre, a place for Indigenous students at the University of Sydney. I reckon I probably stepped foot in 27

the Koori Centre once in my first six months at uni. I was so scared that I’d walk in and have another ‘Baryulgil’ moment where someone would call me out and say I wasn’t Aboriginal and didn’t belong there. That kind of thinking was fucked.

Uni and this scholarship had instantly exposed my three greatest weaknesses: anger towards privilege, thinking I wasn’t smart enough, and my identity. …

Problems we have created for ourselves can’t be solved at the same level of thinking that created those problems.

— Albert Einstein The first fight I picked was with Dr Dumb.

My degree was a combined degree, Arts Media/ Communications. The Media/Comms piece got us into media theory, law and ethics, video/film production, writing, and web design.

In 2003, when me and Kabs came up with a website that amalgamated other sites into one spot, the tutor said it wasn’t a proper website and we had to focus on producing something original… maybe should have stuck with that idea.

Every degree should include Arts. It teaches you to think about thinking. It’s a higher order of learning beyond the right and wrong of high school. The Arts give you a chance to imagine new rules, explore new worlds and challenge the status quo.

I loved the smorgasbord of choice that studying Arts provided. I could walk through ancient Rome in Art History, then sit in a crowd at a sporting event and understand the power and voice of the crowd in Performance Studies. I could 28

contemplate why inequality existed and try to understand our social structures through Sociology.

I could fuel my passion and fire at the dastardly way my ancestors and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had been treated through Indigenous Studies, keep pushing my writing and understanding of language in English, and then I had the chance to do this thing called Philosophy.

Philosophy changed my life.

I walked into my first Philosophy lecture and sat up the back by myself. A kid walked in looking like he was either stoned or drunk.

“Is this Politics 1001?”

“No son, this is Moral Philosophy.”

The stoner shrugged and bounced out the door, backpack swaying wildly.

“Do we know what right and wrong are?”

Of course we do, I thought.

“How do we decide what’s right and wrong?”

Don’t we just know?

“Are we born knowing what is right and wrong or is it learned?”

Maybe it’s learned.

“Then who takes responsibility for teaching what’s right and wrong?”

The family? Oh man, this is getting harder.

It just wasn’t black and white. My brain hurt. I was hooked.

One of the early texts we read was Plato’s The Republic.

Plato wrote through his mentor Socrates’ voice, another Greek philosophical giant. The style of the text is a conversation between Socrates and friends. His friends debate ideas with 29

Socrates who simply responds by questioning, Why? Why? Why? Trying to distil the debate right down to the essence of the idea, to the essence of thought. I love the ‘Socratic’ method of teaching, the pursuit of processing the challenges of human life through questioning, curiosity, exploration, and then pursuing the ultimate nirvana of being able to break that down into the simplest possible form, like a pebble on a beach, with thousands of years of history, ideas, and life inside.

Reading the text at Sydney University was enthralling. I felt like I was sitting around the table in Athens, grappling with ideas on how to build a state… it became evident that everything in the world we have made or thought, no matter how phenomenal it is, has simply been created by another human being, giants or not, they were cut from roughly the same cloth as I. In high school one of the subjects that I’d been okay at was history. I loved trying to understand what pushed us to our limits, the endless struggle between good and evil. The World Wars, in particular World War II, completely fascinated me.

Hitler’s story, all the layers to it, the PR machine driven

by Goebbels, how out of desperation human beings have the capacity to turn to the most extreme agendas if they offer a sliver of hope, identity or purpose. The complete injustice for so many people. How the cocktail of division, nationalism, poverty and difference can create so much pain.

The unfathomable number of lives lost, families broken. The pace and breadth of the destruction. The tactics, the discrimination, the marginalisation and the ramifications – it’s a horrifying case study into the human psyche.

History had scratched an itch, Philosophy pounced and clawed me to life. Both made me immensely curious. Of all the things a teacher can impart, teaching curiosity is the greatest 30

of all. I now wanted to learn, not for the grades, but because I was hanging out with fascinating characters, people who had dared to attempt to conquer the mind.

They say ‘curiosity killed the cat’, but curiosity mixed with a small dose of competitiveness gave me the ability to tell Dr Dumb to ‘fuck off’, dead cats and all. As the Doc walked off into the distance I said to him, “Many of these students got their 99s by following a formula. They played to the syllabus, the rules. They put forward the answers teachers were looking for, void of imagination. They can’t imagine new answers or look beyond the rules, or even make new rules. I can.” …

Do. Or do not. There is no try.

— Yoda Kabir was my Yoda. Fate would have us land in the same group for our radio project in Semester Two. I thought, “Oh man, not this weirdo again.” Turns out he was thinking the same thing.

Then, we clicked. We picked at each other’s stories and found a rare depth. Kabs was and still is a drifter; he’s from the Hunter S Thompson ‘gonzo’ school of journalism. An outlaw. They say that you have a choice to walk the path less travelled – we were running down our respective paths and collided like Terry Tate into an office worker.

With this scholarship, there were all these thoughts and doubts floating around in my mind without anyone to talk openly to. Enter Kabir Dhanji.

Paul’s had formal dinners five nights a week. That didn’t work for me. Instead, almost every night Kabir and I would 31

find ourselves ditching our respective college dinners and heading to one of the most popular Thai food strips outside of Koh Samui – King Street, Newtown.

We’d walk, get Thai, watch people, talk and try to make sense of the world over a bottle of wine. Kabs would smoke a spliff or two. And we’d drift together. I wasn’t into weed, smoking cigarettes or any drugs except for alcohol, arguably the most dangerous of them all. But, I can see why people around Kabir’s college room thought we were two of the biggest stoners in the world. He’d be getting high, Bob Marley would be playing and we’d be talking about how to change the world. Couple of university dreamers, hey?

Skywalker trained with Yoda in Dagobah, I trained with Kabir at Sydney Uni. “Bro, you gotta remember what that famous philosopher once said…”

“What?”

“Fear and anger are paths to the dark side.”

“Who said that?”

“Yoda.”

Learning that lesson would be a longer and deeper journey than an exchange of a couple of sentences after a Chicken Fried Rice from Thai La Ong. …

Why are there 40 million poor people in America? When you begin to ask that question you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth, a question of restructuring the whole of American society.

— Martin Luther King

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In Australia there is a sporting competition among the universities called University Games. It’s often a pretty social affair, lots of partying etc. I didn’t know there was an Indigenous comp too – the National Indigenous Tertiary Education Student Games.

It started in 1996 as part of a group assignment with 13 students enrolled in a Diploma of Aboriginal studies at the University of Newcastle. Newcastle Uni had led the way in so many areas, with pushing for the advancement of Indigenous people in Australia. The program that really helped break the shackles was an Aboriginal Students Medical program the university kicked off in the 80s. To this day Newcastle Uni has graduated more Indigenous doctors than any other university.

Largely as a result of their leadership, there are currently over 200 Indigenous doctors and another 300 or so in training across Australia.

Every wave starts with a ripple.

I was sitting in my college room listening to some tunes and got a phone call from Kristy Kennedy. Kristy would go on to be a lawyer and was one of those incredibly powerful and strong Aboriginal people breaking ground and picking up the flag from our ancestors. We walk in their footsteps.

“Jack, you’re pretty good at sport hey?”

“Yeah, I’m alright.” (Modesty was such a big thing for me back then…)

“Do you wanna be in our Indigenous Uni Games team for USYD?” “What is it?”

“We play touch footy, basketball, netball, and then a traditional game.”

“Where’s it at?”

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“Uni of New South just up the road is hosting it this year.”

“Yeah righto, I’ll play.”

Bluff called. No more hiding from the Koori Centre. Time to face up to the Baryulgil moment. Fuck. Are these guys gonna look at me and say, “He’s not black?” Do I go for the ‘blackfella’ handshake? Are they gonna be like, “Hey, we haven’t seen you around?”

Kristy doesn’t know it but that moment changed everything. It opened a door that would allow me to find peace with who I was.

I turned up and everyone was awesome and welcoming.

Some people had darker skin than me, some didn’t. Everyone was accepted. I remember thinking, “Hey they are just like me.” One lad who drew me in straightaway was Paul Sinclair.

He glowed with energy. Sinco was a dude and had us all laughing like a crop of kookaburras. Over the next few years, he became my most powerful influence of all as a mentor, role model, point of inspiration and leader. …

I’m currently sitting on Ocean Beach in San Diego. It’s 6.20pm, May 9, 2016. My laptop’s resting on a pair of aggressive mustard jeans. Headphones are in and I’m listening to Common’s ‘Glory’ on repeat. Looking out at the ocean while I gather my thoughts I peer across the horizon before my eyes return to the beach. Then something flies into my line of sight before swooping away, like a Swift migrating. I turn and see, no joke, a bloke throwing boomerangs…seems like the signal for us to dive into an Australian history lesson.

1770. Captain Cook lands. Australia is declared Terra Nullius – nobody’s land. Not a great start. When Governor 34

Arthur Phillip arrived with a fleet of convict ships in 1788 he asserted sovereignty based on the declaration made by Cook eighteen years earlier, despite seeing Aboriginal people along the foreshores as he sailed into what would later become Sydney Harbour. By default Terra Nullius classified Aboriginal people as ‘flora and fauna’.

As I mentioned earlier, Aboriginal Australia isn’t actually a thing. Pre-colonisation, the country was split into different nations, which have been estimated between 250 and 600 with 200-300 separate languages being spoken in more than 600 dialects. The invasion nailed different Aboriginal nations in different ways. There were huge massacres across the country in particular on the east coast during the early years.

There’s a place on the north coast of New South Wales, not far from where our family comes from, which got hit pretty hard. Mum retold this story of how after an incident on a farm where a shepherd had been killed, local Aboriginal families were chased by four armed men up to Bluff Rock, a huge rocky outcrop, and systematically pushed to their deaths.

There was remarkable cruelty towards and inhumane treatment of Australia’s Aboriginal people. This is not an uncommon story around the world for Indigenous people whose land was invaded during colonisation. It’s not an uncommon story for any group that has been subjected to war and had their land and lives taken away from them. Death, destruction, devastation.

There’s a common misconception that Aboriginal people in Australia didn’t fight back. That’s just straight up bullshit.

There were people like Pemulwuy, born in Sydney around 1750. Pemulwuy would go on to lead a resistance that brought different Aboriginal people together, and they’d raid settlers’ properties, burn crops, kill livestock. He was shot 35

seven times in a battle at Parramatta and survived. These guys were tough, proud warriors, standing up for their culture, history, land and future.

In the Kimberley, Western Australia, between 1894 and 1897 Jandamarra turned his back on his role as a tracker for the police and led a resistance against the colonisers. To the point where they almost retreated back to Perth. Since that time his story has been kept alive through songs and plays – a story of his ability to use guerrilla tactics, recover from injuries and evade his enemy. This is a tune from Paul Kelly about ‘Pigeon’.

‘Pigeon/Jandamarra’ My name is Officer O’Malley My job is hunting Pigeon down I don’t like this kind of work much I’m sick of sleeping on the ground Pigeon – that’s the name we gave him Pigeon used to be so tame Til one day he turned against his master Killed him, broke his brother’s chains Now Pigeon could track the Holy Spirit But he don’t leave no tracks at all I’ve been running round in circles I’ve been feeling like a fool Pigeon – that’s the name we gave him But he’s got another name It’s spreading all across the valleys Jandamarra! – like a burning flame

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One time we had him in a gully One time we had him in a cave Each time we closed in on our quarry Pigeon – that’s the name we gave him Pigeon – putting me to shame I do this job because I have to I don’t say that he’s to blame Jandamarra! – how I hate that name Aboriginal people fought back during those frontier years to resist and survive. And the fight didn’t stop.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Chief Protection Ministers of different states and territories across the country introduced a policy to remove Aboriginal kids of mixed heritage from their families, so that they could effectively ‘breed out the black’. It was the era of Darwinism where the theory held that only the strongest would survive. The rationale was that the British man, the white man, was the most evolved of the human species and had the strongest genes. The Aboriginal man was a native savage, closer to a Neanderthal than present-day humans, and therefore by removing a generation from their Aboriginality, the Australian Government would be doing Aboriginal people a great service in helping to fast track their evolution to a higher state of being.

And that was that.

This practice continued until the 1970s. The protection officers would swoop in on Aboriginal homes and communities, like an eagle collecting prey. They would fly in, scoop up a handful of kids, then drive them off into the distance to a new life on missions run by the church. Sometimes these kids were never to be seen by their families again.

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Mothers, fathers, families were petrified. As if being classified as flora and fauna wasn’t enough to bring you down, now if you were Aboriginal and of mixed heritage you were at risk of being stolen from your Mum or your Dad. The Australian Government was saying, in more ways than one, that being Aboriginal was the worst thing you could possibly be in Australia.

I have absolutely no idea how, in the face of all of this, so many heroes were able to stand strong, to not just survive but to break the mould. Today we stand on the shoulders of these giants.

Like Archie Roach and his late wife Ruby Hunter who used their experiences to bring healing to people across the country. Archie wrote this song, called ‘Took the Children Away’ about his experience as a victim of the Stolen Generations. It was released in 2005, the same year we started AIME. This story’s right, this story’s true I would not tell lies to you Like the promises they did not keep And how they fenced us in like sheep.

Said to us come take our hand Sent us off to mission land.

Taught us to read, to write and pray Then they took the children away, Took the children away, The children away.

Snatched from their mother’s breast Said this is for the best Took them away.

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The welfare and the policeman Said you’ve got to understand We’ll give them what you can’t give Teach them how to really live.

Teach them how to live they said Humiliated them instead Taught them that and taught them this And others taught them prejudice.

You took the children away The children away Breaking their mother’s heart Tearing us all apart Took them away One dark day on Framingham Come and didn’t give a damn My mother cried go get their dad He came running, fighting mad Mother’s tears were falling down Dad shaped up and stood his ground.

He said ‘You touch my kids and you fight me’ And they took us from our family.

Took us away They took us away Snatched from our mother’s breast Said this was for the best Took us away.

Told us what to do and say Told us all the white man’s ways Then they split us up again 39

And gave us gifts to ease the pain Sent us off to foster homes As we grew up we felt alone Cause we were acting white Yet feeling black One sweet day all the children came back The children come back The children come back Back where their hearts grow strong Back where they all belong The children came back Said the children come back The children come back Back where they understand Back to their mother’s land The children come back Back to their mother Back to their father Back to their sister Back to their brother Back to their people Back to their land All the children come back The children come back The children come back Yes I came back.

There were other heroes like my grandfather, Bill Bancroft, who served in WWII in Port Moresby, Rabaul and Madang and fought for a country that didn’t even recognise him as a 40

citizen, alongside the 5000 to 6000 Aboriginal soldiers who fought in the two World Wars.

Then there was the genius, the pure genius of David Unaipon, one of Australia’s earliest scientists. Unaipon’s face is on one side of our $50 note. He was born in 1872 and lived through one of the toughest periods of institutionalised discrimination, and despite those pretty significant challenges Unaipon took out provisional patents for 19 inventions, being unable to afford to get any of his inventions fully patented.

His most successful invention (provisional patent 15 624) was a shearing machine that converted curvilinear motion into a straight line movement, which is the basis of modern mechanical shears. This was introduced without Unaipon receiving any financial return or, apart from a 1910 newspaper report, acknowledgment as the inventor. He received no credit.

Other inventions included a centrifugal motor, a multi-radial wheel and a mechanical propulsion device. He was also known as the Australian ‘Leonardo da Vinci’ for his mechanical ideas, which included pre World War I drawings for a helicopter design, based on the principle of the boomerang. He also led research into the polarisation of light and spent much of his life attempting to achieve perpetual motion.

Then there were the heroes who staged our own civil rights movement. As Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Selma, and Nelson Mandela sat on Robben Island, our own warriors were rising up against the face of oppression.

Like Charlie Perkins in the 1960s who staged our own version of the Freedom Rides through country New South Wales, where the same apartheid-style divisions were at play.

No blacks allowed in the front bar, no blacks in the swimming pool etc. Charlie and his mates jumped into the pools, walked 41

into the bars, black and white together defying an archaic set of laws and societal norms.

Like Oodgeroo Noonuccal, born in 1920 on Stradbroke Island, just off the Queensland coast near Brisbane. Oodgeroo would go on to be one of the key voices urging Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1965 and his successor Harold Holt in 1966 to push for Aboriginal citizenship. She was also a pioneer writer, beginning with We Are Going (1964), the first book to be published by an Aboriginal woman. The title poem concludes: The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.

The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.

The bora ring is gone.

The corroboree is gone.

And we are going.

Incidentally, when I was a kid Mum illustrated a book with Oodgeroo called Stradbroke Dreamtime.

All of these people were breaking through. Providing a platform for us to follow. Trailblazers like Vincent Lingiari who was part of the Gurindji mob.

In the late 1960s Vincent was working with his people on the Wave Hill cattle station at the top of Australia, in the Northern Territory. The station was managed and run by a fella who went by the name of Lord Vestey.

Now the Gurindji people were working for nothing but rations and one day in 1966, Vincent said enough is enough.

He gathered his people and they walked off the job and sat down in a place called Wattie Creek, to commence the longest strike in Australian history.

Eight years in total.

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During that time Lord Vestey offered to double the men’s wages, to which Vincent replied, “We don’t want your wages, we want our land.”

The strike ended in 1975 with the Prime Minister of Australia heading up to Wattie Creek and handing over a deed to the land. As part of the handover Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand through Vincent’s fingers – one of the most powerful images of Australian history, charged with hope of a brighter future.

Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody sat down some 20-odd years later and penned Vincent’s story into a song. It’s called ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ (1991): ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ Gather round people I’ll tell you a story An eight year long story of power and pride British Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiari Were opposite men on opposite sides Vestey was fat with money and muscle Beef was his business, broad was his door Vincent was lean and spoke very little He had no bank balance, hard dirt was his floor From little things big things grow From little things big things grow Gurindji were working for nothing but rations Where once they had gathered the wealth of the land Daily the pressure got tighter and tighter Gurindji decided they must make a stand 43

They picked up their swags and started off walking At Wattie Creek they sat themselves down Now it don’t sound like much but it sure got tongues talking Back at the homestead and then in the town From little things big things grow From little things big things grow Vestey man said “I’ll double your wages Seven quid a week you’ll have in your hand” Vincent said “Uhuh we’re not talking about wages We’re sitting right here till we get our land” Vestey man roared and Vestey man thundered “You don’t stand the chance of a cinder in snow!”

Vince said “If we fall others are rising” From little things big things grow From little things big things grow Then Vincent Lingiari boarded an aeroplane Landed in Sydney, big city of lights And daily he went round softly speaking his story To all kinds of men from all walks of life And Vincent sat down with big politicians “This affair”, they told him, “it’s a matter of state Let us sort it out, your people are hungry” Vincent said “No thanks, we know how to wait” From little things big things grow From little things big things grow

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Then Vincent Lingiari returned in an aeroplane Back to his country once more to sit down And he told his people “Let the stars keep on turning We have friends in the south, in the cities and towns” Eight years went by, eight long years of waiting Til one day a tall stranger appeared in the land And he came with lawyers and he came with great ceremony And through Vincent’s fingers poured a handful of sand From little things big things grow From little things big things grow That was the story of Vincent Lingiari But this is the story of something much more How power and privilege cannot move a people Who know where they stand and stand in the law From little things big things grow From little things big things grow In 1967 a referendum was passed with a 90% ‘yes’ vote that finally included Aboriginal people as part of the census. People were standing up. Black and white together, marching as one on the road to the Holy Grail, which included the battle for land rights.

In the 1970s a Tent Embassy was set up outside Parliament House in the nation’s capital, to push for land rights, to recognise Aboriginal land. Even though Aboriginal people were now counted in the census and recognised as citizens, Terra Nullius still held true. It was written in law that Australia was unoccupied land when Captain Cook arrived a couple of hundred years earlier.

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This simply denied Aboriginal history. It denied 60,000 years of continuous history – the oldest continuous surviving culture in the world. Think about that. The oldest, continuous, surviving culture in the world – denied.

The longest surviving culture in a country where almost everything kills you – ask Crocodile Dundee. One of the most dangerous places on the planet, where an Ice Age had shot through some 20,000 years before Cook landed. Despite the best efforts of nature, in one of the toughest climates in the world, Aboriginal people not only survived but thrived. Yet that history was still denied.

But cracks were appearing. Through Vincent’s battle the Gurindji were awarded title of their land in the Northern Territory. This was then being used as a precedent for the establishment of land councils around the country.

Yet Terra Nullius still held as law right up until 1992.

When a man by the name of Eddie Mabo took the Australian Government to the High Court to claim right to ownership of his land in the Torres Strait Islands.

Often you’ll hear people talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders being Indigenous to Australia. That’s true – the Aboriginal people are the mainland people, including Tasmania. There’s also a bunch of islands at the top of the country where Indigenous people live. Off the coast of North Queensland is a group of islands called the Torres Strait Islands. This is part of Australia but home to a different set of Indigenous people called Torres Strait Islanders. This is where Eddie was from.

Long story short, Eddie won. The High Court upheld the Mabo case, native title was granted to Eddie’s people and Terra Nullius was erased from Australian law and history. As I write this there are some outstanding legal battles yet to 46

be won, such as obtaining a treaty, or securing constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people. There remains more to be done.

During the 1970s, 80s and 90s Australia started to value Aboriginal people more. We weren’t coming from a high base that’s for sure, but things were moving forward.

There was a growing sentiment that Australia’s relationship with Aboriginal people was not good enough and many white people were marching alongside Aboriginal people in an effort to create change.

More and more Indigenous role models were breaking through, for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike.

During the 20th century, the first Indigenous person graduated with a university degree. Aboriginal people were more prominent in theatre and dance and also in music, with breakthrough moments like the global smash hit ‘Treaty’ from Yothu Yindi. The Aboriginal Medical and Legal Services were set up. Aboriginal people lit up the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) landscapes and a generation of contemporary Aboriginal artists rose up, of which my Mum was one.

By the time I was born there were a lot of positive stories around, but still the majority of Australians, and many Indigenous people, bought into the self-perpetuating myth that was told over again and again – Aboriginal disadvantage was too complex a challenge to overcome, Aboriginal people are great natural athletes and artists, but school wasn’t for them. A sense of hopelessness persisted.

As I sat on a mound of timeless grass at Moore Park in eastern Sydney, a few hundred metres from my old high school, I was captivated by what I saw. I watched my generation gathering for Indigenous Uni Games, 100 or so 47

students running around – students of medicine, law, science, engineering, philosophy and teaching. Many of these guys still spoke their local languages, many were super-connected to their culture and story, and others were at the beginning of their journey of identity.

Amongst the diversity of experience, I simply couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t know there were this many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander university students out there. I sat there thinking, “Man, there are more Indigenous uni students here than there are professional Indigenous Rugby League players. That means Indigenous kids are more likely to be uni students than they are to be Rugby League players. This is a story that has to be told.”

We ended up winning the Games and the rights to host it at The University of Sydney the following year. I put my hand up to help organise it. We were going to tell this story.

My first year of uni came to a close. I felt like my big idea was just around the corner. …

“What colour do you want today, Darling?”

“Let’s go with gold sparkles, Deb.” Deb Kirby-Parsons, one of the support staff at the Koori Centre, would bring in nail polish for our chats, so I could paint my nails while sharing my latest idea or dream. As I brushed the gold sparkles across the fingernail on my left pinky I shared with Deb what I thought the Indigenous Uni Games could be.

“We’ve gotta make this big. Make it the biggest Games yet. Get 200 uni students there and shine a spotlight on them. Show people the generation of Indigenous students 48

creating a new mould and storyline around Aboriginality.

We can shatter the current media stereotype or storyline on Aboriginal people being either athletes, artists or drunks.

In class the other day I jotted this down in one of my lecture books: This has gotta be huge. Imagine if we had it in the centre of Sydney Uni, and every uni student could see the Games going on – they would start to have a moment like I had a year before. And then we could finish with a huge event, musicians, singers, and then… what if we had 1000s of people there and we all sang that song: “We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come, we share a dream, and sing with one voice, I am, you are, we are Australian.”

“Go for it Darling.”

We didn’t end up doing the song, but I was starting to dream, to imagine what’s possible. Once you flick this switch on, good luck ever getting it to turn off.

Deb was one of those people who would get excited and say, “Why not, Darling!”, or “That’s incredible.” If we’d been in a drama improv class, DKP would have subscribed to the ‘Yes, and…’ philosophy in place of the ‘No, but…’.

I’m over it. If we want Australia to be a truly happy place we should say yes more. We should challenge ourselves every day to imagine what’s possible. To encourage people to dream. To not be afraid of ideas. Shouldn’t we all aim to encourage other people’s dreams come to life, and have the same happen for us?

‘Gotta keep him grounded you know…’ Why? Do we try to stop birds from flying? Or planes from taking off? …

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It doesn’t matter whether you are organising a gathering of kids in primary school…a disco at school…yeah man, discos are back. No matter what the arena, when you organise people to be part of something you are honing the same skills that a Martin Luther King Jr or Nelson Mandela used to change a nation. The only difference being they have a bigger microphone, a bigger stage and they’ve reached Splinter ninja level.

The Indigenous University Games were part of my early training while the mic wasn’t turned on.

Swap signing on Google for pitching to a bar owner in Kings Cross to host the after party for free.

Instead of locking in 18 universities to funding partnerships, I was seeing if the Student Rep Council could kick us some free lunches.

Replace the 5000-odd uni students we signed up to volunteer at AIME since 2005 with the 15 we locked in to help referee the Uni Games and provide support on the day.

Instead of getting Australian Story on board, we got The Footy Show.

In the place of the 10,000+ kids who have been through the AIME program, and their 300+ schools, we got two schools along to the final day of the Indigenous Uni Games – 20 Year 9 kids.

Same skills, smaller mic. Don’t ever underestimate the time you spend training for what lies ahead. It all adds up.

On the final day of the Games I witnessed the moment that changed everything for me.

Lights, Camera, Action!

“You kids can be anything, you just gotta work hard, and you know what, education is the key.”

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Me, Dean Widders (pro Rugby League player) and a couple of other Indigenous uni students echoed this sentiment as we spoke to the 20 youngsters.

The Footy Show cameras were rolling and afterwards the producer said to me, “That was brilliant mate, it seemed like those kids were hooked by the uni students as much as Deano.”

The AIME baby was starting to hatch. …

Got to give us what we want Gotta give us what we need Our freedom of speech is freedom or death We got to fight the powers that be Lemme hear you say Fight the power — ‘Fight the Power’, Public Enemy PR is a joke. During our subject on PR our lecturer opened with, “Your priority is to your client, to getting them exposure, no matter what the cost…”

Any chance of providing some ethical frameworks, punk?

It frustrated me so much that for my final exam (can’t remember what the question was) I wrote a paper on how unethical the subject was. I used Aristotle’s Ethics, Rousseau’s Social Contract theory, and even quoted the lecturer back to himself.

My premise was: this was a degree in journalism, so we should be teaching principles whereby the fourth estate could be strong and pushing us all to strive to be the moral compass for the populace, to help them understand the issues of our time, to keep power accountable, and be a voice of reason.

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I was getting punchy. Wasn’t sure where to direct the passion, but I was starting to stand up for my beliefs. …

True friends are like diamonds precious and rare…

— Ari Joseph “Yeah braaaaaaaaa.”

“What’s that, Clarky?”

“Braaaaaaaa.”

“Oi, Sinco, what’s wrong with this lad?”

“I dunno, man.”

Without Clark Webb and Paul Sinclair AIME would be nothing and you know what, so would I. The lads helped me be me.

It’s the best feeling ever when people accept you for who you are and that was heightened for me when I had Aboriginal friends who accepted me and my story. That’s what Clarky and Sinco did – they made me feel like I belonged. Like my Aboriginality was legit.

When I first met Clark at a pub near the Uni I remember being a bit shy and quiet – I was still working through feeling confident in my Aboriginality. Webby was pretty quiet himself. His recollection is something along the lines of: “I remember meeting Jack and he was pretty reserved at first. We met at a pub. Then he came and watched me play footy and we started to spend more time together. We became best mates pretty quickly. That’s when he suddenly turned into an idiot. It’s like he flicks a switch from quiet and reserved to crazy and hyperactive.”

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I was starting to gather my army for the war ahead. When you set out on a battle to change things, your soldiers, warriors and generals are your friends and family.

If they are weak, or your connections to them are weak, you won’t survive the heat of the battle. Clarky, Kabs, Sinco, Hangers, Deb; they were making me stronger. Every single day.

I was already lucky to have a loving and caring Mum and Dad who would do anything for me, and a younger sister Ella who would fight for me and stand by me.

I also had some super-loyal school friends, Viv, Dave, Ham, Shane, Steve, Tom, Ben. They all played their part.

There were a couple of cricket mates too, in particular Sam Perry, who would go on to have a huge role at AIME. Without people by your side you are nothing Your friends and family are your power They are the ones who will run into battle with you They are your soldiers They are your army They are your strength They push you They challenge you They know you They break you They make you They bake your ideas with you They make Your dreams Come To Life.

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…

That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across Greenbow County.

And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d I’d just run across the great state of Alabama. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going.

I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.

— Forrest Gump Life has been a bit of a Forrest Gump marathon over the last 12 years. Friends and family have run along for different stints, a day, a week, a year, the whole distance.

Along the way I’ve lost friendships, lost love, lost relationships. Why? Because I just kept running. I kept pushing people close to me. I kept asking for more. “C’mon.”

“Keep up.” “Run faster.”

Often people would say, “I’m tired man, I’m gonna take a rest.”

When they stopped running I felt rejected.

I was harsh in reply, often telling people they’d ‘sold out’.

That was my own fear and insecurity seeping through.

I should have been more like Forrest, grateful for anyone and everyone willing to run just one step of the way with me.

I wonder whether that fear I have to keep running and keep pushing is why I’m still single.

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Am I sorry I’ve pushed people so hard? That I pushed people away?

Well, the hard thing is if I didn’t keep pushing people for more, the AIME train wouldn’t be where it is today.

Having my time again I’d continue to push as hard as I did. But I think if I could play it back once more, I’d learn to be more thankful, accepting and understanding when people hopped off the train. Easier said than done when your back’s to the wall, but I’d try.

No one can ever know – truly, deeply know – how alone you are, when you set out to run into a new world.

It’s the choice you make when you tread untrodden ground. Leadership carries the unenviable burden of isolation. That’s why it’s so important to cherish anyone who is willing to help lift that burden, even for a moment, along the way. …

Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson After the Indigenous Uni Games I got an email from the Dean of Engineering asking if I’d like to go to lunch.

It was one of my earliest engagements with power.

We went to the business function area at the Uni. It felt so weird. The maître d’ looked me up and down as if I was lost (they still do!). I mumbled the name the reservation was under and was closely escorted to my table.

“So Jack, tell me your story. How’s the scholarship going?”

I spoke about my journey and gave a scholarship update.

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“It sounds like you’re in a great place. Listen, one of the big challenges we face is, we have a scholarship for an Indigenous student, which has been vacant for the last 10 years. There are huge discrepancies in the field of engineering between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people – even more pronounced than the existing inequality. Do you think it’s because Aboriginal kids are not engaging with maths and science? Why do you think we can’t fill this scholarship? How do we get more Indigenous kids into uni? More students like you? More kids to do engineering?”

I thought, “Fuck mate, I’m 18 years old and trying to pass my second year of uni, what do you want from me?”

I think I may have mumbled something around not being sure. We finished lunch and went our separate ways.

Not long after, I was in the Koori Centre, painting my nails with Deb, talking to Curtis about The Simpsons, retelling the story to Deb about my lunch with the Dean.

“So why do you think it is, Darling?”

“It’s cos kids aren’t getting through school.” …

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

— Nelson Mandela The back end of 2004 was operation ‘Get Smart’. Hours upon hours in the Koori Centre Library pouring through books and films, watching Rabbit Proof Fence, getting angry about the Stolen Generations, understanding Charlie’s Freedom Rides, reading Blood on the Wattle, engaging with the history wars – people writing about, versus people denying Aboriginal history, strength and occupation. In my college room I poured 56

over Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, watched docos on Martin Luther, fixated on Malcolm X and Ali, and analysed Rosa Parks and Gandhi.

What did these guys have? How did they do it?

I remember one quote from Mandela; Education is the most powerful tool you have that can change the world.

That spoke to me.

Mandela, like so many of the greats who have changed the world, was angry as he grew up. He was angry at the inequality, at the apathy. I felt that so intensely. I could feel the rage burning but had no idea how to express it.

Then I looked at Nelson’s full story. Twenty-seven years in jail. Oppressed. Rejected. Denigrated. Abused. Hated. His response? He came out of it glowing, with open eyes, an open heart, and looked at his oppressor and said, “I will not only forgive you but I will lead you through your guilt to a new dawn.”

How do you do that? How do you have that class?

Vision? Perspective? Energy? How does anyone have that much heart, let alone the ability to separate your own experiences and pain from the bigger picture? How do you rise above it all? After taking all of those hits? How do you stay positive and hopeful?

He was my guy. …

“What colour today, Darling?”

“Let’s go with blue.”

“What’s news, Sweetie?”

“I think I’ve got an idea.”

“What is it?”

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“Well you know how on the last day of the Games we had the kids come in, and The Footy Show was there, with me and Deano and a couple of other students talking?”

“Yeah I remember. It was beautiful to see the kids with their faces painted listening to you all talking…How good is Bronny for coming down to paint faces?”

“Yep she’s a keeper… I’ve been thinking about that scene a bit Deb. I think there’s something in it. Aboriginal kids hang off the words of rugby league players in NSW. They listen to famous people, right? Well what if we could expose them to a new generation of role models, a different class of heroes. So instead of looking up to rappers or athletes, they aspire to be writers or engineers, astronauts or lawyers.”

“How would you do it?”

“Well kind of like what we did with that final session of the Games. Have activities that the kids participate in, where uni students are their mentors and we could help the kids see that there is a different way forward – that they could get through school. We could have Indigenous and non-Indigenous mentors, and people from all over the world working with them, so they could see that people outside their own postcode cared about them. We could open up their minds. It would be a mentoring program.”

“Darling, I absolutely love it. I’m getting goosebumps just listening to you.”

“Okay, leave it with me.” …

“Oi Kabs, I reckon I’m gonna try to start a mentoring program for high school Aboriginal kids next year – running off the back of the Indigenous Uni Games.”

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“Sounds cool.”

“Where do I get the cash from to make it work?”

“How much do you need?”

“No idea, but I want to take the kids to see different things, maybe bring them on to campus for activities and workshops, maybe we’ll do something with the NRL as a reward. So I suppose we’ll need some cash for transport. And shirts – we’ll need some kit so people know about us.”

“I’ll do some research.” …

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, how many times must the cannonballs fly Before they’re forever banned?

— ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, Bob Dylan My old man marched against the Vietnam War and against apartheid. His generation showed how universities could be the birthplaces of revolutions.

University has stopped being that space. When I was there we protested against the Iraq war, but it kind of felt like we were doing what we were ‘meant’ to do, just following what had been done before. There wasn’t that same energy that I could hear in Dad’s voice when he talked about smuggling a couple of black South African blokes off a ship in Newcastle and taking them into a local bar.

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I think our generation was definitely looking for something. In fact I think everyone that goes to university in one way or another wants to think they can be one of the minds that shapes the direction of the world. Sydney Uni as the oldest university in Australia was renowned as a house of ideas, a place you could sit at the bar and talk about the world’s problems, but then be crazy enough to think you can solve them. It was home to stories about future stars sitting alone at the back of the uni bar writing lyrics while everyone laughed at them. It was a place where future prime ministers honed their skills. A place where greatness had come before.

Surely I could tap into that energy, create something unique for our generation. Something we could own. Could we be the generation that helped end Indigenous inequality and we did it during our time at university? And then we changed the world with that same attitude?

Maybe I was getting somewhere… this could be a chance to make history, which I think all of us want. We want to leave something behind that’s bigger than us. A legacy we can be proud of during our time on earth. I also think instead of blaming the system for being broken, with time on our side, young people can stand up to own the solution.

If the premise holds true that the machine is broken, that more and more people are being shot into power as more and more people are being shot into powerlessness, maybe, just maybe, with the innocence of Dorothy clicking her heels, we had stumbled across one of the key cogs that, with a little click click, could be shifted to produce a more equal world.

That cog, was university. …

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“Bro, I’ve been doing some research.”

“Into what?”

“I’ve checked out the University of Sydney Union and SRC websites. If you get yourself elected as the Indigenous Convenor for the Union and the Indigenous SRC rep then you get a $2K budget for both.”

“Oh mate, does that mean I’m gonna have to sit in those meetings?”

“Maybe a couple… but we could do events… parties at Manning Bar… By the way, isn’t it odd the bar has the same name as you?”

“Must be a sign… Alright bro, I’ll go for the gigs to get the cash. What have I gotta do?”

“I’ll nominate you, you turn up, get voted in and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Man, this is a stitch up. And my uncle’s name is Chris.”

“You said you wanted to work out how to get some cash.

And there’s one more thing – if you set up a club or society then you can get free venues and put on events. We can also make those concerts we’ve been talking about.”

“Look at you bringing me joyful administrative opportunities. What a dream.”

“There’ll be more of this, bro.”

“I know Kabs, thanks.”

I hung up my yellow Nokia 5110 and was on my way to being elected to the USU and the SRC and founding Klub Koori – a place for all Australians to come together. …

New Year’s Eve 2004. We’ve wrangled a place under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and managed to rustle up a couch 61

as well. It’s a cracking arvo, everyone starts drinking. There are eight of us. All guys. Most of them start taking drugs. I keep drinking.

By 9pm we all have to piss, big time. So one of the guys has the idea of using the corner of the couch. And when you’re drinking and break the seal it’s like having a limitless river of urine seeking a hasty exit from the building.

My thoughts started to turn dark.

What the fuck were we doing here? All these people work their arses off during the year and for what?

So the government can put on a few fireworks and pump millions of dollars into a night of bang bang? And we leave with what? A quick smile, some ‘ooh ahhh’ and then head back to our disappointing lives making money for someone else and drifting through the circus that is life. It’s all bullshit.

I shared some of my thoughts with the boys. They were happy to leave me be with the piss couch. Apparently the two of us were dampening the mood. …

In summing up, it’s the constitution, it’s Mabo, it’s justice, it’s law, it’s the vibe, and… no that’s it… it’s the vibe. I rest my case.

— Dennis Denuto, The Castle Okay, if I’m gonna have a shot at getting people under the Klub Koori banner I’ve gotta make it entertaining, gotta create a vibe.

‘Indigenous Australia’ and ‘cool’ are not words you hear uni students saying together very often.

I felt like I had to get some new values and emotions connected to Indigenous Australia, to the flag, to the colours.

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My primary target audience was non-Indigenous people. I’d done a reasonable level of maths in school and the numbers just didn’t add up.

Three percent of the population in Australia is Indigenous.

The other number is 97. So tell me this; how, in any contest, is three gonna beat 97? It’s not. I had to get the 97 re-energised, engaged and connected to the Indigenous narrative. Find a way for all Australians to see Indigenous Australia as part of their national identity. Their story. Their history. We made wristbands, one I’m still wearing that reads, “Our Country, Our History, Our Future.”

As the University’s O Week was approaching I was thinking about how to get these cats at uni to want to engage.

“Hello, it’s Viv speaking.”

“Mate, I’ve got an idea. I wanna make a promo video for O Week. We can take my tele in and have it rolling as a DVD at our stall. I’ll shoot it and edit it.”

“Okay…”

“So I reckon I’m gonna interview a bunch of people I know and ask them some questions about who they are, what they think of Indigenous Australia, their relationship to Aboriginal people, what they want the country to be and so on.”

“Sounds cool.”

“Sweet, so I’ll interview you.”

“Aah, yeah, okay.”

“And I was thinking we’ve gotta make uni students want to stop and watch it… So we should splice it with heaps of ridiculous shit. Stuff that makes no sense, like the Jackass/ Johnny Knoxville stuff. And that’s where I need you mate.

I wanna film you having a bath in Sydney’s CBD in your undies, also walking through our major local shopping 63

market in your undies, and then I wanna throw a basketball at your nuts…”

“Are you serious?”

“C’mon mate, don’t be a dick, we’re talking about trying to change the world here.”

“I can’t believe I’m gonna do this.”

“Sweet mate, we’ll shoot tomorrow, you tha man.”

Guy hit in balls, that old chestnut. Now we needed to make some noise.

I first met Haim Ayalon properly when he was in the same home class as me in Year 9.

“Hey man.”

“Hi.” “Do you wanna buy some laser pointers?”

“Mmm, no?”

Haim was importing the weirdest shit and trying to flog it to everyone from the age of 13. He was an entrepreneurial lad who had his mind set on making cash money. One day I remember him walking around with headphones on, bopping his head to the rhythm of DJ Sammy’s ‘Heaven’. One of the guys asked what he was listening to and he just kept bopping and didn’t reply. The guy then reached into Haim’s pocket.

There was no Discman, no Walkman (yep, pre iPod/iPhone and proud of it), he was just rocking straight headphones.

Fake it till you make it!

By the time we were 19 Haim was a DJ and agreed to pull together a mix for O Week.

We had ourselves a DJ, the loudest speakers possible and a rolling screen of a guy getting hit in the nuts. Klub Koori was away.

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Enter Adam Linforth …

“I remember looking over at this skinny idiot with disgusting hair, wearing knee-high white socks and a singlet as if he was the biggest hitter in the world. And I was like who is this knob? Then he yelled out, ‘Oi Linny, what’s happening?’

It was Jack who I’d met a few years back at a school formal.

We had a quick chat and he got me to sign up for Klub Koori, which I was keen for.”

Eleven years on, Linny recently finished up full-time employment with AIME. I wrote this as a farewell note on Facebook, reflecting on our time together: It is a rare thing to meet someone who changes your life.

To find someone who lights up a room with their smile and spirit. To know a friend willing to give it all up and chase the most ridiculous dreams with you.

It is a rare thing to meet someone who will buy you a bus ticket on their first day of work. Someone who will share the rejection with you. Someone who in the face of hardship, will strut through it with you.

It is rare to find a brother.

Today we farewell one of the true gems.

Adam Linforth joined me at AIME as a mentor in 2006, ’07 and ’08. He volunteered to do the bookkeeping in 2008, and late one night on a dance floor I convinced him to pack up his job at ANZ to come and be our Finance Director in 2009. His very prudent mother made sure that he signed a legitimate contract, but Adam and I both knew that we didn’t have the money to pay him for the full year. So it was time to get cracking.

Since then Linny has never left my side. He’s been one of the true heroes of this story. Egoless, humble, hard-working, 65

kind, generous, weird, uniquely brilliant, consistently highperforming and a joy for everyone who comes in contact with him.

Put simply, AIME would not exist today without Adam Linforth. From 2008–10 there were plenty of moments when I didn’t know if I’d be able to go on, but Linny was always there to answer the call. Over the years he’s led our Finance and Partnering teams with passion, intelligence, wisdom, warmth and desire. Together we’ve raised close to $50 million for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids. He’s made it possible for us all to walk the talk of building a better tomorrow.

Linny’s rap sheet includes: running the second biggest swimwear parade ever (I swear we were only 50 off hitting the World Record in that first year), bringing on 18 universities, signing up some of Australia’s leading corporations, gaining the respect of some of the toughest negotiators in the country, leading us to four unqualified audits from KPMG and doing it all in a pair of flip flops, board shorts and, for a lot of the time, a weird mullet fusion hairdo. He built this city.

Adam, your respect, true deep respect and connection to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and our history is just so awesome.

This country and world could do with a few more Adam Linforths.

My commitment to you, my friend, my brother, is that our team, our mentors that follow in your footsteps, our mentees whose lives you have lit up by your work, all of us, we will make you proud and build that country you and I have been dreaming of.

Thank you for everything.

Without people like this by your side, you are nothing.

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…

The rain is flowing wildly, healing the scars of the pain that had come before. As he looks out across the Serengeti, Simba allows himself a moment to reflect on his return home. He reflects on the destruction that has unfolded while he was away. He soaks in the battle that has just taken place, a battle from which he has emerged victorious. As Timon, Pumbaa, Nala and Sarabi watch on, Rafiki beckons. Simba obliges and walks up to Pride Rock. He embraces Rafiki who says, “It is time.”

As I entered my third year of uni and went back to Paul’s, it was time. Time to have a bit of a harder look at the man in the mirror and face the chip I had on my shoulder about privilege.

I didn’t want to have to look deeper. I wanted a binary. A way out. I just wanted someone to blame for all the pain and hurt that had happened to Indigenous people in Australia. I wanted someone to direct my anger at. I wanted an enemy, a bad guy. Someone to look at and go, “You did this!” Up until that point I blamed the guys at college, I blamed privilege.

Right, wrong, good, bad… my friends, these ain’t black and white ideas, it ain’t that simple.

I was a dick to a lot of people at college. I was rude, obnoxious, dismissive, arrogant and righteous. I thought I was right, morally superior, and that they just didn’t get it.

It’s kind of like a drug, to be able to feel that power of righteousness. To feel morally superior.

On Wednesday College Nights as Kabs and I stood on the balcony of the Grandstand Bar overlooking Oval No. 1, I’d set people up.

“What do you want to do with your life?”

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“I dunno, I’m studying Law, so I’m looking to be a lawyer.

What about you?”

“I’m gonna change the world.”

But I’d say it with an air of ‘you wouldn’t understand, you just give a shit about yourself’. I was convinced no one got me. It was infantile.

I had passion, no doubt, but I was using that passion to divide people instead of uniting them. I was creating binaries and opposition before I’d even got out the gate.

I would later learn, the hard way, that you will come across opposition, really serious opposition that will challenge your very core and being. In times like that you want as many people with you as possible.

My viewpoint was screwed – if you hadn’t been through adversity, if you weren’t Aboriginal, or different, or hadn’t marched through the streets, then you would never get it.

I was wrong. Really wrong.

If I maintained that view of the world AIME would have either folded or become a self-righteous non-profit filled with people who would be preaching to the converted, telling each other how fantastic we were as change-makers, and doing very little to change the game beyond stroking egos.

I was flawed. My problems with privilege were my problems. Not those whom I directed my anger towards.

In 2004 I played the critical match in a tennis tournament against Wesley College. If I won it would seal the deal for us to win the Rawson Cup, which meant some free parties and serious street cred. I imploded and kept hitting the ball out. I went down 6–4, 6–4.

As I walked towards the net to shake my opponent’s hand I was so angry that I looked at the net post and thought, “I’m just gonna throw my racquet at it and break this thing.”

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I loaded up, then sent the racquet towards said net post, yet, I hadn’t calculated the possibility of a late wrist cock.

Misdirected from its original target the racquet flew away from the net post at pace and like a missile, zeroed in on my teammate. Flying through the air it felt like an age before it reached its final destination; my teammate’s nuts. He buckled.

There was a collective ‘oooooooh’ from the crowd. Everyone froze. I walked head down and shook the victor’s hand, then wandered back to my courtside seat next to my teammate and said, “Sorry Christian,” head still bowed.

To make matters worse, to win the tie, Christian now had to beat their number one seed – a semi pro player from the States. As he was helped up by three guys and carried off to the toilets, I wanted to disappear. He pissed blood.

I have never ridden a game of tennis harder, even when Rafter won the US Open. Christian started on fire and went up 5–0. Was this happening? I was gonna get away with it!

Final scorecard 5–7, 0–6. We lost the tennis and the Rawson Cup. That night, as is tradition with a lot of Australian sporting teams, we had a session of ‘Kangaroo Court’, where teammates charge each other for the things they have said or done during the course of the campaign. If the charges stick you drink. The boys walked in, gave me a bottle of Black Sambuca and said, “Drink that Jack.” For once, I didn’t talk back. Guilty as charged.

Tell you what’s a great drug to hide behind when you’ve got powerful emotions of doubt, insecurity and anger pumping through your body? Alcohol… yeah right.

At the end of the team bonding session we went to our college bar, the Salisbury, a little sandstone nook hidden underneath the college. Nick Edelman, one of the nicest guys 69

at Paul’s, came up to me, shook my hand and said, “Mate, bad luck today,” to which I replied, “You don’t mean that, you’re just full of shit like everyone else here.”

I walked out to the back of the bar, shitfaced, jumped on top of a beer keg, stuck both middle fingers in the air and yelled out, “Fuck you all, you’re all a bunch of pretentious cunts.”

The rich and powerful are often, very often, part of the cause of inequality – just the nature of the beast. The latest figures tell us that one percent of the world’s population own half of the world’s wealth.

It is also true that a bunch of these lads were pretentious, they were rich, they were privileged, and it felt like many of them didn’t really care about other people’s misfortune.

But was that gonna change by me abusing them? Blaming them? Judging them?

I kept carrying the same thought around with me and wearing it like a badge of honour; “No one gives a fuck.”

Then a new thought eventually started to creep in. “You know why, Jack? Maybe it’s because you’re not giving them a chance to care.”

It’s exactly the same to have low expectations of Indigenous kids as it is to have low expectations of rich people or people from privileged backgrounds. If you expect the worst of people, you better believe they’ll deliver it in spades. But if you open your heart and expect the best, they will deliver.

And it will threaten you down to your very bones because everything you think you know suddenly gets flipped on its head. We are all guilty of defining people through stereotypes.

The black kid says this, the athlete behaves like this, the chess player looks like this … we create these. And you know what?

We can also shatter them.

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What I hadn’t understood was that to remove the huge divide of inequality we needed to connect the powerful with the powerless. We had to humanise it and reduce the distance between the two.

If you want to try and change the world, you’ll get nowhere without providing a way for polarising forces to come together.

With high expectations, you can remove the mountains of excuses that halt human progress.

Years later, in 2012, our national public free-to-air television station screened a 30-minute documentary on my personal journey as part of a series called Australian Story.

After it aired I was in a pub in Sydney in the lead-up to the Christmas holidays. A bunch of Paul’s boys from my year were there, including Nick Edelman. He said, “Jack it’s so awesome what you’ve been able to do with AIME. I watched Australian Story and we’re all really proud of you. But one thing that I can’t get out of my head is the line where you said, “If I can get a Paul’s boy to connect with AIME and Indigenous Australia, I feel like I can get anyone. What does that mean?”

I mumbled an answer along the lines that I felt that the Paul’s boys represented a powerful force of privilege that often didn’t connect with social issues, or something like that.

Right now, this very minute as I write, is the first time I’ve had absolute clarity on this.

Why did I feel that if I could connect a Paul’s boy to AIME I could connect anyone?

Because I would have beaten my Kryptonite.

I could let go of my misguided obsession with blaming the powerful. I could stop searching for someone to project my insecurities and pain on to. I could stop looking for an easy target to hold accountable for a world that didn’t make sense.

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I was the reason I couldn’t connect the Paul’s boys with AIME. My thinking was flawed.

The day I could stand with an open mind, an open heart and open arms to the Paul’s boys, in the same way I did for the kids coming to AIME, I would become a much better version of myself. I had to learn to look beyond where people had come from and zoom in on who they were in that moment in time, and more importantly, where they could go.

That’s when AIME and I would become limitless in our capacity to create change. I would then truly understand what Rudyard Kipling meant when he said, “If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a man my son.”

Many Paul’s boys, alumni, friends and family have played critical roles for AIME, for me, and for our country. The moment I learned to open up myself and expect the best of myself, and them, the guys were so good for it.

Our current chairperson, a former Paul’s boy, Geoff Lovell, has been on the AIME Board since the beginning. He’s walked through Sydney in his swimwear, filmed a clip as a Bee Gee, and been a hugely reliable cornerstone of our growth.

Paul’s College has hosted our staff for free when they’ve travelled to Sydney from all around the country for learning and development workshops, they’ve put on lunches for the kids at the end of the program year, they’ve set up Indigenous scholarships and even given me free parking on campus from time to time!

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Hundreds of Paul’s boys have mentored with AIME since I left the college and worn our hoodie with pride. Many more have been fundraisers, donors and public ambassadors.

Hugh Tancred, one of the lads from my year at College wrote to me not long ago saying he felt like he wished he could have done more for AIME. As a result of our convo Hugh organised our first ever international gala event in New York. To be frank it’s been incredibly humbling to see how proud the College has been of me and of AIME – we have been featured in many newsletters and our achievements have been celebrated. For that I am most thankful.

I also want to thank everyone from St Paul’s College for the patience shown me during my time of personal and professional growth and development. Thank you for giving me the space for this. Thanks for not punching me in the head. And thank you for proving me wrong by showing me that, if given the chance, we all want to see change.

Thank you for showing me how to unlock a force that can change a country and the world.

Thank you for teaching me one of the most important lessons of my life – to expect the best.

Thank you for helping me, in Kipling’s words, grow from a boy to a man. …

Just after O Week 2005 I was training with Sam Perry and was working out what to do with the budget from the USU and SRC. Take it away Mr Perry…

“Jack and I found ourselves practising together at the Sydney University cricket nets, no doubt convincing each other that this was ‘our season’. We would toil away, 73

competing with the necessary ferocity, each honing the other for our eventual cricketing greatness.

But as it is with cricket, ‘the nets’ were also a time to chat about our lives that remained outside the game, too. We were, after all, a couple of years out of school – there was a lot about life that was very new, not least university, where we both studied at Sydney.

In the course of one of these mid-net conversations, Jack mentioned that he was facing a dilemma.

‘This scholarship’s given me a little bit of money to spend,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got a couple of ideas.’

‘Go on,’ I said. Even at that age Jack was always good for an entertaining project, or hair-brained scheme.

‘I’ve narrowed it down to two choices. One: a mentoring program that matches uni students with Indigenous high school kids from the local area. I reckon both groups would hugely benefit from the other’s experience. They can get on each other’s level.’

I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember thinking it sounded pretty good.

He continued. ‘The second: there’s a party on every night here in Sydney, except for one. Tuesdays. There’s no party on Tuesday night. I reckon I can corner the Tuesday night market. I’d call it Tempting Tuesdays.’

‘What do you reckon?’ he said.

‘I reckon the first one is better,’ I replied.

To this day I’ve always claimed some responsibility for guiding Jack to the creation of AIME. And whether that’s true or not, I think he made the right decision.” …

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It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.

— David Allan Coe “Jack, Darling, a student popped in the other day and said he was wondering if there were any mentoring programs that were going on and if he could get involved. We mentioned that you were looking into something, he left his details and said he’d love to help.”

Tom Ward was the lad – a med student, a gentleman and (Rhodes) scholar. We caught up a few times and spoke about the idea I had. He said he’d be more than keen to help with pulling together the research and getting some documentation behind it.

You often hear people say that you need to have a vision.

I think even more important than having a vision is saying it out loud to people. If I hadn’t spoken to Deb, when Tom walked into the Koori Centre she would have had no idea about the plan in my mind, Tom and I would have never met, and maybe AIME wouldn’t exist.

Don’t leave your dreams in your bottom drawer.

Tom and I first met at a small cafe in Sydney Uni called Ralph’s. I don’t drink coffee but man, have I been to a lot of ‘coffee catch ups’ over the last 12 years.

Ralph’s became our office. Over the next six months Tom introduced me to Hamish Dunn and Rashi Kalra, two of his fellow med students, and we also connected with Robin Shields, one of the Indigenous med students who offered us lots of advice.

Tom, Hamish and Rashi were godsends. They managed to get the ideas out of my head and onto paper and allowed the mania to make some sense. Together we nutted some 75

of the foundational ideas around the program rules, child protection and mentor clearances that were needed. Hamish got Baker and McKenzie, the law firm, on board to help with making sure our working with children processes were as tight as possible. They’ve been our legal partner ever since.

We landed on a couple of program rules that have remained part of the AIME DNA and will forever more.

In particular, ‘no contact outside the program’ and ‘the relationship between mentor and mentee starts and ends with the program’. We still also make it very clear with our volunteers that they are mentors, not saviours, and that AIME’s role is to build capacity so the kids are stronger after every session – like a car checking into a petrol station.

Another thing we recognised early was the power of evidence – results were king. If we couldn’t prove that the program was changing kids’ lives and keeping them in school, then we should walk away. There were enough smiley-faced programs out there, we didn’t want to be another one.

We also wanted to create workshops that would help the kids navigate the world they were in, at the same time ramping up the fun factor. The final cog in the AIME wheel was mentor training. This was hugely important to us.

‘Perfect practice makes perfect’ would become our mantra.

With the ‘business’ case in our hands, all 14 A4 pages of it, we met with Janet Mooney, the Director of the Koori Centre at Sydney Uni. She was keen and offered to provide an introduction. “Well, one my close friends is the Deputy Principal at Alexandria Park Community School, and they’ve been asking for something like this. Deborah will tee up a meeting with Cathie Burgess and I’ll go along with you.” …

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Alex Park. Debut. “Holy shit is this the place where they filmed Dangerous Minds?” Straight to the Deputy Principal’s Office. Not fond memories from that phrase. We start speaking about the plan.

I can’t take my eyes off Cathie as we tentatively explain our idea.

“Righto. Well, I’m the acting boss at the moment so let’s get this happening. You can run it on a Friday because kids don’t turn up to school on Fridays. When can you start?”

“Term 3 – August.”

“Sounds good.”

Game on!

Time to get some mentors and create the workshops, pronto.

Rashi, Tom and Hamish all went hard at getting medical students on board – they really formed the backbone of the mentoring cohort for Years 1 and 2. With the support of the faculty the students were able to have flexibility with their studies so they could be involved.

The rest were my mates and people we attracted through Klub Koori. No one escaped the Nokia 5510 phone call barrage.

“You’re a mentor.”

“Mmm okay… what have I gotta do?”

“We’ll sort that out, just be ready in second semester.”

Next call. …

Evening Standard, “The First Footstep”, June 21, 1969.

What a headline; ‘Man walks on the moon’. We needed our own, a hook to bring the kids in. I wasn’t sure of my ability 77

to be the hook, feeling insecure about my identity and wondering if the kids would rip me apart. I thought I’d write and direct the show, not act in it. For the headliners I turned to celebrity. Don’t we all?

The thinking was, if we had the NRL on board and footy players involved, then that would act as an incentive for some of the more ‘boring’ workshops around racism, goal setting etc.

I sat down with Matt Francis from the NRL and asked if they would host a day at one of the stadiums with their players.

“Mate, we’d love to. I’ll get Deano on board again. What’s the name of the program?”

“Umm we don’t really have one yet. Indigenous Mentoring Program?”

“You need one, and an acronym to boot.”

I went home and started scribbling. Indigenous, Mentoring, Change, Kids, Inspire, Believe, Hope, Australia, acronym, Mandela, Education, New, Energy, Role Models, Leaders…

I asked around for ideas.

“How about Grey Mentoring? Black and white coming together… It’s Grey.”

“I’ll give that one a miss thanks Viv.” Indigenous, Mentoring, Australia.

Australia, Indigenous, Mentoring.

AIM? Australian Indigenous Mentoring?

AIM is a bit cringe. Bit too literal. What if we chucked another letter on the end, like Support. AIMS… nah not quite there… Youth. AIMY – sounds a little too like car insurance… Experience.

AIME. 78

Yeah I like that – cos if we call it an experience it means that even if we stuff something up we can be like. “Hey chill out, it was an experience, wasn’t it?”

I later found out AIME is not far from je t’aime, which is French for “I love you”. Bingo.

Juliet: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

A bloody lot is in the name, Juliet. We had many ‘experiences’ yet to come, and they didn’t all smell like roses. …

“Hey, do you wanna come to this party on National Sorry Day, with a bunch of Indigenous performers? Going to be a great night.”

People walked past not even looking up.

“Hey, do you think we should do more to help Indigenous people?”

And still they walked by.

“Hey, Indigenous Carnivale is on May 26, National Sorry Day. It’s a great chance for us all to come together.”

No dice, people kept walking. Fuck this shit.

“Yo, the biggest party on campus is happening in a couple of weeks. It’s pretty much sold out, I don’t give a shit if you don’t wanna come.”

“Wait, what is it?”

In 2005 I organised Indigenous Carnivale, a festival of Indigenous and non-Indigenous performers, a place to create an energy-force to move us forward. I thought this could be a way we could showcase Indigenous talent and start to build the narrative that allowed us all to feel like Indigenous Australia 79

was something we could be proud of. That as Australians, we have a national shared history of 60,000 years.

Indigenous Carnivale helped me sharpen my selling skills.

There is so much baggage when it comes to everyday Australians engaging with Indigenous Australia that often, simply saying the word ‘Aboriginal’ can freak people out and make them feel guilty, upset, and like they are going to be blamed for something. Or even worse, they respond with the line, “Aboriginal people are hopeless, there’s been heaps of money thrown at them, it can’t be fixed.”

The trick is in how you frame it all – how you make it something people want to be a part of.

Once we had them in the room we could do the teaching, little by little.

After punching out ridiculous hours in the Koori Centre computer room, hustling emails to performers from my Uni email account, we finally confirmed our line-up.

It was time to make some noise.

One of our tactics was to chalk the ground all around the Uni. The biggest canvas was the forecourt of Manning Bar, which was the venue for Carnivale. I took the lead, worked with hawk-like focus and precision and after two hours stood back, dusted off my hands and gave myself a little pat on the back.

“Hahahahahaha, nice one JMB!” “What?”

“Bro, you wrote ‘Indinous Carnivale’.

You know that feeling you get when you hand in an assignment and think you’ll get 100, and the mark comes back at 49. Yep, that’s the feeling I had.

Thanks to Dave Kaldor’s artistic genius, he saved the day.

Dave would join us down the line as a staff member – a once-in-a-generation creative mind.

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It was time to sell tickets.

Venue capacity at Manning Bar was 1000. As we started to get closer to the date I was shitting myself because we’d only sold 50 tickets. If the gig was empty it would affirm the belief that many people had – no one cares.

When the future looks bleak… invent a new one and convince everyone it will happen… until it actually does.

I was the only person who knew how many tickets had been sold, so when people started asking about sales I said, “700, 750,” even to my family and closest friends.

Suddenly, with the thought that 750 tickets had been sold, my mates started exuding confidence, ‘this thing’s gonna sell out’.

Only I knew the truth.

At 6pm on the night of May 26, 2005, I knew we’d only sold about 250 tickets.

After the artists had finished their sound checks, Haim came up to me and said, “Dude check this out.”

We walked out to the Manning Bar balcony on level 3 and saw a circus of people streaming down the street.

If you build it they will come.

In total 800 people flowed through the doors to create a symphony of human spirit, a night I will never forget, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people dancing the night away, moving as one.

Backstage, our headliners Local Knowledge were about to fly out into a venue bursting with raw hope, belief, joy and energy. Wok Wright turned to me and Kabs and said, “Braa, I’ve never seen anything like this, who are you guys?!” …

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What, are you gonna give me some advice? Just say no?

Well, forget it! How the fuck are you gonna save me from my life, huh?

— Emilio Ramirez, Dangerous Minds It was time to face the music, the kids.

Clarky and I rolled out to Alex Park and the class of Year 9 students were waiting. “… and that’s basically what the program is all about. Any questions?”

A kid put his hand up.

“You just feel sorry for us cos we’re black, hey?”

Clarky looked at me, his eyes whispering, “All yours, bruz.”

Okay, let’s see what we got.

“I’m Aboriginal too, man. I’ve grown up with successful Aboriginal people around me and have seen what it takes to get there. So the first thing is we want to help you be the best you can be. The second is that these uni students don’t feel sorry for you, they want to learn from you, a lot of them have never met Aboriginal people before, so you guys will be teaching them as much as they will be teaching you.”

I passed my first audition.

The kids took the permission notes home and we got ready for day one to roll around, fingers crossed this would be one of those Fridays where the kids turned up to school. …

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it or just let it slip?

— ‘Lose yourself’, Eminem 82

The waves crashed into our ferry, swaying us side to side as the sun glistened across Sydney’s majestic harbour. Our destination? Taronga Park Zoo. The date? August 5, 2005.

The ferry cut it’s path across the water, past the place where I’d watched the fireworks from on New Year’s Eve on the piss couch, past the Opera House, we were tracking the Harbour Bridge on our way to the Zoo, which sat in the nest of Sydney’s northern suburbs.

Talk about vision – the building of that bridge.

It was opened in 1932, when the population of Sydney was 1.2 million. Only three years earlier Australia’s major horse and cart transport company Cobb and Co closed its doors.

Can you imagine trying to convince the bureaucrats, at the height of the Great Depression, that within 70 years Sydney would quadruple its population? Imagine trying to convince the penny pushers that Sydney would need a bridge to stand the impending growth ahead, while horse and cart travel was still fresh in their minds? And that the bridge would need eight lanes for 150,000 cars to cross daily and trains would be shooting across every five minutes or so. Without doubt nobody would have envisaged groups of tourists climbing the bridge four times a day and hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders and tourists alike walking, running and cycling across the bridge weekly. Beyond that, imagine showing them a design where the bridge would be constructed from each end and meet in the middle over the harbour. It still blows my mind apart as to how they actually put it together.

Talk about vision.

I took my eyes off the bridge and looked down the rows of seats on our ferry. I saw 25 very fresh looking faces rocking pungent yellow AIME t-shirts.

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In the group were friends from my childhood, high school and university days, alongside strangers who had answered the call. There were Aboriginal people, people from South Africa, a Kenyan, and a crew of Australians from all different histories, joining together to try and see if we could stem the tide of negativity and hopelessness, and in our own way, write a new chapter for the place we all currently called home; for each other and for our Indigenous Australians – the children of the first sunrise.

We were the mentors. …

I grew up in the last generation to not have mobile phones as a key part of our lives. I think I got my first phone when I was 16, my trusty Nokia 5110, which I rocked into the early years of AIME and used for our first round of mentor recruitment. The only game the phone had on it was Snake.

The closest you could get to bells and whistles was a coloured cover. Bright yellow it was. It also had a sweet feature called SMS. Now known as texting. When did that change? Who changes phrases like that?

Pre mobile phone, if you wanted to contact someone you called their home.

“Hello Sue, it’s Jack, is Tom there?”

“Hi Jack, sure, I’ll just get him.”

(Mouthpiece covered) “Tommmmmm! It’s Jack.”

“Hello?”

“You wanna come over and play cricket?”

“Nah, you should come to my house, my backyard is better.”

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“Okay, can your mum pick me up?”

(Mouthpiece covered) “Mummmmm! Can we go pick Jack up? And can he come over?”

(Mouthpiece covered, distant reply) “Sure, we’ll be there in 20.”

“Yeah that’s cool, we’ll be there in 20. I’ve just gotta have a shower.”

I think they ended up taking 40 minutes. Jeez that kid could shower.

You learned to talk to people during this time. You had to talk to adults and be able to hold a conversation, just so you could get past them to talk to your friends or, even harder, when you wanted to ask a girl out. Now that was a fun challenge.

Ring Ring, Ring Ring.

“Hello, is Sarah there?”

“Who’s asking?”

“It’s Jack.”

“Okay I’ll put her on.”

(Mouthpiece covered) “Darling, there is a boy on the phone for you!!! A boy named Jack.”

“Hey Sarah.”

“Hi Jack.”

“Umm, I was wondering if you wanted to maybe go to the movies with me this weekend?”

Silence.

“Okay.”

“How’s Town Hall steps, at 6pm Saturday?”

“Sounds great, see you then.”

Quick, hang up the phone before she second-guesses.

Saturday rolls around. You do your hair with some sweet gel from the supermarket, put on your most stylish looking 85

Marcs shirt – from the discount rack on sale of course – and head down to the bus stop.

Crunch time. It’s 5.55pm and you’re sitting on Town Hall steps. You look left, you look right. Clock ticks to 6.00pm.

I hope she turns up. It hits 6.05pm. Oh my god she’s not coming! I’m a loser! Look at all those gangster kids, they’re laughing at me! Everyone is laughing! 6.07pm.

“Hey Jack, so sorry I’m a bit late, my train wasn’t on time.”

“Oh that’s fine, I didn’t even know what time it was…”

If it’s possible to multiply that feeling of anxiety and fear of rejection by let’s say 4.24 light years, which is as far as the earth is from the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, whereby traveling at 56,000 km/h it would take you 81,000 years to get there. Yeah let’s go with that. Multiply the awkwardness and anxiety that comes with a feeling you’re about to be stood up on a first date after beating the dragon father in phone wars, multiply that feeling by 4.24 light years and that was how I was feeling outside Taronga Zoo on August 5, 2005 at 10.55am as I stood there with 25 or so uni students waiting for the bus to arrive that was bringing the kids from Alex Park.

What a relief when they turned up.

We had mentors and mentees together. It was time to put on a show. …

It’s a steamy night on October 20 in Kinshasa, Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo) and the year is 1974. The crowd is chanting as one. Moving as a wave to the beat of “Ali booma ye, Ali booma ye.” (Ali kill him).

The man Muhammad enters the ring.

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“I’m so mean I make medicine sick. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. I’m so quick, when I turn the lights off I’m in bed before it’s dark. I shook up the world.”

Foreman follows suit. Unbeaten in 34 fights, he is the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Ali, the former champion, is now the challenger, one of the all time greats, but at 32 he isn’t the same fighter he once was.

Foreman, meanwhile, is at the height of his powers, and he is strong, really strong.

“I was trying to kill him,” said Foreman when he reflected on that night in Zaire. “I wasn’t looking for a knockout, because if you’re looking for a knockout, you use your skill. I didn’t do that. I was trying desperately to destroy that man.”

Expecting fireworks, the crowd exploded when the announcer cried, “Let’s get ready to rumble.” And then the strangest thing happened. Ali waited. He let Foreman come to him. He didn’t float, he didn’t dance, he dropped his guard, leaned back on the ropes and let Foreman hit him. He let the man hit him. The man with the biggest, most powerful, most dangerous punch in the world. Foreman obliged and hit him, again and again and again.

The commentators started worrying for Ali’s safety. It didn’t even look like a contest. Ali just held his gloves up and let Foreman keep hitting him. Whack, whack, whack. Next round. Whack, whack, whack. Next round.

No one could believe Ali was still standing. But they also didn’t realise how much energy Foreman had wasted throwing endless punches. And suddenly, out of nowhere, everything changed. Ali rose. Just after the bell rang for the eighth round Foreman’s punches started to fade. His defence wavered. And like a leopard, Ali instantly pounced off the ropes. Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap – a five-punch combo sent 87

Foreman hurtling towards the canvas. Wavering, he tried to get back up for a couple of seconds, but it was all over. Ali became the heavyweight champion of the world once more, and the tactic of ‘rope a dope’ was born.

Watching my old mate Paul Sinclair at Taronga Zoo deliver the first AIME session was like watching Ali at Zaire. He exhausted the kids’ defences, let them expel all the energy they had, and then when the moment was right, he pounced to deliver the message that really mattered.

For the first 55 minutes Paul delivered the ‘Animals of the Dreaming’ session, with real animals being handed out to the kids and mentors to touch. There were snakes, turtles and the star of the show, Elliot the cockatoo who flew in and landed on Paul’s arm.

He was dancing with the kids, like Ali danced in the ring.

Like a snake charmer slowly whistling away. There were plenty of laughs – something that has stayed part of the AIME DNA since that day – the idea of learning while laughing.

There was also randomness and surprise, as well as energy variance. And as mentioned, once the kids’ defences were down, Paul seized the moment, snap snap snap snap snap.

“If you don’t wanna be 17 and pregnant and drunk, or 18 and drunk and a father, you need to start having a look at yourselves now and you need to start setting yourselves some goals. These days are all good when you come out and you feel great and have a laugh. But the thing is the real hard work because this is the easy part. The hard work is going back into your classroom and ignoring your mate who’s sitting next to you saying, ‘Let’s do this to get in trouble or let’s do that.’ The hard work is trying to concentrate on what’s being said in your classroom. The hard work is trying to make yourselves a better life. It’s very, very easy to be a drunk, anyone can do that.

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But it’s not very easy to make something of your lives. That’s the challenge, trying to make yourself a better life.”

Sinco said to me later, “Braaa it was the first one and we had to get it right. And you know what when I think about that first session, Aboriginal people have been learning outdoors, with animals, and with mentors and Elders, since time immemorial. I reckon we were harnessing that same spirit.”

As he delivered the five-punch combo I was in awe. The message shot through to the kids’ hearts like an arrow zeroing in on Achilles’ heel. This was the formula. Like a film or a great theatre show – drama, narrative, energy, life, and then own the climax.

More than anything, from that moment on, I wanted to be able to stand on that stage and do what Sinco had done. …

Man, that year was a whirlwind. Running a festival. Coming up with the idea of AIME. Kicking it at Ralph’s Cafe with Tom, Rashi and Hamish. Painting nails with Deb. Walking the streets with Kabir. Throwing balls at Viv’s… Driving mentors to sessions at Alex Park. Driving to pick up our yellow mentor t-shirts. Starting AIME. Surviving the first year of program sessions. Letting Tempting Tuesdays go. Going to class.

Passing class. Trying to not throw tennis racquets at anyone.

Opening my mind to people who were different. Sending a heap of emails from my uni account to mentors, lawyers, bus drivers, school teachers, sporting bodies, artists’ labels.

Getting the University of Sydney Union Leadership and Excellence award. Partying. Printing off endless amounts of worksheets at the Koori Centre late at night. Developing said 89

worksheets. Setting up an Indigenous scholarship at Wesley College. Bowling mad leg-breaks. Breaking my leg. Learning.

Hustling. Listening. Filming and taking photos of everything – tree falling in the woods with no one around… if it’s not captured it didn’t happen.

Amongst the torrent of madness a few moments remain etched in my recollections.

We rolled up to Alexandria Park in my 1995 Ford Festiva – eat your heart out Batmobile. We’d completed a suite of different workshops, including the Zoo experience with Paul, Art workshops with my Mum, a writing workshop, an experience with the NRL and Drama with my Dad’s wife Maz. They were all great. Mum got the kids expressing themselves, Sinco inspired them, the footy players added some extra reinforcement to our message of ‘stay in school and be proud of your identity’, and then the session with Maz had one very simple but significant moment.

We were doing ‘space jump’, a Theatre Sports improv game. The mentors were leading the way, getting weird, trying to create a safety net for the kids to move out of their comfort zones.

“Space jump.”

Everyone froze in the middle of the room, waiting for the next person to enter the scene. One of the quieter kids rose, shoulders back, and strode through. His contribution was simply to walk past and nod at the fellow actors.

Afterwards one of the teachers pulled me aside and said, “Jack, do you know how big that moment was?”

“Which one?”

“That kid has never even put his hand up in class, let alone joined a theatre scene. That was a huge breakthrough.”

I got it.

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If we can take these kids out of their comfort zones and get them speaking, asking questions, performing, dancing, whatever the challenge may be, we’ll be helping break the barriers holding them back in school – things like asking a teacher a question.

After our series of workshops with external guests, we were set to match the mentors up with the mentees one-on-one and move into the content we’d created around getting to know each other, mental health, goal setting and the like.

We arrived at Alex Park with no glitz or glamour, no Elliot the cockatoo and no famous athletes. Just us mentors and a set of printed out ‘Get to know you’ questions for both mentees and mentors to answer.

Did you know that all matter consists of tiny particles called atoms? The centre of the atom is called the nucleus.

Inside that nucleus resides these little customers, which are positively charged particles called protons. Now the protons tend to bounce off each other so much that their repelling force can destroy the nucleus. Think of a bunch of kids at an eight-year-old’s birthday party, jacked-up on sugar. It’s got the potential to destroy the show. There needs to be a mitigating force. That force at the birthday party are the parents who provide a calming effect. In the nucleus, that role is played by neutrons, which have no electrical charge in and of themselves, but have the ability to cancel the repelling action of the protons and keep the nucleus together.

As the kids were split up one-on-one with their mentors, it changed the whole energy of the environment. Previously, disengaged kids would be niggling their mates to not pay attention as their energy bounced off each other like a couple of protons flying around unabated. Now, those same students 91

were leaning over their worksheets with their mentors politely navigating this brave new world.

It was so simple, but transformational. Anyone who has worked as an educator knows what engaged body language looks like. I was watching kids and mentors, hunched over, pens at the ready, dancing their way through the questions together.

We had created our nucleus. …

A few weeks later I was part of another moment I’ll never forget. It made me think of the Ali line, “Hating people because of their colour is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which colour does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.”

We were back at Alex Park for another workshop.

“Jack one of the mentees is asking for a new mentor.”

I walked over and it was one of the tougher kids, back in proton mode. He was partnered with a mentor of Chinese heritage and the kid was straight up ignoring the poor dude. I remember the mentor’s eyes as he looked up to me helplessly, not knowing what to do.

The kid was laughing and looking at his mates and then turned to me and said, “Jack, I want a new mentor.”

I watched the mentor’s heart break.

We had gone through this scene in mentor training, where we explained there was every chance that the connections might not work, and we’d prepared the mentors for that scenario. If that were to happen, we said we’d look at changing the partnership.

Easier in theory than practice. I’m pretty sure this kid was testing my mettle as well.

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I pulled the mentor outside and said, “Hey, we might give it a whirl with another mentor for now and try that out. It’s got nothing to do with you. Why don’t you take the rest of the session off and we’ll get back in touch with you during the week.”

He mumbled back, “Okay sounds good,” and walked out trying to keep his pride intact.

Tough gig.

I don’t know how so many of these mentors maintained their resilience and spirit in spite of the rejections, and they came quick and fast in those early years. They are the silent heroes of this story. The safety net of mentors that just kept turning up week after week, thousands of them.

Kids are vicious if they sense weakness. I was a bit like that at school. I’d have fun trying to break teachers. It was a challenge to see if I could shift the direction of the class.

During a science class in Year 9, just after sports photos, the substitute teacher Dr Livingstone arrived. He was about 80 and no, the irony in the name and his age was not lost on me.

Dr Livingstone was trying his best to battle through. I was doing my best to organise a coup. First assault? As one, with coded nods and winks, we dropped under the tables every time the Doc turned to write on the chalkboard. The vanishing effect sent him into a spin and off into the corridors to explore where we’d transplanted ourselves to. Upon his return we were in our seats as if nothing had happened.

Doc was rocking a couple of hearing aids, dialled right up.

Second Assault? I asked a question, but lip-synced groups of four or so words.

“So… (15 seconds of mouthing words)… carbon… more lip-syncing… atmosphere… (mouthing more words)… (Doc’s face screws up a bit tighter)… do you know what I mean?”

The kids in the class start to lose it.

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“Mmmm, what did you say?”

Doc starts to walk closer.

I repeat the process.

Kids stop breathing.

Doc walks closer.

“Whaaaaaat?”

“Sir… (5 seconds of lip-syncing)… understand… (10 seconds)… (Doc is now standing at my desk watching my lips move without words coming out)… molecular life… (4 seconds)… (he looks closer)… and all that stuff.”

“Hang on a minute. You’re leaving out words!”

Class explodes. I get sent out. Objective met.

Well, ain’t karma a bitch?

The world had come full circle and I was standing there looking at this kid, having no real idea what the next play was. He was the captain of a runaway train and I was one of his passengers.

There is something deeply psychological that comes out when kids try to take on their teachers. When they sense that weakness. When I was at school my motivation came from trying to gain status with my peers. That was the same picture I was watching play out as this youngster at Alex Park requested his new mentor. On top of this, one of the other driver’s that comes to light when a student defies a teacher is something much deeper – it’s a fear of failure, a fear of the power that teachers have to expose your lack of knowledge, a fear of difference, a fear of vulnerability.

That’s why the role of the teacher in building trust with their students is so critical. You are asking kids to openly share their frailties, failures and weaknesses with you, and often with their peers.

This kid didn’t want any of that.

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As we stood outside, I asked why he didn’t want to work with his mentor. One-on-one it was different. He’d lost some of the swagger. The toughest kids are often the weakest and the most afraid. He said, “Man, he doesn’t get me.”

I pushed a bit further, sensing there was something more.

After he parried my questions, he hit the final shot in the rally.

“I don’t want no Chinese mentor.”

Got it. Fuck. I managed to stumble through my response, “Well, you know we can all learn from lots of different people, and that’s a skill in itself.”

But truth be told, I folded, and paired him with a new mentor. Game, set, match.

I learned two things at that moment, which helped me with kids moving forward. The first was that for Aboriginal kids to be able to work through overcoming their disadvantage we would need them to be the heroes. Like the way Mandela was as he left Robben Island. I had to push them to strive for class.

That even though they’d been victimised, the pain had to stop with them – there was no more space in the world for more racism and discrimination.

We had to teach empathy.

I had to learn how to be stronger up front, to frame expectations. To let the kids know that I was leading.

As the person who broke a mentor’s heart because their mentee didn’t want to work with them, and the person who had driven hours with hopeful mentors only to see their whole spirit drop the moment they walked into a classroom that was empty of mentees, I began to realise that to actually change things these kids needed an electric shock to wake them up.

They had spent so long being undervalued that they simply couldn’t value or respect other people in return. Once bitten, twice shy.

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In this light I was actually perpetuating the inequality by letting the kids think their behaviour was normal. Even though they’d been through tough times, and been hurt, disappointed, under-appreciated, I had to get through to them that there were people standing here who cared, and if they didn’t respect that chance, they may not get another one.

If I kept making excuses for the kids’ behaviour, which included not turning up, being racist to the mentors, being rude, how would they ever have the chance to shine?

Having low expectations based on disadvantage was not okay.

I had an opportunity to call bullshit on it and I didn’t, I was choosing to go along with the tide. If I let this continue to play out I would have blood on my hands as much as anyone else.

After these kids left school the world was gonna munch them up, so I became very serious about getting them ready for that.

I’ve sat with 17-year-olds who can’t spell their names.

What’s the world got in store for them? These kids all wanted to be professional footballers and the reality was, if me or someone else didn’t change their outlook or direction, they’d end up trapped in a cycle of poverty, welfare dependence or crime. What else do you do if you have no education? If no one values you? If you don’t value yourself?

I was beginning to see that shifting the kids’ psychological framework and repositioning the values and behaviours they aligned with their identity was at the heart of the solution. We had to shatter the mould of disadvantage that the kids were being cast in. We needed language that perpetuated success and pride. We had to help the kids learn about their history and see that the last 200 years were filled with great people 96

and great achievements, and the 60,000 years before were filled with waves of genius, resilience and brilliance.

The kids had to see their identity as a reason for success as opposed to an excuse for failure.

A few years later I was opening the program for the year in North West Sydney with kids from some of the toughest neighbourhoods in Australia.

“Welcome team to the start of the program. Today we are working through the ‘Get to know you’ session… I started this program because I was sick of all the complaining about the problems facing Indigenous kids and I was sick of everyone assuming you guys were going to fail.”

I had most of the room but a group of three boys up the back were laughing and giggling away.

“Your mentors are here to walk with you and so is AIME. As long as you meet us halfway we are willing to walk every step of the way with you…”

More snickering from the boys.

“And one thing I want you to know…”

Snicker.

Stuff this.

“You know what boys, I don’t have to be here and neither do you. I have a pretty good life, which I’m happy with and guess what? I really don’t give a fuck about you if you’re just going to sit here, stuff around and waste my time. The other kids in the room have decided to take a chance and try to make something of their lives. You keep acting the way you are and maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it through Year 10.

Hey, you might even finish Year 12. Then, guess what? The lights go out.

Programs like this stop coming your way. Teachers stop calling your home. And no one gives a shit about 97

you anymore. You are on your own. So here’s your choice, you either pull your head in now and make the most of this shot you’ve got, or you walk out that door and let us get on with it.”

They were stunned.

I’d said ‘fuck’.

We later got a complaint from one of the mentors about my use of language. But you know what? Those boys paid attention and stayed through the program. I’ll swear any day of the week if I think it can help me change a kid’s life, if it can shock them back to reality.

You either lead or you don’t. You either stand for something or you don’t. You either make history or commentary. There are no half-measures. If you paint the world through rose coloured glasses to kids whose path is shaping up to be disastrous, then you have to take responsibility for that. We are all responsible for the world we live in.

It was time to wake these kids up, before it was too late.

We finished the 2005 program and saw a 40% increase in attendance for the kids who completed the program. There were no further problems with kids not turning up to school on Fridays. …

2006. Happy Feet becomes the biggest grossing Australian film. Ian Thorpe retires from swimming. Irfan Pathan becomes the first bowler to ever take a hat trick in the opening over of a test cricket match. Six men stage Britain’s largest robbery, stealing £53m from a Securitas depot in Tonbridge, Kent. NZSL (New Zealand sign language) is made an official 98

language of New Zealand. At least one million union members, students and unemployed people take to the streets in France to protest against the government’s proposed First Employment Contract law. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium. Eminem marries Kimberly Anne Scott, for the second time. The world’s longest running music show Top of the Pops is broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. Thai military stage a coup in Bangkok, the constitution is revoked and martial law is declared. Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi’as in 1982. NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars. Australian archaeologist Sue O’Connor finds first evidence of modern humans in Jerimalai cave, near Lene Hara cave in East Timor. We change up our shirts from yellow to blue, score a logo thanks to some sweet design skills from a high school friend Shane Talbot, a new school joins the program, and we introduce a new set of shows for Year 10 kids. And, and, and it’s my last year of uni.

Where do magicians practise? Or hang out? Dedi is rumoured to be the first known magician whose story was recorded in the Westcar Papyrus. They reckon he was throwing around his ‘decapitate then put head back on bird therefore bringing it back to life’ trick almost 5000 years ago in 2700 BC. Then there were the Acetabularii who were rocking out the ‘cup and balls’ illusion in Rome between 50–300 BC. And of course we’ve all heard of Joseph Pinetti, a major figure in eighteenth century magic. Pinetti is said to be the first recorded performer to do the ‘thumb tie effect’ and 99

he also performed ‘second sight’, ‘exhibited automata’ and the ‘orange tree illusion’.

So my question is, do you think old Dedi, the Acetabularii crew and Joseph ever just went to the pub and settled in for a couple of schooners or pints? Kicked back with their mates?

Threw around some chat? Maybe shared an idea about a trick or two?

During 2006, we definitely did.

Plenty of people could have done what I had done up until that point. Gone into a school, got some people together, started a program. The non-profit sector has been around for a couple of hundred years since the church started its broader outreach programs. In Australia alone there are over 40,000 non-profit organisations.

So what was gonna make us different?

Time at the pub.

The sun sparkled through the trees in the Manning Bar courtyard, shadows creeping towards us from the Gothic Revival architecture surrounding our vantage point. It was a Friday afternoon and as the student band whacked away on the stage, we crowded together around a few jugs of beer, on the balcony of the Bar. Around the table was a suite of characters. Linny, rocking long hippy blonde hair and looking like he’d walked straight off a surf model runway, would be sharing his views on anything, with anyone. The kid had a serious penchant for making friends and lovvveeeddd a schooner.

Still does. Next to Adam was Carla McGrath, a Torres Strait Islander woman. Talk about a combination of beauty, power, presence and a strong mind. Carla also loved a chat and would most likely be telling Adam something he didn’t 100

know, or helping him understand what he thought he knew and didn’t.

Down the table was Penelope Gillam, a tiny blonde lass who was covered in tattoos. One of the kindest natured people you’d ever meet and a mainstay at AIME for a few years. Pen’s husband, tattoo artist Elliot would drop in at some point – giving us all some ink street cred.

Candela Alvarez was sitting next to me. When Candela walked into the room at mentor training everyone froze – her beauty and aura sucked the air out of the room. Man the kids wanted to be like her, especially the girls. Candela and I would be having a ‘deep and meaningful’, talking about changing the world. The problems. What we could do. What was driving us.

Sam Perry would be there adding a mixture of brilliant insights, pointed questions with a strong dose of irony, weirdness and dark humour. Sammy Hinton would be nodding. Daniel ‘Hangers’ Halangahu would drop in from time to time, if he wasn’t playing that weekend – he’d just sit back and kick it with whoever was around.

Clarky and his cousin Benny Phillips, two of the strong Aboriginal male role models for the kids in the early years, were there joking around. Clarky was quoting the movie Team America. ‘Derka Derka Derka.’ That was unless Linny and Carla had hooked them in to talk about Indigenous Australia, the history, the future and everything in between.

Viv was just being Viv. Throwing out some trivia content, quizzing Hangers on the Waratahs, challenging people’s thoughts, looking for an intellectual fight, leading off with, “I’m the smartest person I know.” Jeez he rocked some quality hippy threads during those years.

Pat ‘Hollywood’ Orme wandered around holding a jug, rocking the coolest Adidas jacket ever made. Quick side story: 101

we did a jacket swap, landing the Adidas bad boy in my hands. One day we were down at Alexandria Park playing touch footy with the kids after school before the Homework Centre kicked off. As the contest started heating up, I took the jacket off. After the kids ran rings around us, we headed up to start the Homework Centre, rolling past where my gear was. I looked down to see the jacket was gone. It had been pinched.

Perfect. “So Pat, thanks for volunteering with AIME… ummm your jacket got stolen… by the kids… sorry?” A small window into the lack of rules, order and opportunity we were up against. Pat stayed the course and now works for AIME on the NSW North Coast, driving endless hours to show the kids the belief, energy and leadership required to break the cycle of inequality. He now wears Nike.

Leaning on the balcony railing was Steve Barbouttis, a mate from high school fresh from ‘winning the HSC’. Stevo had just got back from driving mentors out to Leichhardt high school, and he was yabbering away to Ineke Wever, another friend from school. Ineke was in the first crop of mentors and was there whenever I or AIME needed. Always kind, caring and generous. All of my high school mates answered the call in one way or another, and for that I am forever thankful.

Bonnie Faulkner, daughter of Labor political heavyweight John Faulkner, joined us for a middy. In 2008 Bon spent a day in my office at the Koori Centre helping organise all the files – talk about an exciting day of volunteering. Funny thought… one day of volunteering to help someone organise their files in a tiny office at Sydney University could help form the spine for an organisation that would grow to have 8000 people in it 10 years later.

As Slim Dusty came on over the wireless ‘Mr Country’ Locky Rothwell strode up. Locky and I had previously met 102

on a sporting field during school and went to Paul’s together – suffice to say he wasn’t my biggest fan in the early years.

Three or four years on, we were mates, and he, alongside other Paul’s boys, were marching with me to help give the kids the leadership they were crying out for.

My little sister Ella would be there. Her first year at uni, my last. El and I were born on the same day, three years apart. On my birthday I was woken up by Jill who took me next door to see Mum and Dad. Apparently I said, "Oh wow, a new baby sister for my birthday." There's no escaping the powerful force between siblings. When Ella walked into Manning Bar, like a gale force wind, we felt her presence immediately. Ella held court, leading with passion, energy and heart. And the kids, they just loved her.

Deb would pop in after work for a lemonade and share her week with us. What an energy and effervescence Deb brought to the table. You really couldn’t notice the 30-year age gap because she had such a joyful, uplifting and generous spirit. There’d be “Darlings”, “Congratulations”, hugs and ‘smooches’ all round. A lesson that age is just a number, attitude is life.

We were getting cool mentors in the game, cats that people wanted to be around, and in doing so we were starting to make caring cool for uni students. And for the kids, having cool mentors with a certain amount of star quality was creating a new type of hero; the uni student, the education role model, unlocking the magic of learning, showing a path to a world of possibilities.

We were also building a family. These guys were more than just volunteer mentors. They were my brothers and sisters.

One literally was! These guys would do anything for AIME and for me.

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Many years later a university would let the AIME partnership go and our relationship manager at the uni criticised the program and our work, saying AIME was like a ‘cult’. That hurt me. It really did.

The greatest harm we have ever done is cared. So much.

About each other, about the mentors, about the kids, and about the country and world we wanted to build.

We shared pain, laughter, tears, hugs, push-ups, handshakes, shakkas, smiles, stories, and love with and for each other. This was and still is a family.

Time at the pub helped us forge these bonds and that was how we started to build the DNA of an organisation like no other, through deep human relationships. We shared our lives together.

If you share your love and generosity of spirit and strive to be the best possible version of yourself, people respond in-kind. If you dare to dream, you will find dreamers, and you will fly. You will literally fly. You’ll fly out of this world to a place where very few people dare to venture, to a place where you can dream a new future, and if you have the arrogance, audacity, self-belief, courage, drive and persistence to back yourself, you can make that dream a reality.

Cult? I prefer ‘family’. And the world could do with many more people connecting the way we do, that’s for sure. …

Peter Cave: The world records keep tumbling at the Pan Pacific swimming championships in Sydney. Four world marks have been broken in two days of competition. And leading the charge is 16-year-old Ian Thorpe, who’s now added the 200 metre freestyle record to the 400-metre record he broke on Sunday.

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Jerry Collins reports.

Jerry Collins: Whenever Ian Thorpe swims now there are high expectations, and after he broke the world record in the semi final of the 200 the previous night, the world was ready for another record-breaking display – even if the timing device wasn’t – it failed to operate properly, leaving confusion at the end of the race.

Pan Pacific Commentary Excerpt: They’ve got about 30 metres to go, but Ian Thorpe is clear and now he powers again. He’s out almost a body length clear, surely we’ll be looking at another world record. Can he get three world records in three nights? It looks like he will. Ian Thorpe out, he really pushes for the wall now. Thorpe goes in and takes the gold and the time is 145.7, 145.7. That’s incredible! It is incredible! Oh surely they’ll have to check that time.

— Transcript from Linda Mottram, AM on ABC Local Radio, 1999 As his career progressed Ian met Australian journalist Jeff McMullen. They spoke about how Ian wanted to use his profile to help disadvantaged people, maybe kids overseas. Jeff said, “Mate, there’s plenty to do in our own backyard.” Together they travelled out to a small community in a remote part of the Northern Territory – a trip that resulted in Ian forming the Ian Thorpe Fountain for Youth in 2000, the year of the Sydney Olympics. The foundation was formed to provide literacy backpacks for Indigenous kids across 20 communities in the Northern Territory, and Jeff became the honorary CEO. Six years later, Jeff was speaking at an event at Sydney Uni on behalf of the Fountain for Youth and I was in the crowd.

We’d completed the second year of AIME and my final exams were around the corner.

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In a packed lecture theatre McMullen stole the show as he painted a picture of the challenge our country had on its hands, the challenge our generation was inheriting when it came to Indigenous Australia. He pushed us to see that every Australian had to lift their game. That this was everybody’s business. This was in fact our shared history, our identity as Australians.

The discrimination, the poverty, the pain, should not turn us away from the strength, hope, power and resilience of the children of the first sunrise. I was burning up inside. You know that feeling when you want to talk in class, answer a question, or offer your view at the adult’s table? You’re sure you know the answer but are afraid to speak up. I was there and couldn’t stop scribbling on my note pad, We are doing this.

It got to the end of the night and there was a chance for Q&A. I was nervous as all get out but thought “stuff it”. My hand went up.

After I spoke, Jeff smiled.

At the end of the night we spent over half an hour talking before they kicked us out.

McMullen loves a yarn and has access to stories that could last more than a lifetime. At that point, he’d been a journalist for over 40 years. He’d reported on more than thirty conflicts around the world including the genocide in Rwanda and the highest war on earth in the Himalayas. He has camped with Indigenous tribes from the Amazon to the remote parts of Australia, drunk mare’s milk with nomads in Mongolia, travelled to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Siberia. To balance the horror and suffering of the war zones he sought out the beauty that the world had to offer. McMullen has swum with sea lions and iguanas in the Galapagos Islands, dived 106

with whale sharks on Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, climbed several active volcanoes and been stranded in a tent for 17 days in Antarctica, after filming six men and their huskies on the longest trek ever made across that frozen continent.

As we said our farewells and exchanged contact details, he looked me in the eyes and said, “Anything you need, I’m there.”

Over the next few years Jeff would pen me the most remarkable emails, fuelling my belief that what I wanted to achieve was possible. He was so generous with his time and words. I felt the love every time I opened one of his notes.

They say that when Bill Clinton speaks to people he makes them feel like they are the only person in the room. Jeff’s emails made me feel that; at the moment he was writing them, I was the most important person in the world.

Next time you pen a note to someone, take a leaf out of Jeff’s book and really put what you are feeling into your words – make that person feel truly special. …

2006 finished well. Got myself a degree. AIME made it through another year. Indigenous Carnivale went off. Scored $20K from the Faculty of Economics and Business at Sydney Uni, and $10K from the Aboriginal Education Council (NSW) Inc. who were our first funder outside the uni environment – it was a huge contribution at the time, 25% of our revenue.

Including the profits from Carnivale, we now had about $40K to play with for the following year.

With another three schools set to come on board and our mentor base growing to 100 or so, the money would cover transport, venue hire, catering, guest fees and mentor uniforms.

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But the big question for me was, what was I going to do to eat, pay the bills, live?

My scholarship was finished and AIME was now well and truly a full-time gig. I couldn’t let it go, it was working. The kids were getting through school. Mentors were loving it.

Change was in the air.

My simple thought was that if Sydney University could give me a contract then I’d be right. AIME was providing an amazing graduate development experience for the University’s students, as well as providing practical experience for degrees like Education and Medicine that required experience in the field. We were building the Uni’s brand and reputation in the local schools and community. Plus we were getting results and kids were staying in school.

In my mind it was a simple thing to visualise – that if the kids stayed on from Year 9 to Year 10 and from Year 10 to Year 11 and if we stuck at it, we could create a talent pipeline of Indigenous kids for the Uni that had never come through at that scale before.

In Australia there was also a demand from universities to recruit more Indigenous students, something they received specific federal government funding for. It all seemed to line up, right?

Sometimes things making sense just isn’t enough.

The proposal for me to have a role was put to the Uni’s Indigenous Advisory Board. They considered it and declined the proposal, saying that funding could be used within their existing set up. I was asking for $60K. I don’t like to hear no, so I organised a meeting with the boss of the Board, the Pro Vice Chancellor. My theory was, whoever says ‘no’ always has a boss, who could potentially say ‘yes’. If not, they’ve also got a boss somewhere too…

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We met and I proposed a creative solution around getting faculties to kick in $20K like the Faculty of Economics and Business and also inviting the colleges to help. I explained that I’d already convinced two colleges to set up Indigenous residential full scholarships.

At the end of the meeting he said my funding idea wouldn’t work because if faculties wanted to spend more on Indigenous engagement, the money would have to come through the Advisory Board that would then decide where the cash would be distributed.

What!? Man this didn’t stack up.

What were they so afraid of? That something might actually work?

In the interim I forged ahead with AIME, committed that I wouldn’t dip into the $40K program funding for any sort of salary for me because we needed that. I also ploughed ahead on Indigenous Carnivale.

I had this vision of Indigenous Carnivale becoming the biggest festival in Australia and that we could use it to fund AIME, while creating a place for mentors, mentees, partners, family and friends to return to every year. It would be time when we could share the magical AIME spirit of people coming together to move forward.

I didn’t really think about the fact that I didn’t have any money and most of these big festivals cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One day I managed to get a hold of the phone number of Michael Chugg, arguably one of, if not the biggest music promoter in Australia over the last 30 years.

Cold calls – you just gotta do them. There is no other way to bring people with you other than walking out on the plank and inviting others to join you.

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Ring Ring. Ring Ring. Am I actually doing this? Ring Ring.

Ring Ring.

“Hello.”

“Hey Michael, my name’s Jack, your number was passed on to me by a friend at the ABC. I’m running a festival called Indigenous Carnivale – Indigenous and non-Indigenous people coming together. We’ve run it for the last few years at Sydney Uni and I reckon it has the potential to be one of the biggest festivals on the Australian calendar. Plus it raises cash for a mentoring program we are running for Indigenous kids.

I was wondering if you could spare me half an hour to pass on your advice and see if it might be something you want to help out with.”

Silence.

“Kid, it sounds great, but if I helped every person that came to me with an idea I’d never be able to get anything done. Good luck with it.”

End call.

Fair enough.

Rejection hurts.

From that moment I decided that if I ever made it to the big time or to a position of influence, I would always make time for people at the start of their journey. I’ll never forget the feeling that lingered after that call, and many others over that period. How it felt to beg, cap in hand and be completely vulnerable.

As I was pushing the uni for a job, running AIME at the biggest scale yet (we even got our own Gmail account during this year), and planning for Indigenous Carnivale to be bigger than Woodstock, I worked two jobs to get by. One as a cricket coach and the other as a pre- and after-school carer for kids aged 5–12 at Glebe Public School in Sydney’s inner city.

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The majority of the kids at the school were Aboriginal.

My experiences at Glebe kept the fire burning. I saw how messed up some of these kids lives were, from such a young age.

I will never, ever forget one kid, a young boy 10 years old, who I connected with like no one else. I could hook this kid and hold him. I knew I could. The problem was, the die was almost cast for this youngster. As a seven-year-old he’d seen his dad stab his mum, his older brothers were all in jail and he was starting to get into trouble at school.

How can you recover from that?

Deep down he was a gem, with rivers of charm streaming through, and he was smart. Street smart is smart – people should recognise that more. If you can work your way around the challenges of life, you’d better believe you can navigate a set school curriculum – you just need someone to help you crack the code. If you’d seen what this kid had seen, you’d have had more experience and resilience than almost any other kid the same age. The challenge with him was turning this all into a reason to succeed as opposed to an excuse for failure.

We had a dance class during the holidays and it was a beautiful sight to see the kids forget about all the problems in the outside world and just dance. Dancing, carefree, happy kids. I left with the biggest smile.

The dance instructor returned five minutes later. Someone had broken into his car and stolen his GPS. I had the fun task of going to one of the main suspects – you guessed it, our 10-year-old mate. There’s no win in this convo. If he didn’t do it then I’m just another person who doesn’t believe in him. If he has done it then he’s broken my trust.

We had it out, heart to heart. The GPS turned up. The teacher drove away.

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I went home on the bus thinking how does a 10-year-old know how to break into a car?

At that point I decided that I couldn’t give a shit about the bureaucratic or political problems in front of me at the Uni. I intended to run through walls if I had to, in order to stop this from happening. I didn’t want to see 10-year-olds live like this any more. …

I love unlikely heroes. Mark Freedman, Lisa Kelaher and Richard Seymour at the Faculty of Economics and Business just backed me and backed AIME. They went out of their way to try to help. They provided $20K a year for the first few years. They loaned us our first ever Apple desktop computers for our office, and in 2007 they helped submit our first proposal to the Federal Government for program funding for AIME. Maurice Shipp was also awesome in those early years. At that stage he was the Director at Tranby, an adult education and training provider for Aboriginal people.

“You need an office? You can be based here an Tranby.”

“Maurice, that would be amazing. No more working from the basement of our apartment!”

Maurice later became the inaugural chair of AIME and provided some fantastic personal support, guidance and generosity of spirit during those formative years.

We had an office. Small win. I still couldn’t pay my rent.

Clarky was living with me and helping to cover it, though that arrangement couldn’t last forever. But… we had an office.

April 20, 2007, Lisa called.

“Jack, we’ve received a call from the Federal Government to say that our proposal has been successful for funding.

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We haven’t received the whole amount but they’ve committed to $90K over two years. That could pay for a salary for you and get us some breathing space. I’ll send you, Maurice, Hamish and the crew an email but wanted to call you first. How exciting, hey!”

“Lisa, that’s brilliant!”

After Lisa emailed the group the ‘reply alls’ were joyous and instant. “Yessss!,” “Well done team,” “Congrats Jack,” “We’re away!!!”.

We’d cracked it.

The next step was a phone call with the feds and after that they would send the agreement through. We had the call and all seemed hunky dory. Then the agreement came through and I read this clause: 14.2 You grant to us a permanent, irrevocable, free, world wide, non-exclusive licence (including a right of sublicense) to use, reproduce, adapt and exploit the Project Material for any purpose.

There was no way I was giving away our intellectual property before we’d shown what we could do with AIME, even if I was offered millions of dollars for it. And they wanted it all for only $90K! We had another call where they confirmed that part of the agreement would see the government own the IP and have the ability to do whatever they wanted with it.

I said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

We pushed on. …

You can have as much intent as you want but at a certain point you start to run out of gas. By mid-way through 2007 I got sick, very sick. And in that state, on the eve of Indigenous 113

Carnivale, I sat in my apartment in Balmain, on the floor, drinking whiskey from the bottle. I was so lost about how I was going to keep this thing together.

It was May 21, 2007 at 11pm when I opened my computer and wrote this email. The subject title read ‘scared’, and I clicked on ‘send to all contacts’.

So it’s Monday night bout 11pm. Been stressing all day and have started to become really scared.

I’m scared because of how apathetic everybody is. All of my peers are moving into careers. Most are focussing on making a lot of money. I’m really hopin’ that people are as dissatisfied with the apathy of today.

I’m sick to death of people not caring about each other.

Without sounding like a tool, where is the love? Where is the support for real people and real change?

The last three weeks have been the hardest of my life, jugglin’ the start of AIME with Carnivale. But I’ve kept myself going by saying that it’s worth it. That what I’m doing is good. Since then I have been belittled again and again by people, in the process of trying to get the message out. Tonight this climaxed with a trip to Wesley College.

The best moment of the trip was knockin’ on a door and going in and asking a couple of guys if they wanted to come to Indigenous Carnivale, they didn’t even reply and kept their eyes transfixed on their PlayStation game.

You know what – that was fucked. That is fucked. And I’m sick of being diplomatic. These people are so ignorant that they are missing out on an opportunity that could change their life. Fuck people not taking a chance.

Somebody tell me why this event, with The Herd, and 11 other performers, who are all brilliant, and the exhibition, 114

and the day (Sorry Day), and the cause (AIME), have to be sold. Why did I have to beg the editors of USU Bull, The Glebe, and Drum Media for articles?

It disgusts me that we have to “sell” this event. So much of this disgusts me. Except for those of you who are coming.

You are the shining lights. But… here comes the crunch.

If you want this to be a success, over the next four days you need to shoulder some responsibility. Every person who says they believe in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in a statistical and social fashion needs to step up.

Are all your friends coming? Is your family coming? Have you put yourself on a limb to help this event succeed in creating something unique??

If no, you have four days left.

I’m not askin’ you to recreate the wheel. The stage has been set, the message is there, the event is ready. Your job is to bring at least 10 people each to this event.

Otherwise. I’m done. And Indigenous Carnivale is done.

There is no reason why this event shouldn’t sell out and send a message to the University, Sydney, and Australian communities that we are willing to come together and build a better future in an age where the bottom line doesn’t always have to involve money.

I’ve tried my best. That’s all I can ask from you.

Peace JMB The responses flooded in. From family, friends, strangers.

People wanting to do more, to help, to do something. Jeff McMullen was one of the first.

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Hey Jack, It’s a while since we met and talked.

In between series one and two of my ABC program, Difference of Opinion I have been hard at it, working with Chris Sarra and Ernie Grant in Queensland to push a better form of Indigenous studies into our education system, and up in Arnhem Land, Ian Thorpe and I helped open a Cultural Education Centre in Wugularr, a very small Jawoyn community 110 kms east of Katherine.

I understand your howl at the moon in the email you sent out to friends. Marcia Langton told me once that I would die without seeing much change because politicians and much of the public were so damn apathetic, ignorant and just numb to what is happening.

But my brother, it is always a few that get things done. My little boy Will is 11. “It’s so unfair, dad,” is how he sums up what he sees as he runs with his pals in the communities we work with and Claire, my daughter who is 13, works what she knows into her writing, her schoolwork, her conversations with friends and strangers.

We shall overcome these many things that are wrong. How do I know this? Because it is the right thing to spend your life working away on and the gains come even after we are gone. Ray Charles told me once that no one “owns the music.

We just take the notes, use em and let em flow on to the next man.” Our effort is like that.

But your blood and sweat to make Carnivale happen is worth it. I am with you in spirit, even if I am far away.

Others wrote messages.

Hey man 116

Keep the anger and energy up – nothing is as dangerous as complacency and malaise. Those idiots zoning out with the PS2 will eventually realise that they have to do exactly the kind of thing you’re already doing in order to quantify and justify their place in our society – or they may never get it and join the log-pile of dead wood we all have to work with every day. It’s a grind by the sounds of it, but you have passion and you need to follow that and don’t get disheartened. Every one of history’s great philanthropists or social visionaries have done it pretty tough – it’s a short road to the middle.

– James Manning (cousin) All I can say is it is going to take a lot more for you to be “Done”. You have a lot more in you than that. People are ignorant. Feel sorry for them and don’t let them get under your skin. Do what you have done, and give people a call to action.

– Amanda Manning (married to said cousin) You cannot convince press about anything, don’t worry about them, if they give you support then great, take it. if they don’t then move on and do your own thing, getting good press is always a battle. as shameful as it is, Indigenous issues aren’t priority in this country, that’s why there are people like you out there pushing for change, pushing for awareness and acknowledgement, pushing for respect that is so rightfully deserved. stay true to yourself and your beliefs. you have chosen this mission, you are passionate about it, you are the one to who needs to keep up the vibe and stay positive about it all, you have great bands that have committed to this gig, it’s already a success. people will come, just keep pushing it, it doesn’t matter how many come, remember there is someone 117

out there, just one person, who may just be inspired by what your doing to take it all to another level.

Reality is, it’ll take more than your gig to make all the change that is needed, it’ll take more than 100 bands, it’ll take more than 1000 articles about it and another 1000 protests, but it’s the combination of all these things that can do it, a movement is being created, be part of it, do your part and do it as best you can, bust your ass for it, and inspire others to be part of the movement until the movement takes effect, that is all you can do. good things will follow. if you give up, well it’s just another defeat.

– Carlo Santone, Blue King Brown (band).

Darling – sometimes you just break my heart.

– Deb Kirby-Parsons …

Carnivale happened. People turned up. I survived. The messages helped. Big time. Reach out for help, please, reach out for help. People will go with you if you believe in what you are doing, if you are working for other people and if you are honest with how hard it is. Don’t bottle it up.

Everyone was right. It was simply a hard road I had chosen.

But, after endless whacks in the head, I caught a break, which came in the shape of the NSW Governor and newly appointed Chancellor of The University of Sydney, Marie Bashir. …

Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.

— Mevlana Rumi, 13th century Sufi poet and mystic.

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Some people just have vision. They look up and swallow the biggest bite of the world they can. Their eyes welcome in the whole canvas that is life. I felt like I was banging my head against the wall, that people couldn’t see what I could see.

Maybe they weren’t looking from the right perspective. I decided to head to the top of the mountain at Sydney University, to see if there was anyone there who could see the whole picture.

At the top of that mountain stood Marie Bashir, waiting.

After the Carnivale email Mum called and said, “Marie has just been named the Chancellor and if anyone is going to get this she will. She’s worked her arse off for Aboriginal people throughout her life, she’s known you since you sat in the shop window at Designer Aboriginals and would often come in and ask, ‘How much for that baby in the window?’…

Let me introduce you two.”

I mumbled some sort of thanks, not really expecting anything to come for it. I’d become such a hopeful 21-year-old!

Planted at the entrance to Marie’s office, was like standing in front of a castle door waiting to meet with Her Majesty.

The huge aged timber arched over me. Yo Alice, now I know what you felt like. How did you reach that key on the table again? Deep breath, kid. This is it. The last play.

Knock, knock, knock.

The door yawned open and Marie’s assistant ushered me in.

“The Chancellor will be with you shortly.”

My heart was pounding. I always felt so out of place in these rooms. They were stiff and old, they reeked of power, protocol and rules and the chairs were uncomfortable. I felt drowned by the weight of order and by the lack of colour.

Then Marie walked in.

You know that period before sunset when there are clouds about, there’s been some misty rain during the day and our 119

friend the sun has decided to show its face one last time before dusk? Cars stop, people look up and children smile.

They smile because this wonderful combination of natural power has lit up the sky with a perfect arc of colours, running through the clouds, seemingly from an unknown world of treasure and magic, stretching endlessly across the horizon and taking our imaginations with it.

Marie had that effect on a room. Especially a dull one.

As we headed into her office Marie told me how she hadn’t seen me since I was a little child playing in Mum’s shop window. She spoke of Mum and how wonderful her art was and asked that I passed on her best. And then the newly appointed Chancellor of Australia’s oldest university, the current Governor of NSW, turned to me and said, “What can I help you with today, Jack?”

“Three years ago I started a mentoring program here, while I was studying. I was sick of all the people complaining about the problems facing Indigenous Australia and wanted to get on with it and try to make something happen. So I gathered together a bunch of my mates and we went down and started working at Alexandria Park Community School.

We ran a 12-week program and had a 40% increase in attendance for the kids.

Since then the program has grown – we now have five schools across Sydney, there’s over 100 kids in the program and over 100 Sydney Uni students lining up to be mentors.

Not only is this big for the kids, but think about the impact it’s having on these university students as they build stronger relationships and connections to Indigenous Australians, learn about their national history and identity, learn to lead, and learn about the power of giving to people during their formative years. This is only going to make our nation 120

stronger when these students are running the country in 30 years time.

What I’m looking for is the Uni to put me on a contract to run the program. Not forever, just for one year to get us going.

Marie, I think this has the potential to work at unis right across Australia, and potentially even the world.”

She paused. Lifted her head ever so slightly, and smiled – a huge, loving smile.

“What a gift you have created. Jack. Think about all those students whose lives you have improved already. It does seem like the sort of thing the University should be supporting.

Leave it with me.”

Two weeks later I had a contract. …

After coming so close to losing it all, I made the commitment that day that I was never ever going to be beholden to someone else. A week into my contract I reached out to Tom, Hamish and Deb for advice about how we could incorporate, and we set the wheels in motion with Baker and McKenzie for AIME to become its own business.

Why do we climb to the top of mountains? Why does it sound so much cooler when someone is hosting a rooftop party? Why are castles built on top of the tallest hills? What happens when we get up high? Or look out the window of a plane? What do we see? What can a lighthouse keeper bring to the table that a captain of a ship can’t? They have vision.

Simply, broken down, they can see farther and wider. If we ever find ourselves on top of a bridge, the top floor of a building, on top of a mountain, we give one big exhale as if to say, “Wow, I can see it all.”

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I have come across two very broad camps of leaders.

The first sits in their castle and observe the countryside through a lens of fear. They are afraid of all of the threats abroad. They study the slightest of changes with panicstricken eyes. They expect the worst from us and cling desperately to their power and kingdom. Change is a threat.

The other group of leaders stands upon their watchtower unafraid of the wind as they endeavour to be inspired every single day by the breadth of what they see. The world they look upon is filled with endless possibilities. They are constantly searching for the next spark of brightness. Change is opportunity.

Both leaders have vision. One leader turns a blind eye to what they see, the other leader strives to see it all.

I’ve been criticised for being pushy. I’ve been criticised for being disrespectful and for not adhering to protocol. With Aboriginal people, respect for Elders is a really critical part of the cultural circle. I’ve been criticised at times for not having respect.

I had no interest in attending advisory committees, I had no interest in talking to people who couldn’t make decisions, and there was no way I wanted to spend time being caught up with paperwork. My priority was the kids and the world around those kids. The teachers, the parents, the mentors. For every other world, I rushed to the top of the mountain as quick as possible in order to get a decision. Could they see or not?

We are blinded by senseless noise, internal bickering, small-minded politics and jealousies. It’s really hard to navigate through all of these differing and often conflicting forces, to help showcase an idea rationally.

And to be fair, I was ‘very rough around the edges’ early on. I’m a lot more subtle these days. And also more 122

generous and classier with how I bring people along on the journey.

But I was impatient. I’d seen what was happening and I knew I had a solution. I just wanted everyone to get out of my way so we could get on with helping unlock the magic of learning for the kids.

I was impatient. Still am. They reckon patience is a virtue.

If that holds true then virtuous I am not, and proudly so. I had no intention of sitting back wasting my time in full-day conferences and meetings. I had no interest in preparing a business case for the Department of Education to review for six months when I could simply go to a principal direct.

After the meeting with Marie I had no interest in meeting with the 500 or so uni staff who could have an opinion on the value of AIME. Put me with the decision makers, let’s dance and see where we end up.

The endgame from this strategy? Well you get going. Fast.

You know where you stand. Fast. And if they say, “Yep,” then you have to work to mend bridges with everyone in the organisation you have just partnered with. Fast. Because while the bosses make the decisions, their teams either make it really easy or incredibly hard for you to succeed.

We’ve lost three or four unis over the years, purely due to my inability to play the game. But you know what? I reckon if I did play the game we probably wouldn’t have got in the door.

So here’s to the impatient ones. May we live unvirtuously together and carry with us to the graves the legacy of getting shit done. Cheers.

Dear Marie Bashir, AIME would simply not be here without you. Thousands of young minds would remain locked. A generation of university 123

students would have never had the chance to lead. To grow.

To learn. And, to make us all proud of the country we are building.

Concepts like Indigenous Success would not have lit up through our voice. I would never have been pushed out of my comfort zone as you broke down the facade of power by allowing me to see the human side of our leaders, as you invited me to endless events and sat me next to the King and Queen of Spain, former Prime Ministers, heads of Australia’s leading businesses, members of the Stolen Generations.

I would never have had the chance to sit in your office and watch your generosity as you explained how fresh fruit was the key to a healthy diet, while you hand wrote notes to four Chancellors in NSW, urging them to pick up the AIME program. After it was penned one of those letters led to a partnership that has lit up the NSW North Coast for the last 7 years.

I would never have felt the way you made me feel when you showed publicly that you believed so much in me. When you spoke with pride about AIME at various functions, or when you said that you thought that AIME was arguably one of the greatest ideas to ever come out of the University of Sydney.

You pushed me to reach for greatness. To think of how much more I could be. How much more we all could be.

I will be forever grateful for that moment we shared in the University’s quadrangle in 2007. When you showed me how to be a leader for good. How to look at the big picture with excitement, hope, and possibility.

When you challenged me to imagine what’s possible.

The only way I can repay that faith is with a commitment. I commit to you that I will dedicate my life to paying forward 124

the wisdom, belief and faith you bestowed upon me. I commit to you that I will do everything in my power to fight for justice, to fight for what is right, to fight for what is good. I commit to you that I will do everything in my power to help as many kids as possible have the lives they deserve.

Thank you for getting us away, Love and respect.

Always, Jack …

Kermit isn’t happy with his skin colour. The Cookie Monster can’t control his urges. Big Bird questions everything. Oscar the Grouch is the habitual pessimist.

Announcer: We take you now to Kermit the Frog, with another fast-breaking news story!

A paper airplane zooms by as we pan across a crowded classroom full of monsters (among them are Maurice Monster and Elmo), over to Kermit, talking to the sound operator.

Cookie Monster sits behind Kermit, looking around anxiously and biting his nails.

Kermit: (to sound operator) Uh, no… mostly, uh, I think, like, I think I got mostly C-minuses, you know. I-I was sort of a late bloomer. What?

He notices he’s on camera.

Kermit: Oh, uh, oh, hi-ho, this is Kermit the Frog of Sesame Street News, and I’m speaking to you from inside a typical classroom on the first day of school. And what an exciting day it is for all these students as they look forward to another wonderful school year.

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He gets out of his chair and walks around.

Kermit: Let’s see if we can talk to some of the happy students before the teacher arrives.

He approaches Cookie Monster.

Kermit: Uh, excuse me…

Cookie Monster: (perks up) Uh, uh? Oh. Kermit: Uh, uh, wha-what’s your name, please?

Cookie Monster: Uh, ‘Cookie Monster’.

Kermit: Cookie Monster, uh huh, a-and can you tell me, um, uh, how do you feel, what is going through your mind on this wonderful first day of school?

Cookie Monster: (leans towards Kermit) Me afraid.

Kermit: Afraid?

Cookie Monster: Yeah.

Kermit: What is there to be afraid of?

Cookie Monster: Well – what if teacher not like me? What if, what if me no can find pencil? (gasp, then whispers) What if me forgot where bathroom was? Hmm? (Kermit gulps) And what if teacher not understand me like cookies? (buries face in hand) Kermit: Yeah, uh, but, you’re supposed to feel good about the first day of school.

Cookie Monster: Tha-that make it worse! Me only one who feel this way.

Kermit: (nods) Hmm. Y-you know, come to think of it, I remember feeling scared and nervous on the first day of school.

Cookie Monster: (softly) Yeah?

Kermit: (to the other monsters) Any of the rest of you feel that way?

Monsters:(random) Well – yeah. Yeah. Really scared. Yeah, I feel that way. Me too.

Kermit: (nods) Mm-hmm.

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Cookie Monster: Yeah? You mean – you mean, me not only one who feel scared?

Kermit: (shakes head) Nope.

Monsters: (random, shaking heads no) No. No, me too.

Cookie Monster: Oh! Ohh! Me feel so much better! Thank you!

Kermit: Uh, uh, oh, oh, look, uh, he-here comes your teacher now.

All the monsters disperse and take their seats, including Cookie.

Cookie Monster: Oh, oh, oh, oh… (takes his seat, then whispers to Kermit)… You know what? He not look scary.

Kermit: No. See there? The-there’s nothing to be scared of.

I-I’m sure he’ll understand if you forget things.

Cookie Monster: Even the cookies?

Kermit: Mm-hmm. Even the cookies.

Cookie Monster: Oh, okay.

Teacher: Hello, everyone, I’m Mr. Morley. I’ll be your teacher this year.

Kermit: (to camera, softly) Uh, uh, I’ll just tip-toe out.

Teacher: Uh, young frog? What’s your name?

Everyone turns and looks at Kermit.

Kermit: Uh, uh, Kermit the Frog, sir, Sesame Street News.

Teacher: Kermit, would you take your seat, please?

Kermit: Uh, but I’m afraid, uh, you see, you don’t understand…

Teacher: (in a non-threatening tone of voice) I understand a lot of you are afraid on the first day of school, but that’s no reason to leave.

Kermit: (at a loss for words) Um… Teacher: And now I’m going to show you your new books.

Kermit: (to camera, softly) Uh, this is Kermit the Frog returning you to your regularly scheduled program.

Teacher: Uh, now Kermit, you can’t talk and listen at the same time, can you?

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Kermit: Uh, no, sir.

Cookie Monster: (to Kermit) Shhhh.

Kermit: Ahem. (sits down) — News Flash: The First Day of School, Sesame Street In 2015, a report was published by The National Bureau of Economic Research in the US, authored by Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine, titled Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street. The findings? That Sesame Street may in fact be one of the most successful educational interventions in American history. Amongst the results, one that stood out is that after Sesame Street was introduced, children living in places where it was broadcast saw a 14 percent drop in their likelihood of being behind in school.

Sesame Street, Levine and Kearney write, was the original MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). “If we can do this with Sesame Street on television, we can potentially do this with all sorts of electronic communications,” Kearney said in an interview. “It’s encouraging because it means we might be able to make real progress in ways that are affordable and scalable.”

There are a few things I love about this report and the central idea. The first is that we don’t have to think about teaching through the simple lens of ‘teacher in front of the classroom’. The Levine and Kearney report found that Sesame Street costs $5 per participant on average whereas Headstart, a pre-school early intervention program, costs $7500 with similar results and outcomes.

Scalable? Cost effective? Dynamic… And fun! It’s fun!

As children we love to play. Think of a pre-school room.

You have a kid standing in the corner, staring at the wall.

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In fact he’s been there for almost an hour. Nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of girls are rolling in a ball around the room – pirate ships taking on the seas. Two lads are eating their fourth course of rice paper rolls, sans rice. A youngster is banging on the table channelling Mick Fleetwood. Three punks are outside digging holes to China – been at it for hours.

It’s all weird. Really weird. But completely natural.

Because…

We are all weird.

We are all different.

We all love to play, wander, drift.

It is a part of who we are.

When we grow, we let that go. We don’t get playtime anymore. We don’t get free time. We stop wandering.

Sometimes we even stop laughing.

As Smaug lay dormant inside the great mountain of Erebor, resting on the huge wealth of the Dwarf kingdom, we lay resting on our dormant imagination, playfulness and weirdness.

Paul Sinclair helped me see how to unlock this with the kids and keep it alive in myself too. Sinco joined me as a part-time staff member in late 2007, and then became our first staff member on the books in 2008. We’d sit in dimly lit lecture theatres in the back of the Old Teachers College at Sydney University and kick around story ideas for our shows.

Note the word ‘story’. We had to create stories.

My original instinct was to be serious. To focus on the hard message. Like pushing a session on drugs and alcohol to the depths where it shocked the kids into action – think Requiem for a Dream.

Sinco wanted to play. He was the jester. As we sat across from each other at our shared desk, we’d compete about who 129

got more kids along to their sessions – the winner gaining the right to use the desktop computer and computer chair for the next day. I’d be zoning in on some attendance data entry when I’d suddenly hear Paul putting on a voice, pretending to be the taxman calling in an audit. He was on the phone to a contact teacher.

It was fun. And the more serious it got, the more Paul would help me lighten up. Our voices combined to find a magical formula.

We called it ‘learning whilst laughing.’

We wanted to play up to the crowd – create a show. We’d push the boundaries every time we took to the stage. We’d sit in the car park before speaking gigs, bouncing around ideas. Paul would lead us. Then one day we were on a plane to Tamworth in country NSW, I had a moment of creativity. Having seen Paul enchant audiences with stories about spiders, making everyone dance across Charlotte’s Web, and after witnessing him sway and swoop with Eliot the Cockatoo, holding each person’s attention in the palm of his hands, I wanted to join him and said on the plane, “Bruz, I think I’ve got a show.” This was the scene we played out – Paul was the football hero, I was the kid and the moral of the story was the power of education.

Bring Bring, Bring Bring.

“Excuse me, is that Benji?”

“Yeah bro.”

“I’m wondering how you are really good at football and I keep getting smashed? Every time I run with the ball, it’s like running into a wall, how do you get through?”

“Bro, you gotta find the sidestep.”

“Ahhh, the sidestep.”

“Yeah the sidestep, bro.”

“Thanks!”

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“Not long after the call with Benji, the youngster took to the field once more. As if by fate, the ball fell into his hands from the kick-off, the opposition approached, encircling, as they closed in and reached out their paws, he unleashed his new weapon, pop, pop, pop, left, right, left, left, right. Frenzy.

Limbs everywhere. Then fresh air. Space. He was away. As he looked back he saw the other team all on the ground in a twist, whilst he flew towards the goal line, running freely and alone like a king galloping through his kingdom. He’d done it.

Kids, education is your sidestep to life. The more you master it, the more powerful your sidestep becomes. It’s how you break through the wall in front of you. How you can step past the claws of pain to a future of hope. The more educated you get, the stronger your ability to step past any job on the way to your dream future, ‘later garbage man, later bartender, I’m gonna be a lawwwyeeerrrrr!’”

Those four or five years working with Paul, as I’ve said before, helped me understand that kids and people are weird.

We just are. And we love to be taken to new places. To play and to dance with ideas.

Since then, every year I’ve worked on trying to add more fun, joy, imagination and theatre into everything we do. To create the ultimate show.

That means I never limit myself to where, who, or what we can borrow from. I love the Sesame Street example because it inverts the idea that TV is bad. No doubt a lot of television is brain numbing, but it’s there, so instead of complaining, let’s work out how we can use it. I love the Khan Academy model because, again, it’s simple and scalable, and uses systems that are already there.

I love what Socrates, Plato and Aristotle managed to do together to help kick-start huge conversations around 131

morality and democracy. I love that Shakespeare helped poor people during the 1500s be able to think about love, pain, hurt, treachery, nobility, hope, the human spirit and so much more, and that his lessons still live on.

I love that Aboriginal people in Australia were able to keep together the longest surviving continuous culture in the world through word of mouth, through stories. I love how a film can change the direction of your life. I love how one speech can make you want to follow someone. I love how costumes and makeup change people. I love the power of music to move us in three minutes or less. I love the awe-inspiring power of the ocean and nature at large. There is so much to love in this world.

So much that I see our role in education is bringing the theatre of the world to life for the kids, the mentors we work with and for our broader audiences.

Today the cornerstone of our work features the establishment of a Theatre of Education on our university campuses, where we deliver 50 interactive educational shows for kids aged 10 to 18. These shows attempt to distil the most significant lessons we need to navigate life on earth.

Educators, don’t give up on your inner child, allow it out to sing in a symphony of spirit, energy and weirdness. And ask yourself and your peers, ‘what are we going to do to light up our kids imaginations this year?’. …

As the sun set over Sydney’s harbour on the evening of April 7, 2008, I was privy to one of the best views in the whole city, arguably the world. From the Baker and McKenzie boardroom on the 26th floor of the AMP building, I gazed 132

to my left and through the Harbour Bridge into Sydney’s sprawling western suburbs. Over the bridge and far away was the north of Sydney, the basin of which has been home to the Cammeraygal people for thousands of years. Below me sung the sails of the iconic Opera House, and as I contemplated the beauty of the house, a green Sydney ferry caught my eye as it left Circular Quay and headed out past the wealth and power of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, snaking it’s way along the harbour shoreline towards the cove of Manly and the northern beaches – a peaceful journey, interrupted by a moment of power and force when the ferry was met by the weight of the world as it passed near the gates of our majestic harbour, which open out onto the Pacific Ocean, and the endless horizons of possibility.

A couple of hundred years ago ships flooded through that harbour doorway to build a country with so many great foundations, but left a proud people knocked to its knees, within a breath of survival.

I stood in this boardroom, on this night, because AIME was incorporating and I was set to become a CEO at age 22.

We’d done all of the paperwork to get registered. Jeez that was a barrel of laughs! Hamish and Tom were awesome with their advice, and Deb Kirby-Parsons was a guru pulling together all of the Rule Book details. Deb would become the Secretary of the Board, a post she still holds today.

Baker and McKenzie were critical in getting us to this point, including providing the room we were in. If I can offer any advice about starting your own organisation, find a pro bono lawyer! Even just to cut through the jargon. Over time you’ll learn to understand the code, but straight off the bat it’s like reading Latin. The lawyers help you wade through the clay.

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We found an auditor, on the cheap, after unsuccessfully trying to hustle some pro bono love, which is much harder to get in start-up town. KPMG came to the pro bono party a few years later and haven’t left our side.

Last ingredient? A Board of Directors. Where do you even start to find people for a board? Start asking, yesterday.

In the preceding year, every time I came across someone impressive, who I thought could add something special to AIME, I asked if they would be interested in becoming a director. I wanted a mix of influence and wisdom.

When Geoff Lovell, who I’ve mentioned already, wrote to me to congratulate me on the work AIME was doing, I spotted Macquarie Bank in his email signature and asked him if he’d be interested in being on the board. He agreed and since then Geoff has been a hugely astute guide. Reliable, professional and loyal, and he’s been the chairman for the last seven years.

At the end of ’07 I invited Jeff McMullen to our end-of-year lunch for the Sydney Program. Following the lunch I penned him a note and asked him to join us. He said something very kind in reply; “I shouldn’t say yes, Jack, I’m trying to knock back everything, but I’ll do it for you.” Jeff is still on the board today.

In the room on level 26 sitting next to Geoff and Jeff was my Mum, Bronwyn Bancroft. Bronny had sat on many boards over the past 20 years. She’d dedicated so much of her life to helping other people, in particular Indigenous people. Mum’s still an AIME director today, always willing to answer the call. When I think of Mum and her relationship to AIME it reminds of the Churchill quote: We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we 134

shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Maurice Shipp sat next to Mum. Maurice would provide a great start as the chairperson – much of his work had helped us get to incorporation. A year or so later Maurice would hand over the reins, leaving AIME in a much stronger place then when he began his journey.

Alana Rose was an inaugural board director. Alana had done some phenomenal work in the Aboriginal arts and tourism space and helped again with her guidance in the early years. Philip Morrissey also joined us in the early stages and provided sage advice.

Kerry Paul also joined as a director, rounding out the team. The mother of Viv, Kerry had been the manager of our under fives soccer team, right through to under 10s. As a director she crunched us. It was awesome. There was no detail we could get away with. Kerry was incredibly hardworking, diligent, and brought a world of experience and smarts to the table. Understated but a hugely powerful bedrock in the early development of the AIME castle.

Linny was sitting at the table. This was the period where Lin was volunteering to do our bookkeeping part-time while continuing to work at the bank. It was later that year after a couple of drinks, standing in the middle of a dance floor, I convinced him it was time to join AIME full-time. And the fact that he knew we didn’t have any cash? Small details.

Carla and Hamish joined me and Lin as inaugural board members. Carla would later become a staff member for a few years and bring a world of energy and passion to our work. Much of Hamish’s work had been completed in the early years and he was now occupied by life as a doctor.

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We wouldn’t lose the family connection though, with his sister Alison becoming a mentor in 2007 and 2008, and then taking a post as a staff member in 2011. Ali is our Social Communications and Media Director and has been one of the pillars of the organisation over the last five years. A genius learner. Hamish and Ali’s parents should be very proud, and should also bottle and sell whatever they fed their kids! More people like Hamish and Ali in the world please!

Duncan Peppercorn sat in the room as well. Duncan was the head of consulting for a group called Social Ventures Australia. SVA is a venture capital model focused on the non-profit sector. Their model at the time was to take start-up ventures and invest funding and build capabilities, to scale growth. The return on investment was social capital. SVA wanted to see problems solved. Part of Duncan’s role in the room was around due diligence and exploring if AIME had what it took to make it into the SVA portfolio. I knew we were on show and he’d suggested that I should use the meeting to lay the foundations and define the roles for the board.

So I did. Cocky little 22-year-old…

I worked my way around the group of worldly superexperienced cats and told them what their role was and what it wasn’t. Jeff with the media, Geoff and Kerry with fundraising, Bron with contacts and so on. And I remember as clear as day, I then said, “I don’t want you messing with the program. We’ve got that covered. Your job is to help guide the org, ensure that our finances and governance is red hot, and support with contacts, advice, mentoring and fundraising. Let me run the show.”

Duncan nodded.

Around the table there were our four staff members. A few likely lads – the original mod squad. All Indigenous.

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Clark Webb, who I’ve spoken about, was working on getting the program pumping in Western Sydney. It was a real hard slog out there, but to Webby I can say now, “We got there, bruz. Ten years on, Western Sydney is one of our biggest programs and the kids are killing it.”

A few years after one of Marie Bashir’s introduction letters, Southern Cross University signed on, allowing Clarky to take AIME to his hometown of Coffs Harbour and lay the foundation for kids to shine for years to come. We now employ some of the kids Clark first worked with, who have picked up the baton to inspire the next generation. Circle of life. …

“Thanks for covering my rent bruz, what a dream it was sharing those early years with ya… ‘You’re watching AIME TV… Braaaaaaaaaaaaaa.’”

Sinco was in the room making everyone laugh, and then there was Jake Trindorfer. Every now and again in life you need a big slice of luck and timing. That came at the end of October 2007 when I met Jake.

At that time I was dating one of the most phenomenally beautiful girls I’d ever met in my life, Catalin Hartwig, a German lass. She was drop dead gorgeous… so much so the thought of AIME Germany crossed my mind.

We had managed to score a meeting with Wollongong Uni in October and on the morning of the meeting I woke and got ready to head down to pitch the program and see if they would pick it up for 2008. I needed back-up, and a car that would make it on the three-hour round trip to Wollongong, so I’d asked Linny if he’d drive us.

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Knock Knock Knock.

“Who is it?”

“Maaate, it’s Linny, let’s go.”

“I’ll answer the door,” Catalin said to me and walked downstairs – I was still getting ready to bounce.

The knocking stopped and there was silence. A few minutes later I made it down to see Linny at the door picking up his jaw off the floor. I said goodbye to Catalin and we jumped into Lin’s 1990 Ford Laser. For about five minutes he couldn’t speak – she was that beautiful.

Sometimes I wish she’d stayed around simply so I could shut Linny up. Ha. Joking! Maybe a little serious, but mostly joking. Seriously, I love you, Linny, we’re friends, bro, but you know those times when you’d call me and be like, “Maaaaate, I’ve got an idea”… well sometimes they broke my brain… but sometimes they were great too… so overall… we cool.

Wow, drifted off course a little… You still there? Snap back to reality.

We hit the road and landed in Wollongong. We strode into a room with a ‘knights of the round table’ style slab of wood, playing host to a mix of university staff and Indigenous students. Kathleen Clapham was instrumental in getting the partnership established, as well as Paul Chandler, the Dean of Education, an Aboriginal man from Sydney. Chandler is the most published academic in Australia. Not a bad claim to fame for a kid who used to get called ‘spare tyre’ in primary school. Chandler would later join the board and be like a godfather for me and AIME. He still sits on the Board today.

A genius in his own right.

They were all sussing us out. I spoke about the program, Linny spoke about his experience as a mentor and how, because of AIME, Aboriginal people had become the dominant 138

influence on his adult life. We spoke from the heart. And at the end of the meeting Chandler said, “Jack, you’re going to need a star to pull this off, and I think I might have the guy for you.”

Outside Chandler introduced me to Jake, it turned out we had met at the Indigenous Uni Games earlier that year. We sat down on the picnic table by the BBQ at the Woolyungah Centre and as the conversation flowed I just knew this was my man. Back yourself Jack, just ask him. “Bro, do you want to work with us and try to get AIME set up here?”

We hadn’t become incorporated yet, so if the partnership went through Jake would have to be employed by the Uni for a year – like what I’d done at USYD. He told me how he lived one and a half hour’s drive away and was looking after his 15-year-old brother. It wasn’t going to be an easy road, but I could see so clearly that he was a star. A star that had yet to be seen. We needed him, all of us.

JT, Clark, Sinco, these guys were the heroes the kids were crying out for. The heroes we wanted to show this country.

Jake paused, looked away, then smiled and said, “Sounds like fun.”

Single-handedly, over a four-year period, he built AIME Wollongong and set a precedent for how AIME would work around the country, and for how it would be shared around the world.

It all starts with one person, then another and so on.

Paul Chandler was monstrous in his support, as was a core group of mentors like Nadia Neal, Steve Mitchell, Rob Evitt, Nathan Lovett, Layne Brown and the other guys who would go on to work for AIME in one capacity or another, up and down the coast.

As Jake recalled later, “There were so many people that helped out. Chris Issac (not the singer, although that would 139

have been something) and I dressed up in costumes and danced to music belting out from a portable stereo, at the front of Woolyungah Indigenous Centre, in the morning peak-hour uni traffic. We had a cardboard box sign we’d made that read: “AIME Mentors.” In 2008 no one knew what AIME was so we did anything we could to get the name out there.

I think Chris was dressed up as a ‘devil with dreads’ and I was dressed up as the Transformer Bumblebee. Hahaha.

Later that day we presented to lecture theatres full of students and received comments like, “Oh, you guys are involved with AIME, we saw some random people dancing this morning in front of a sign” etc … hahahahhahhaha :)” Jakey – man he just kept going. And always with a smile.

He was a machine of joy. By that stage we had 30 shows that Jake had to deliver as part of our Theatre of Education with the focus on Year 9 and 10 kids. We didn’t have workbooks or session scripts, or even many video resources. Sinco and I would spend hours on the phone with Jake before each show, walking him through every step as he took notes. It was a huge undertaking, he was incredibly alone, driving huge hours, balancing supporting his little bro and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Finally, he snapped.

“Jack, I don’t know if I can do this anymore. This principal just told me that the kids were destined to fail and we were wasting our time. I almost lost my temper right there. It’s not right, Jack.”

Jake was not an angry person. You’d struggle to even coax a swear word out of him.

“Hang in there, man. Focus on the schools that you’ve got.

They’ll come around.”

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“You should have heard what he was saying. He said these kids don’t want to learn. I’m flaming sick of this, Jack.

This is what’s stopping these kids making it. No one is seeing them.”

“I know man, and I know it’s super hard. But we gotta stick. If we don’t, who will? I’ve got your back, bro. Take the arvo off. But hang with me JT. We just gotta get through this year.”

He stayed the course and is still with us today. A slightly different AIME we share with over 330 schools, 140-odd staff, and a model that is about to be shared around the world. It was worth hanging in there for. Right Jakey?

A few months later I called Jake.

“Ughhh, hello?”

“Sorry JT, did I wake you up, bro?”

“Oh man, you’ll never guess where I am? Haha.”

“Where?”

“I’m in the Wollongong Uni car park. I didn’t finish working until 11pm last night and jumped in the car to have a quick kip before driving off. And looks like I slept through the night! Oh well, at least I’m here for work now!”

We learned to laugh. It was either that, or cry.

Jakey kept driving. Literally and metaphorically. Three hours each day. We had no fuel reimbursements. Heck, we didn’t even have more than three work shirts to give him.

Christopher Reeve once said, “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” That’s you, JT. Here is Jake’s recollection of that first year from one of our newsletters in 2008:

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Brick by Brick the Gong’s Away 2008 nearly cracked me – what a year…

“Have you heard about AIME?” That is how a conversation started early February 2008, University of Wollongong. After talking for over an hour about how AIME began, its success at the University of Sydney and being briefed on how it could be introduced to the University of Wollongong, I thought that AIME sounded really good. There would be a lot of work to do and very few people had heard of AIME in Wollongong, and I remember thinking: Where do I start? What do I do first?

The AIME Program would involve 100 Indigenous students from Years 9–12 as well as 100 mentors (university students) who would meet once a week to work together to improve Indigenous educational outcomes in Australia, through mentoring. Meetings had to be organised with the local community, high school students, principals and contact teachers. Transport had to be arranged for the participating schools, venues had to be locked in for the AIME sessions and promotion had to occur throughout Wollongong University.

This was the first year that AIME had branched away from Sydney.

I knew the good name that AIME had worked so hard at achieving was at stake and this task was too much work for me to achieve alone. I turned to the people close to me and said, “Hey, you heard about AIME, Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience?” By the end of the week just about everyone I knew had heard about AIME and they were all excited about the concept and were offering their help.

According to statistics if you are Indigenous, you are less likely to continue through school let alone stay on to university.

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People talk about Indigenous “retention” rates; maybe it’s the Indigenous “acceptance” rates we need to be talking about.

Have Indigenous Australians been accepting the existing education system? Revisit the statistics and then think about it… sure there are exceptional cases where Indigenous Australians have achieved academically, but on a wider scale something needs to change.

AIME is simply about that, it is positive change! Throughout this year high school students have been exposed to top of the line presenters from the fields of academia, entertainment and sport.

No-one would guess that in less than 3 hours, 25 mentees, with the support of workshop co-ordinator Jack Manning Bancroft and their AIME mentors, would produce such a powerful, honest and self-reflecting piece of music that covers issues including education, self-pride, goal setting, society and achievement.

When you have five minutes, log on to the AIME website and check out the short films and pictures that now feature the year that was AIME Wollongong. It has been a full-on year but thanks to everyone involved, I will share many positive memories for the rest of my life.

Jake Trindorfer Program Manager AIME Wollongong 2008 …

In the middle of the 2008 when I finished my contract with USYD I became employed by AIME. We didn’t have enough money to guarantee a 12-month contract so I went on a 143

two-month rolling contract, which I stayed on for the next couple of years. I was the CEO and also the lowest paid staff member – gotta love those perks! The other guys had commitments and family. I was happy just be able to pay the rent.

Towards the middle of 2008 I finally managed to convince Deb Kirby-Parsons to join us on a super reliable rolling two-month contract.

“C’mon Deb, everyone’s doing it!”

Deb had two kids to support and a lifetime job at the uni, with tenure.

“Let’s go for it Darling!”

DKP hit the ground running, writing hundreds of grant applications to try and get enough funding to roll our two-month contracts on. There’s a certain hunger, energy and productivity that comes when your back’s against the wall and you’re fighting for survival.

We’d secured an office in one of the University of Sydney Union’s buildings, thanks to Al Cowie and Paul McJannet with a rent of $5 over five years – we had a home.

The office space was a basement room under the food court in the Wentworth Building on City Road. It was previously used as a print studio, which was obvious by the jarring colours featured on the walls – yellow, orange, aqua and magenta. Someone on an acid trip in that room would have never found their way out.

Mum turned up one day and stencilled a logo upstairs on the wall, which the Uni then kindly replaced at a later date with an official AIME logo plaque. Act first, seek forgiveness later.

Then we got stuck into painting the walls downstairs. We put desks together and scavenged bits and pieces from all over.

One rainy Friday night in Sydney, Paul and I hired a truck 144

to go and pick up a board table and eight chairs that Deb had scored on eBay for $45. I think that was all Deb had in the bank at the time. The traffic was madness as Paul and I bounced around in the truck with the table and chairs. We got back to the basement and then put the table back together.

The following year that same table would be home to four or five staff members.

The office wasn’t easy to find. It was in the bowels of the building along with parked cars, cleaning equipment and skip bins full of rubbish and recycling. When people asked where to find us, we’d tell them to get the lift to the bottom floor and follow the smell of the garbage. Who needs windows?

Basements are hip. …

July 2, 2008.

“Stuff the protocol, Darlings. Just be yourself. They’ll love you for it!”

“Thanks Deb!” Paul and I were running out the basement doors. There never seemed to be enough time. We jumped on and then off the bus before sprinting across Martin Place. “The sidestep, bro…”

Into Macquarie Bank, up the stairs, and into line at reception. The receptionist looked us up and down in our black AIME hoodies and tracksuit pants and said, “Umm, the hotel is next door.”

I laughed and said, “Sinco, I can’t handle this right now.

All yours.”

Paul explained that the Macquarie Group Foundation and Julie White were hosting a series of corporate lunches for 145

AIME, to meet with some of Australia’s most influential people and funders.

I remember a few months earlier when I met Julie for the first time, just praying she would say, “Yep, here’s $200K a year, off you go.” After pouring out my story, Julie replied quickly, “Well, we won’t give you funding, but we can introduce you to people.” My poker face is still average and it was even worse then. I remember thinking, “Oh great, another person just bumping us off.”

But in hindsight Julie’s role at that time was as critical as anyone else’s in the early years. Even though it may seem like no one is ever going to give you cash, the introduction offer is something. It’s real. It means you have to be a little like Indiana Jones rushing through endless twists and turns. But I promise, if you hang in there, there definitely is gold at the end. You just gotta keep moving.

Two things came from that corporate lunch series. The first was, we made a statement that AIME wouldn’t change who we were for anyone. In opening all three of the lunches I said, “We don’t dress like this out of disrespect for your world. I just want a kid, no matter where they see me, to know that I’m the same person in front of them as I am in front of everyone. My promise to you is I will always be the same Jack and AIME will always keep it real. How we dress represents who we are. And what you should judge us on is not what we look like, but what we get done.”

I knew that struck a chord. For the following years, every time there was an invite that said ‘business attire’, I’d chuck on my AIME hoodie and head off, often on my Pat Malone, to an event full of suits. We stood out from the crowd, not for the sake of it, but because this was who we were in front of kids and we just wanted to be ourselves, 146

small bonus that wearing a hoodie was more comfortable than a suit.

The other thing that happened, thanks to Julie’s introductions and the lunch series, was that we broke into a world of influence.

Out of the lunches at Mac Bank the following organisations and people joined us.

Within a year we scored our first corporate partnership through Rio Tinto. Greg Hutchinson became a personal coach for me and our team, a donor and a true member of our family. Roger Massey-Greene and his wife Belinda Hutchinson would go on to be consistent donors, guides and advocates for us. In great ‘small world’ fashion, Belinda would replace Marie as the Chancellor of Sydney University.

Georgia Simmons, four years later, would call us on the eve of applications closing for a Telstra Foundation grant, encouraging us to apply.

Thank you Julie and those members of the first group of lunches for your patience.

I was so hungry to get out to the kids that I didn’t take a breath in order to take the time to bring people with me.

Inner dialogue: –Why don’t they just give me the money now?

–Well mate, for starters it’s their money and maybe they want to get to know you and see what you and the business are all about. Maybe they want to date, before they get married.

–Yeah okay, but I can’t even afford flowers.

–Fair point. Well, maybe in the interim do what you can to get by and if you can be patient, build relationships, let people get to know the real you and understand why you are doing this, how it all works. Then they will come with you.

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–Yeah I know, but as I said, I can’t even afford flowers for our first date.

–Give ’em a drawing of flowers. …

AIME Newsletter, 2008 DKP Joins the AIME Family Well here I am working at AIME and I feel so energised by it that it seems like my third day, not my third week! It has been all systems go from day one and I am amazed at just how much Jack, Paul, Clark and Jake can fit into the day. I have been collapsing in a heap when I get home each night and wonder what I would be like if I did any of the 200-odd push-ups they do in the office each day to keep their energy levels in check – I can’t believe that the Rocky theme is starting to grow on me.

Apart from the physical exhaustion I have been feeling from strenuous exercise avoidance, there have been a couple of ‘big picture’ planning sessions, which have left me feeling like I have scrambled eggs for a brain, but thankfully writing a couple of hefty grant applications this past week has given me space to get my head around some of the ‘planning’ tasks ahead.

I must say though that I feel very special (and privileged) to have been involved with AIME since its inception and to see it grow into what it is today with over 300 mentors and mentees.

The best bit of the adventure is that it won’t stop here – next year will see participant numbers more than double, so things are going to intensify.

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It really is an amazing feeling to witness a simple idea turn into something real – something that actually supports and empowers young people.

For the fundraising event on October 30, I was typing up a list of quotes from mentees, mentors and teachers, which came from the ‘end of program’ surveys. This was one of the most enjoyable tasks I have had in my entire working life. It was simply amazing to read so much positive feedback about the program.

I totally agree with one of the mentees who recently said, “AIME is the best experience ever.”

Being involved with AIME makes all of us much better people.

Deborah Kirby-Parsons …

It is, quite simply, ‘the best thing since cut bread’,” says Graham Spetere, a Careers Adviser at Dulwich Hill High School of Visual Arts and Design. “I’ve been teaching for 35 years – it’s unique in my experience for its depth and scope… it’s been devised by Aboriginal people for Aboriginal people.

— Sydney Morning Herald article about AIME, September ’08 First impressions count. Every time we went into a new school, people saw AIME with new eyes. By the time we reached Dulwich Hill, we’d had three years of practice and were working out how to frame expectations with the school and kids alike. We’d become better at what we did and how we did it.

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It’s strange that we were delivering the same program for Alex Park that we were for Dulwich Hill in 2008, but because Dulwich Hill got the chance to experience version 2.0 they only saw the positives. Framing.

Through Dulwich Hill, the unwavering belief of Graham and a strong, powerful mother named Priscilla Johnson, we would stumble across two young women – our worlds colliding to create a benchmark for AIME kids for years to come.

They were Alicia and Emily Johnson. Two brilliant young minds. Yet they’d never imagined that uni could be for them – no one in their family had ever been. So we pushed them. Hard.

“C’mon there’s more in you girls. Lift. Dream bigger.”

By the time Alicia moved into Year 12 in 2010, she asked if she could skip the AIME program and focus on her maths class. “Yes you can!” I’ve always seen the ultimate success as the day when kids don’t need AIME, when we do ourselves out of a job.

In that same year Alicia would be named the first Indigenous school captain of Dulwich Hill High in over 100 years of the school’s history. The following year, Emily became the school’s second Indigenous captain. In 2011 Alicia won a scholarship at Women’s College that I’d helped set up at the University of Sydney. Emily would follow suit.

This was the perfect storm for change. Graham would push and support the girls and they had a loving family and a super strong mum behind them. They also had a heap of talent and we were there alongside challenging them to imagine what was possible.

It takes a village.

As our model grew across the nation the role of the parents and teachers became mission-critical to flaming the energy and change we set alight in the kids.

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What we did the moment Alicia broke through was repeat her story again and again until it was gospel. I wanted kids to walk into the program and put their shoulders back, lift their heads up and believe they were gonna make it through school because they were at AIME. I wanted it all to be one big self-fulfilling prophecy of success and happiness.

Post 2010 here’s how the AIME prophecy has come to life: 2011: 75 schools. 4 school captains.

2012: 121 schools. 6 school captains and 116 in other leadership roles.

2013: 241 schools. 14 school captains and 101 in other leadership roles.

2014: 314 schools. 5 school captains and 166 in other leadership roles.

2015: 325 schools. 3 school captains and 177 in other leadership roles.

Since Alicia and Emily finished school, in five years there’s been 32 Indigenous school captains, many of whom were the first Indigenous school captain in their school’s history. And marching along side them has been another 560 Indigenous kids in leadership positions, such as vice captains, sports captains, SRC, form captains and peer leaders.

A generation is rising. …

Exhaust fumes, basements, sleeping under desks, music blaring, car parking fines, becoming best friends with cleaners, creating AIME TV with some super weird excerpts, student housing running parties and donating us $500, Clarky rabbiting on about being ‘beached as bro’ while talking into 151

the phone on the wall that didn’t work. Linny trying to be serious and work out the numbers. Tunnel vision. Road trips to Wollongong singing Daryl Braithwaite’s ‘Horses’. Writing workbooks. Trying to find kids and mentors for AIME Western Sydney. Dealing with bus companies. Having the worst photo of all time taken of me and Sinco and then using it everywhere #zoolander. Driving out to schools. Running to meetings, literally running to meetings sidestepping business folk through the city. Absurdity. Making hoodies - good call Clarky. Russell Crowe replying to Sinco’s email after watching our AIME film with a one-word response, ‘cool’. Catching the bus to meetings. Begging. Borrowing. Stealing – well maybe not stealing. We were so alive. So alert. You could smell the food court and the rubbish and feel the students marching above us. There was so much love and respect for each other.

It was a beautiful, crazy, full time. Spirals of energy spinning constantly. That was 2008.

23 December 2008, AIME Newsletter The Year That Was I couldn’t count the number of times that I’d get off the phone this year to find that what someone promised me in person they would not follow through on. I’d struggle to nail down the specific moments where I felt defeated leaving the office at 7.30pm, having to skip training for cricket because I just had to get work done.

It’s a knife edged game, the world of change. It’s what politics used to be. We stand for something and we stand for it publicly. Love it or hate it (50 cent reference for all you youngsters).

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I have yet to come across anyone who has been able to give me a rational reason why AIME can’t make mass change in this country. Unfortunately, when reason is lost, it is replaced with a number of other human emotions that cloud the reality of the situation.

It’s debilitating to know in your heart of hearts that what you are doing is right. That the only thing stopping AIME from changing the face of Indigenous education in every region in the country where a university campus is located, are people who make decisions.

The decision makers of our society who have the power to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, to a program being taken up by a university, or who say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a funding grant.

Change is confronting when it’s not sugar coated. It challenges the people in power, because it’s their problem, for which you have found a solution. Ego distorts all. How can any one of us consider ourselves more important than the progression of our fellow Australians into a life of equality?

The question really is, what do the decision makers stand to lose? The answer is, power. Those who see AIME as a challenge to their control cannot see the bigger picture that we just want to give the kids the support they are desperate for.

We just want to be able to help the schools that constantly ask us when they can get the AIME program. We’re not in this game to play personal politics, we’ll leave that to the politicians – yes, the ones that can’t commit to a climate change policy to secure the future of human life.

I got home from one of many meetings this year and said to Deborah Kirby-Parsons, our new Communications Director, “People talk about stuff so they can justify having a job – that’s the dichotomy, it’s a talk versus action game, we are action and in the process have to wade through the talkers.”

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Clichéd as it may sound history shows truly and clearly that you cannot stop the masses when they are unified. We are a young, confident, positive, committed, hard-working organisation. We represent change, from our Indigenous and non-Indigenous Board representatives to our Year 9 Respect session between university mentors and their high school mentees.

We have attracted an incredible array of believers in 2008.

The range of which is too many to name but to paint a picture the Governor, Professor Marie Bashir has been a fantastic supporter, as has the whole University of Sydney that have begun to get heavily behind the program. The University of Wollongong led by Deputy Vice Chancellor, Rob Castle, and the Dean of Education, Paul Chandler has successfully come on board as AIME’s first site outside of the Sydney region.

Di Yerbury and the Co-op Bookshop crew deserve massive recognition for their unabated support of AIME in becoming AIME’s publishing partner. They have been willing to go above and beyond, at times to the point where we felt we were testing the relationship by asking too much – but here was a group that genuinely meant what they said when they told us, “We believe in what you are doing and will do anything we can to help!”

Baker and McKenzie, led by Jennifer McVicar and Maria Pawelek, drove AIME’s incorporation, and our successful application to the ATO for Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status. They also worked diligently on AIME’s first agreement with a university – a two-year agreement with the University of Sydney in 2008. Once again, Baker and McKenzie have treated us as a client, they have shown respect and belief to the point where their support has energised us and solidified our belief that what we are doing is right.

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The AIME Board of Directors has been incredibly engaged in the process, bringing all of their experience and knowledge to help mould AIME into a sustainable long-term business.

To the mentors, this starts and ends with you. With great power comes great responsibility. There is no other mass of people like university students, that have the knowledge, youth, and time needed to commit to AIME. Thank you for recognising that life is more important than the latest episode of Australian Idol.

Every single one of you who has said to a friend or a family member, have you heard about the AIME program?

Every one of you that watched Obama’s election and believed that we all had a chance at a better life – thank you for having the ability, courage, and desire to believe that change is possible.

History will record the four new staff members in 2008 as the founding fathers and mother of the AIME movement.

Paul Sinclair left his post at Taronga Zoo with a guaranteed income, with the added responsibility of a new wife and a new son, and took a risk to come and run the Education programs at AIME. There is no one who I believe I have met that has Paul’s gift of engaging children – any age, any race. His gift will be shared with close to 700 Indigenous high school students across NSW next year.

Jake Trindorfer wins the player of the year award. Jake lives with his girlfriend and brother in Jervis Bay. For the majority of the year Jake drove 1.5 hours each way to work at the University of Wollongong. The program placed him under immense pressure, but his commitment to change was an inspiration to us all. We couldn’t have created a better employee for the AIME Program if we moulded him ourselves. Thanks Jake – apparently rumour has it that he has 155

what it takes to be the first Indigenous Prime Minister (let’s hope we are a republic by then – hail President Jake!)

Clark Webb was the first Indigenous scholarship holder at Wesley College at Sydney University. He was an AIME mentor in 2005 when we began. He was employed this year as the AIME Western Sydney Program Manager. Clarky’s commitment once again could never be challenged – he mentioned to me when we were in the office at 6.30pm on a Monday night a couple of weeks back, “I really like my job” then repeated it in a tone, which had a bit of ‘wow’ underneath it, “Yeah, I really like my job.”

We are proud to announce that in 2009 Clark will be returning to his hometown of Coffs Harbour to start AIME North Coast to be run out of our newest university partner site, Southern Cross University.

Our last staff member to come on board in 2008 was Deborah Kirby-Parsons. In the three months that Deb has been on board we have moved to the next level as an organisation. She is an incredibly gifted and committed individual who has believed in AIME since day one. Her belief and support is core to our ability to overcome some of the challenges mentioned at the start of this article.

In 2009 we will welcome 11 staff members to the AIME team.

At the start of 2008 we had 1 staff member. From little things, aye?

Have a great festive season, enjoy the time to reflect on where you are at in your life, We’ll be back on the 5 Jan ready to rumble.

Keep believing.

Jack Manning Bancroft AIME CEO 156

…

TV Newsman: And now, details on the sudden announcement that has captured the attention of the entire world. Hidden among the countless billions of Wonka Bars are five gold tickets. And to the five people who find them will come the most fabulous prize one could wish for: a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Bucket House TV Newsman (on TV): (continuous): And as if this were not enough, each winner before he receives his prize will be personally escorted through the top secret chocolate factory…

Grandma Josephine: (on “escorted”) They’re all crazy!

Grandpa Joe: Sssshhh! The man’s a genius! He’ll sell a million bars.

TV Newsman: (continuous)… by the mythical Willy Wonka himself. The amount of chocolate involved in this competition has relighted the imagination to incite candy eaters and all citizens around the world.

Charlie: (on “involved”) Grandpa, do you think I’ve got a chance to find one?

Grandpa Joe: One? I’m counting on you to find all five!

Charlie: One’s enough for me.

— Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory And one was enough for me too. You keep banging on closed factory doors hoping, praying, that some day one will open and you’ll find your treasure of riches, be it chocolate bars, gold or influence – all you are hoping for is value. Someone that values you and wants to increase your value by taking you off the streets and into their kingdom.

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Aladdin: Genie, I wish for you to make me a prince!

Genie: All right! Woof woof woof woof! (Takes on square shoulders and looks like Arsenio Hall. Then becomes a tailor/ fashion designer.) First, that fez and vest combo is much too third century. These patches – what are we trying to say beggar? No! Let’s work with me here. (He takes Aladdin’s measurements, snaps his fingers and Aladdin is outfitted in his prince costume.) I like it, muy macho! Now, still needs something. What does it say to me? It says mode of transportation. Excuse me, monkey boy! Aqui, over here! (Abu tries to cover himself with Carpet, but Genie zaps him and he flies over.)

Abu: Uh oh!

Genie: Here he comes. (Aladdin and Genie are on a game show set, where Aladdin stands behind a podium with “AL” on it.) And what better way to make your grand entrance on the streets of Agrabah, than riding your very own brand new camel! Watch out, it spits! (A door bearing the Genie’s head on it opens, where Abu is transformed into a camel.

He spits out the side of his mouth on cue. But the Genie’s not sure.) Mmm, not enough. (He snaps his fingers and Abu turns into a fancy white horse.) Still not enough. Let’s see.

What do you need? (The Genie snaps his fingers repeatedly, turning Abu into: a duck, an ostrich, a turtle, and a ’57 Cadillac, with license plate “ABU 1.” (That one’s a guess, I don’t know cars, but judging by the tail fins, ’nuff said.)

Finally, he’s returned to normal.) Yes!! Esalalumbo, shimin Dumbo! Whoa!! (And on the keyword of the spell, Dumbo, Abu turns into an elephant. Carpet struggles to get out from under Abu’s size 46 feet.) Talk about your trunk space, check this action out!

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(Abu sees his reflection in a pool of water, then jumps into a tree. The tree naturally bends right back down to the ground, where Abu hangs on and looks at Aladdin upside down.)

Aladdin: Abu, you look good.

Genie: He’s got the outfit, he’s got the elephant, but we’re not through yet. Hang on to your turban, kid, cause we’re gonna make you a star!

— Aladdin I wanted that ticket so bad. Just like Charlie. I’d dreamed of a magical life. A place where I could be on a stage to shape the world. Where I had the power to make dreams come true.

Like the power Willie Wonka had. A voice. A way to shape a world of your own. To change a world. To inspire new realities, bubble gum meals and all. I also didn’t want to be a beggar anymore like young Al. I wanted to get off the streets and be on the other side of the castle’s walls. If only I had the money and influence, I could do it all.

I was sitting in the Social Ventures Australia (SVA) waiting room reading through their latest promotional magazine: What we do at Social Ventures Australia (SVA) is take a small group of non-profits, in fact we only have 8 organisations in our portfolio at any one time. With 40,000+ non-profits in Australia we only partner with organisations that we believe have an idea that is scalable, can show impact, and have a chance to seriously change the problem they are addressing.

SVA was founded by Michael Traill, a former Macquarie Bank investment banker. Michael brought with him the Macquarie network of influence and capital.

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What we offer our ventures is simple. It’s a 5-year partnership where we generally commit to securing $500K to $1M worth of cash investment. The cash is given with strings attached. We get our hands dirty. We work very closely with all of our ventures through our consulting business to build their strategic capacity, their ability to measure impact, and generally support their leadership, and mentor the CEOs so they can learn how to run a successful organisation.

We lean on our networks for cash and in-kind.

The return for our investors is not capital like in the investment banking world. For our investors the return is social good.

What we are looking for with our venture partners is organisations who have already shown impact, who have a unique idea to solve a complex problem, and who have not yet scaled, but have the clear potential and capacity to scale with more investment of both capital and in-kind support.

“Oooh, pick me, pick me, please, please, please, I’m over here, pick me!!!!!!!”

I looked up at the installation next to the door. It had these glass circles swinging from the ceiling at the end of chains. On each circle was the name of the ventures that were in or had been in the SVA portfolio.

I wanted AIME to be there. So bad. This was our golden ticket. Our genie in a bottle.

The time was early 2008, so bear with me as we jump backward, to move forward.

Duncan Peppercorn, who as you know, would later joined us at our first board meeting, strode into the waiting room with an outstretched hand. Little did I know that this moment would begin a partnership that would change the course of 160

my life, and the life of AIME. A year or so after our first meeting, we would be welcomed into the SVA portfolio.

Duncan walked me into the SVA boardroom. A room where so much would happen over the next five plus years.

It was in that boardroom that Duncan and Lisa George would teach me about strategy. From what I can now ascertain you need a whiteboard, some whiteboard markers and ‘a true north’, to pinch one of Michael Traill’s favourite catch cries. You need a vision, which is big, so big that it scares everyone into action. I think with the best visions even the leader has no idea how they’ll get there. But once it’s written on that whiteboard, the rest is history as they say.

I was so lucky to be in that room, to start learning the fundamentals of business. To be able to have Lisa walking me and Paul through how to make a strategic plan and then going off and doing work for us, was genius. It was like Rashi, Tom and Hamish V.2.0 – this time for the business.

When we wrote our first strategic plan at the back end of 2008 we had 300-odd kids in the program. 2009 was set to see between 500 and 700 kids at AIME and have us operating in one state with eleven staff and four uni partners.

With that as our base we went with these goals as our 2009–2014 headlines: • To increase Year 10 completion rates of AIME students to greater than 90% in all participating schools (compared to the current baseline of 69% of Indigenous students nationally).

• To increase Year 12 completion rates of AIME students to greater than 75% in all participating schools (compared to the current baseline of 39% of Indigenous students nationally).

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• To increase university admission rates of AIME students to 30% of those who complete Year 12 at participating schools (compared to a national university participation rate of 1.25%).

• By 2014 to be engaging 3,600 Indigenous high school students and 3,600 volunteer mentors at universities in every state and territory of Australia.

In 2009 we were running on $1.4 million, a reasonable jump from the $4K budget in 2005, and we had set the target of running off a $3.8 million cash operation by the start of 2014.

I wasn’t really sure how we’d get there or whether the numbers were ‘right’, and I think that deep down neither was the SVA crew. But we’d tested them with our board, our key staff, the SVA family, and it seemed close enough. I think everyone thought it was pretty aggressive but they were willing to back us.

The result?

Well, as of 2016, we are now working with 6000+ Indigenous kids. We are running on an operating budget of $10 million cash, plus another $2–3 million in kind. So let’s call it a $13 million business. The only number we didn’t hit was the mentors. Important lesson. It’s okay to change goals if they aren’t working for you. They are, after all, your goals.

In 2016, there are 2000+ uni students mentoring across Australia, clearly a lesser number than the 3600 in the original plan.

Why? Because along the road we’ve made a clear decision to never sacrifice quality for quantity with our mentors.

Remember what Margaret Mead said; “Never forget that a small group of committed people can change the world because it’s the only thing that ever has.”

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I want a super engaged community of people who will live and die for AIME and the world we are trying to build together. I’ll take five driven, focused, quality human beings over 500 average people, any day of the week. I want people of the same calibre of the folk that sat at Manning Bar with me in 2006, the cool kids in the hoodies. The kids prefer this as well.

In the SVA boardroom, as I’ve said, I learned about strategy. I also built a lifelong friendship with Duncan who is quite simply one of the most unique minds on this planet.

AIME and I are stronger every day through Duncan’s influence. Lisa George was also brilliant to work with in those early years. The SVA fold were so smart that they gave me a new benchmark of where I had to get to. I wanted to acquire their skills and get to their level ASAP. Like that crazy alien dude in Men in Black I, “water!, sugar!, water…” but without having to kill them all and enter their bodies… They were smarter than me, and had skills and tricks that enabled them to win. I wanted to be like them.

In that same boardroom Lisa Cotton would have the unenviable task of trying to coach me on how to speak publicly.

I’m not very good at being told what to do. Something just happens in my brain when someone says, “do this”. I think “no”. Suffice to say this reaction has created a touch of tension over the years. I am still unsure if this impulse is a good thing or not. It’s meant that people who have managed to convince me, coach me and teach me have understood this element of my psyche and have positioned their advice as an offering, a nicely wrapped gift. They tend to leave the gift at the door, with a lovely card, knock lightly and walk away.

Inevitably with this style of advice I always open the wrapping to see what’s inside.

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In Back to the Future Marty McFly has the world’s greatest knee jerk reaction whenever someone calls him chicken. He fights back. Immediately. To the point where he almost gets left in another era and never makes it home. My ‘chicken’ reaction was to anyone who said, “You can’t do that.”

I’ve pulled off some of the most hair-brained ideas just purely to prove people wrong. Sometimes it’s brattish. Often, I’d like to think it’s because I truly believe, when people say things can’t be done, they aren’t looking at all the possibilities.

If I can show them that something they think can’t be done, can in fact be done, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll start to believe that other things are possible – that they can be more than they are. And then we’ve taken the first step together on a path towards the idea that anything can be done.

For our public speaking training session I was seated in the SVA boardroom with Lisa and the seven other CEOs from the SVA portfolio preparing for a huge event where SVA would announce their portfolio for 2009. AIME was set to be unveiled as one of two new ventures – it was a moment to inspire some of Australia’s most influential funders and decision makers.

I sat and listened as the comms coach explained that a perfect pitch to this audience would need to start by establishing the problem, eg. Indigenous kids are not getting through school. Then we should explain our solution eg.

AIME gets Indigenous kids through school.

The next step was to share a personal story of someone who had succeeded, eg. Alicia and Emily going to uni. And then have a call to action, eg. We are working with 500 kids now and want to get to 3600 by 2014 and we need an extra $2.4 million per year to get there.

The rationale and structure all checked out but I couldn’t stop thinking about the audience. If all eight of us got up 164

and followed exactly the same formula, wouldn’t it get a bit repetitive? Wouldn’t the smart people in the room pick up the pattern and even subconsciously group us all together? And in doing so, wouldn’t it make us all a little less individual and a little more average?

I pushed back.

I wanted to just tell my story. Tell it with energy. Be a bit of a punk and leave people thinking, “What and who was that?

I want to know more.”

I wanted to hook them with energy. To leave them with a feeling. I couldn’t see how I could do that by following a formula.

Structure, rules and formulas are magical ways to learn.

But once I know them, I want to subvert them, and do it fast.

I like to see if I can break up the structure that we are all using and find new iterations, new manifestations. So, using a formula is good to learn fundamentals, BUT after you know the formula, mess with it. In that space you will stumble across genius.

I sat in the SVA boardroom with my arms crossed and could sense Lisa’s patience fading. She was a guru at what she did. Her role was to manage the investors and, rightly so, she wanted to ensure there was due diligence done so that the investors on the other side of our pitches were as excited about our work as SVA was. I got it.

Over the years I would observe the way Lisa managed partnerships and people. And I was inspired to follow her lead – her relentless work ethic and utter professionalism. Helping the investor feel like they are building the business and story with you, because they are.

In that room that day we butted heads to the point where I eventually decided to fold into the SVA mould. I did the 165

pitch in their way in the rehearsal – at least they’d mic me up now.

The next day we headed to the launch. I was seated next to the former CEO of Macquarie Bank, Tony Berg, someone I’d later spend some time with doing some mentoring work. Tony and I couldn’t have been from more different worlds but we connected around negotiation. Tony said, “Never be afraid to leave the table mate.”

Throughout the room were people who would go on to be great advocates and supporters of AIME. As the mic was passed around and the other venture CEOs did their thing, I watched the room. There was polite applause, but no one lit it up. My right leg started bouncing up and down on the spot. It’s a twitch I get when I start to get inspired and can’t control the energy inside of me.

Fuck it.

“Jack Manning Bancroft from AIME, one of our newest venture partners.”

I stood at my table and turned to the room, rocking out the black AIME hoodie, a pair of jeans, a couple of speed stripes through my hair and a pair of flip flops. I knew I had their interest already. I was close to 20 years younger than all the other venture CEOs, plus they were all in suits.

I keep rabbiting on about this, but you have very, very small windows to frame expectations with any audience, so once you know the context, know the conventions, know the audience, know whose speaking before and after you, then use that window and everything you’ve got, to stand out from the crowd in the first five seconds.

“Four years ago I walked into a school in Redfern to start a mentoring program with Indigenous high school kids. My family is Aboriginal and I was sick of the complaining about 166

the problems. Last year we incorporated and I became a CEO at 22. Over the last four years kids going through the program are staying in school and finishing school. I want to see a country where every Indigenous kid finishes school at the same rate as every other Australian child and I wanna give you the chance to be a part of it. Peace.”

Mic drop. Loudest applause. Impact registered. I hoped Lisa wouldn’t kill me… she didn’t.

Over time they learned to trust me. And I learned to trust them.

My relationship with Lisa was representative of my relationship with corporate Australia and funders more generally. I think initially they were hesitant. I didn’t have the runs on the board and had this ego, which may or may not have been unfounded. I wanted to learn, but I also wanted to stay like me. I wanted AIME to grow and develop as an org but not lose our spirit and essence. I would never fold on our integrity. No matter what.

Over time I think Lisa and the other investors started to realise that I backed up the talk with action. That I would deliver in spades on the promises. And as the trust grew I got more and more freedom to be myself. The investors loved it and we made the whole thing sing. Including one day when I was the speaker at an all women Angel Investor event for SVA. It was at a fancy restaurant club in Sydney’s CBD. It was also a shockingly hot day so I was wearing shorts. Neither Lisa and SVA nor I had thought of telling or asking about the dress code. So I turned up and they wouldn’t let me in without pants. I ran back to the SVA office, asking around if anyone had spare pants. On went a pair of charming brown slacks a couple of sizes too big, tied together with a belt. I looked like it was my first day of high school. I suppose it kind of was.

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As I learned to wear pants and became a touch more polished and considered, Lisa introduced me to some phenomenal people. We did a trip to Western Australia together, which laid the foundation for our expansion there years later, and also laid the foundation for a university we signed on just this year, some seven years after a meeting in Perth. Plant enough seeds.

I sat with brilliant minds in the SVA boardroom. We had dinners with investors, lunches, strategy sessions. Each one making me sharper.

One introduction in 2009 was to Ros and Geoff Morgan.

They are family these days. The briefing from Lisa went like this; “Geoff is incredibly shrewd and will take you round the ring with questions. If he likes what he hears he will be completely in your tent. But be ready to be challenged. He’s built his career in recruitment, founding, building and then eventually selling Morgan and Banks, one of the largest recruitment organisations in the world. He’s had a tad of experience reading people. Ros is also deeply thoughtful and keen to make a real difference. You may get more out of Ros than Geoff but let’s see how it goes.”

We sat down to dinner in the boardroom and Geoff asked me a couple of questions. The first, his favourite; “What’s your story?” I spoke and watched him reading me, leaning back, thinking. The more I went on I knew I had him. Then they both explored the inner workings of the org. What were the people like? How did we do induction? What was the retention? Where did we do recruitment?

Ros had a background in HR and Geoff was constantly intrigued by people and making connections work. They knew, as I do now, that if you don’t have a phenomenal team 168

and culture you are nothing. Your idea will never reach scale to change a country or the world. To reach this scale you need smart, dynamic, creative systems and policies alongside an executive team that leads by example. Ros and Geoff knew that for organisations to nail all of these factors was nirvana.

Challenge set. I had a long way to go but I wasn’t shy about learning. I wanted us to be the best place to work in the world. The best.

Later in our relationship Geoff would tell me that it wasn’t a bad thing if a staff member left or if you fired them. In fact each scenario was a gift from one party to the other, because the reality is that a round peg doesn’t fit into a square hole.

There’s simply no point trying. You’ll never get to the other side. But there are plenty of square pegs and round holes out there so it is better to bid adieu sooner rather than later to set the other party free to find their respective match and share that happiness for all.

Geoff shared another pearl of wisdom with our team a few years back when we were at about 80-odd staff. He said, “Listen, how far this goes is now up to how many of you guys are willing to do the heavy lifting. Jack [he pointed to me] has done everything he can to help this show make it to the stage.

But he can only do so much. He needs generals to win this war. The number of you that are willing to rise to that level of commitment and sacrifice, to step up to lead, that will dictate how great you truly become.”

One day Geoff and Ros gave me and Adam Linforth a lift to the airport. We all happened to be travelling to the same place. As we made it through the valet service and into the airport lounge I noticed that Geoff knew everyone’s name.

Especially the people at reception. I said to him, “How do you know everyone?”

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“Mate, it’s not the CEOs that make the world go round, it’s the people on the front line, it’s their assistants and the people on the front desk. Treat them like gold, give them presents, be kind, because they are the ones who decide if you fly or not, they decide if you get in the room or not, and they are the ones everyone takes for granted.”

Over the years I’ve shared countless meals with Ros and Geoff. They bought me a slot car set for my 30th birthday, which was and is still awesome. I’ve seen postcards of their holiday adventures and learned of their love of travel and cars. I’ve been introduced to some wonderful people through them. They’ve met my Mum. They’ve bought Mum’s artwork and then got her to design a surfboard for Aussie surf company McTavish.

Ros has spent hours in our office trying to help me see what she could. Geoff has sagely passed on advice. Both have been there whenever I needed. Whenever AIME needed.

As I’ve said before, it’s the people that make you who you are. It really is. Those human connections. Don’t chase cash or influence. Chase the gem human beings. More often than not they have cash and influence. But don’t chase them for that, chase them for the kind of people they are. Chase their wisdom. Study them. Strive to learn from their guidance – to become a gem yourself. …

Back in the SVA boardroom I would be pulled aside after one of our ‘feedback sessions’, where the SVA leadership would check in on our plan and pass on their advice and thoughts.

Chris Boys was our relationship manager at the time. During the session I’d been offered some suggestions about AIME’s 170

direction that I didn’t agree with. Following the session Chris had taken me aside and ever so gently ‘gift wrapped’ some feedback. He spoke softly and kindly.

“Jack, do you know how obvious it is when you are not agreeing with someone? You lean back in your chair and cross your arms. And when you do that you instantly lose the person on the other side of the table.”

Boom. I had never considered what I looked like from the other side. Never.

As Chris spoke, his words instantly unlocked a huge gateway of reflective power in my mind. I became phenomenally self-aware.

The great poker players read their opponents. They look for tics or tells to show what their opponents are thinking. Chris had helped me find mine. I couldn’t switch off my reactions, but I could learn how to mask them. Ninety percent of our comms is non-verbal. I was wasting so much potential by lacking self-awareness and discipline in my body language.

Even today, either in work or social situations, I’ll catch myself going to close my arms and I stop, breathe and then try to stay open. I want to be open to people. Not closed. I really do want to learn and grow. Even if it hurts. There is a constant struggle between your physical and emotional reaction to lessons that expose your weaknesses and being able to keep your heart and mind open enough to actually receive what is, in fact, a gift to help you grow through the life you are living.

Over those early years Chris was role model with lessons on how to be kind, generous, caring, thoughtful, professional, charming and have empathy for people you are working with.

He was a truly great guide.

The boardroom would also be the same place I would meet the SVA founder and ‘C-E-OOOOOOO’ Michael Traill.

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Every six months as we checked in on AIME’s progress, he would push and prod me intellectually. He would analyse and test. Question and, amazingly, listen. He listened to a lot and still does. That stuck with me. This bloke had a world more experience and knowledge than I did, but he recognised that I saw the world differently and that meant I had something to bring to the table. Later I would learn at Stanford that ‘strategy manifests itself on the front line’ – that’s where you get the rawest insights and information that can help you predict future trends. I was Michael’s front line.

Over the coming years, at each six-monthly check-in, I’d feel a little stronger and a little smarter. Strat plans, audits, org charts, risk management, position descriptions, cost per participant, stakeholder management, vision, mission statement, values – the words started to move from theory to practice. I was on my Karate Kid journey and would soon be able to grab that fly.

I consider Michael a great friend. It’s fantastic to have an ally and partner-in-crime who is well ahead of you. It gives you a benchmark. Over the years I watched myself grow from feeling like a little brother to, eventually, an equal and peer.

That was a great feeling.

The SVA crew at that time were simply on fire. I’ve already mentioned Duncan who offered me his outstretched hand.

I’ve also mentioned how Duncan has become a phenomenal friend. His mind is so charged that I simply love dancing with him mentally.

I love being able to be friends with people of all ages. In particular older people who have so much more knowledge and wisdom. Often I’ve found it easier to connect with people who are older than me. Maybe it’s because I’m running through life at warped speed. Many years later, Jan Owen, 172

who would then be the CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians, would ask me why I was friends with so many old people and not as connected to people in ‘the space’ who were my age. I said, “I don’t know how much I can learn from the guys my age.”

I’d met Jan originally in 2009 in that same SVA boardroom, when she was the General Manager of SVA, rounding out their key leadership group. Jan brought to the table an infectious sense of excitement, exuberance and an unfaltering capacity to always say yes. Michael and Lisa would be analysing the consequences, Duncan would be considering what we had missed, Chris would be reading the room and me, and Jan would just be giving me this wholehearted ‘you can do anything, I believe in you’ vibe.

They were truly a dream team and it was a privilege and honour to be a part of that family. A match made in heaven. …

What do you call a national launch with no national partners?

Ours.

August 4, 2009.

“Team, a deadline and event will force the hand of unis both within and outside NSW and maybe convince a corporate to become our first national partner.”

We wrote to endless universities and received the cold shoulder. Victoria and Queensland seemed to be the warmest.

But no one would sign on the dotted line. Heck, no one even wanted to come to our national launch.

The date got closer.

We had the Governor of NSW coming, we’d pulled together a national leadership council that included Ian 173

Thorpe, Andrew Denton, Tom Calma, Linda Burney and Jeff McMullen. I remember as the night approached our team gathered around to go through the plan for the event. One of our staff turned and looked at me and asked the question no one wanted to; “How do we have a national launch without any national partners?”

Blank faced, just like the Indigenous Carnivale ticketselling days I replied, “We announce our intentions to expand nationally.”

Simple. I was a pretty good spin bowler during my time playing cricket, and I reckon I was quickly becoming an even better spinner of words.

Macquarie Bank had agreed to host the function in their new trendy space at Shelley Street.

Before the night we held our national leadership council meeting. Denton listened, Calma encouraged and Thorpe offered to get to work. “Jack, I’m gonna introduce you to Virgin. I reckon you guys would be great together, and I don’t know how I’ll find them but I’ll google Google and get you an introduction. I’m happy to come to both the meetings with you.”

Australia’s greatest Olympian and one of the best athletes of all time is offering to go out and get Google and Virgin, two of the biggest orgs and successful brands in the world, on board with AIME. Be cool. Even though your childhood voice is screaming, “What is happening?!!!”

“Sounds great mate.”

The image of Marie Bashir opening the event with her class and luminous presence will never leave me. We had potential and existing partners in the room. There were people there who had the power to make things happen and even though 174

we didn’t have a uni to announce that night, we gifted everyone in the room with a spirit and belief that changing a nation was not only possible, it was inevitable. In the face of the toughest adversity, reach for the most uplifting and positive energy and vision you can.

Despite the lack of national partners it really was a special and beautiful event. The images from the night capture the essence. There are pics of Thorpie kicking it with our staff, Denton was rocking out his leather jacket, McMullen holding court, around the room everyone was smiling. And there’s a cracking image of one of my close friends who had joined us that year, Tom Andrews, the same one who took ages to shower.

In the pic Tom is holding the attention of Greg Hutchinson and company telling his AIME story, which commenced with Tom lying on the couch in our apartment and me saying, “Bro, I can’t get anyone for the job at North West Sydney.

How do you feel about giving it a crack?”

“Sure,” he said.

Turns out a slightly cynical red-headed Greek Cypriot can be an ideal role model for Indigenous kids.

Tommy was beyond admirable in those first couple of years, in particular in getting North West Sydney pumping.

He’d drive endless hours out to the schools, hustle for mentors, get bustled around different ‘work locations’ – at one point working at the end of my table in the Wentworth Building office, on a ‘desk’ of stacked empty laptop boxes.

The first stand-up desk?

You have to create deadlines and events to manifest a sense of urgency. The launch worked. It forced us to move quicker and brought people together. Create events, create moments, create the world you want to see, or someone else will create it for you.

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We’d created some momentum, now we really had to deliver on banking a national partner. And quick, the clock was ticking.

I hustled my way around the country and met a variety of universities. Same result as before the launch. Many simply didn’t reply.

One university took us on a tour of the whole campus, introduced us to all their key staff, and acted so warmly that I thought it was a done deal. They drove us back to the airport and gave a handshake saying, “Today went brilliantly, we’ll be in touch soon.” Afterward we sent emails to thank them for their time and asked when we should expect to hear back. No reply. A few weeks passed, so we called. They took a message. No reply. Four months later we received a letter from the Vice Chancellor saying that they would not be entering into a partnership. So weird. Just tell me ‘no’ upfront you battlers.

Another weird moment happened in South Australia. A group of students formed a club to get AIME to their university. They had been lobbying the key staff and secured a meeting with their Vice Chancellor. I agreed to fly down. I waited at the huge cedar wood dining table with the student rep who had organised the meeting. The Vice Chancellor strode in with his staff member. He looked me up and down and then shot a look at his staff member, which was a killer.

Not the best poker face. His look said, “What the heck am I doing in this meeting with these kids?” Needless to say, despite my best efforts he couldn’t see past my age, attitude and general vibe.

He wasn’t alone.

Fifteen universities later, no one had signed on. We’d organised a uni task force group who were writing to their 176

friends that were chancellors and vice chancellors but still, no dice.

It was late November when I walked out of Melbourne Airport and jumped into a taxi. The destination? Monash University, the second last uni meeting we’d secured for the year. To be honest I didn’t even know where Monash was or how many Indigenous kids were in the local area, but all the same we needed them. We needed somebody, anybody.

The meter kept ticking $60.05… $70.75… $80.50… where is this place? I arrived, one hour and $110 later, sourced from the ever-dwindling JMB savings account. The time? 4pm. The day? Thursday. The scene? Rain clouds were brewing and thunder clapping, sending the taxi speeding off into the distance away from the ensuing apocalyptic moment that was descending on Clayton Campus. Chuck Norris was on standby in case it got any more real.

As the rain started to fall I set off, with AIME hoodie on, trudging through the storm, alone, into the meeting with Pro Vice Chancellor Adam Shoemaker. His assistant asked me to take a seat.

Man, if this bloke says no, I think I could be done here.

“Professor Shoemaker is ready to see you now.”

“Jack, welcome! I’ve been looking forward to this meeting all week. Can I get you anything? A water? Let me tell you, I know of your mum’s artwork, I did some work at ANU in the Indigenous field. It’s so exciting what you are doing. Before we get into it, know that we are 100% in, the cash is sorted, so let’s take the time to talk about how we can make it work.”

I could have kissed him.

Thank you world.

Adam was a lifeline, one of those people who saw the potential, the glass half full.

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He would go on to be a constant source of positive support. A wise point of counsel for navigating the complex political landscape of university life and he would eventually move to Griffith University in Queensland, bringing AIME with him, to help light up the lives of Indigenous kids throughout South East Queensland.

Find the good people, the believers, and never let them go.

They’ll move mountains with and for you.

The following day I met Margaret Gardner, the Vice Chancellor at RMIT, who said, “We’ve got our own unique political climate in Melbourne. You’ll have to try and work through that, but I’m willing to give you a shot.”

Boom. Two new uni partners. AIME was national.

Melbourne would go on to be an incredibly challenging place to establish a foothold. They have a small Indigenous community and are understandably wary of programs that come in and promise the world. Many had come before and failed or disappeared. We would have to do our time there, sometimes in the face of pretty harsh receptions from some of the key Indigenous people in both the education and university sectors.

All I said to our team was, “Keep focusing on the kids.

Be really good at what we do and eventually people will see us for who we are. Do our time, don’t play politics, keep working hard. In five years when we are still here, they’ll know we are the real deal.”

Both RMIT and Monash were brilliant starts for us, but like Macquarie Uni and the Cumberland campus of University of Sydney, they were not the ideal locations for the model because of the lack of Indigenous kids within an hour of the campus. We did our best in those areas and managed to show glimmers of what we were capable of. After building our 178

initial foothold in Victoria, we have now moved on from both of those universities and are working with Deakin in Geelong, which has one of the biggest pockets of Indigenous kids in Victoria, and also with Federation University in Ballarat and Gippsland.

You can plan all you want, but sometimes you have to just get things going. …

“Let’s just advertise for a role in Queensland and fill it?”

“Where will they be based?”

“I’ll work it out, we just gotta get someone on the ground.

Eventually a uni will come on.”

In December, just after we’d signed the Victorian universities, we went into a staff recruitment drive for the following year. We hadn’t been able to nail a Queensland uni partner. It was time to take a punt. We’d advertise for a role, pay for it out of some of the SVA cash for the first six months and see if we can bank a uni in the new year.

I remember sitting across the interview table, an outdoor table in the Wentworth building food court, with Belinda Huntriss who had applied for the AIME Brisbane role. I said to Bez, “Sooooo, we don’t have a uni locked in, or even an office, but I’ll get you one and while you are up there we’ll get a uni on board.”

With blind faith Bez backed me. I’m not even sure if she’d been to Queensland before – ha!

Belinda moved up and had a small office in the reception of SVA Brisbane. We got her out meeting with schools and doing some covert mentor recruitment at university Orientation Weeks while I kept working the back channels, trying to get 179

someone to sign on. With the support of Chris Sarra and one of the university’s biggest benefactors, Bob Bryan, in our corner, in March 2010 we eventually secured a last minute deal with Queensland University of Technology, for three years.

Boom, again.

In Queensland we suffered similar start-up blues to Victoria and had to overcome the people whose noses were out of joint from the new kids flying into town. But those three years gave us enough time to win the main battle, the only one that counted – the connection with the kids and mentors.

I love stories like Belinda’s, or Adam Hansen’s, who also joined us that year. Adz has been with us ever since we bumped into each other in Victoria Park on January 26, 2010.

With tats all over his arms and the muscles to match, he’s a scary looking dude, that is, until he smiles. Adam is one of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever seen stand in front of the kids. Bez and Adz are the kids we work for.

They’ve overcome adversity and have shown through their own personal stories that it is possible. They are the everyday heroes who make the AIME heart pump. Absolutely brilliant role models of Indigenous success. For a couple of years Bez worked her arse off to get us away. The legacy of which now sees over 1500 Indigenous kids and over 500 university students in AIME across Queensland. Adz is still with us, travelling around Australia from Rockhampton to Bunbury and everywhere in between, unlocking the imagination and spirit of kids and mentors along the way. …

“We’ve only got five people left to break the Guinness World Record. Only five left.”

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I yelled across Sydney’s Martin Place as 200-odd people stood in their budgy smugglers (speedos) and smugglettes (bikinis). We were about to strut from Martin Place in Sydney’s CBD all the way down to the Sydney Opera House, in nothing but our swimwear. We were hoping to break the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest swimwear parade.

Why? Good question. The answer is in the year 2009.

Most of the cash wasn’t set to come through from SVA until 2010 and we were battling big time to get through the year. In fact we were short about $100K to pay our staff. It was serious, we could go broke. SVA had agreed to pay us in advance for some of the 2010 commitment but we were still short.

Every avenue had been exhausted. Every phone call made.

Every application submitted. As Linny and I sat in our basement office at 7pm in early November we got absurdly desperate.

“C’mon mate, give me all the stupid ideas you’ve got. No such thing as a bad idea. Where can we score this cash from?”

“Crazy ideas?”

“Yeah man, I’m out.”

“Well, you know how I own Budgy Smuggler and run that on the side?”

“Yeah, the swimwear company?”

“Uh huh. Well I’ve been thinking about trying to break the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest swimwear parade.”

“Go on…”

“Maybe we could do it as a fundraiser?”

“We could ticket it?”

“Do it at Bondi Beach?”

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“Nah bro, stuff that, let’s do it through the middle of the city.”

“Ha ha, that would be wild.”

Five weeks later, after calling everyone in our respective phone books, setting up a website to ticket the event, organising a police escort to shut down the city, getting permission from the Opera House for a photo of semi nude people spelling ‘AIME’ with their bodies on the steps, doing endless push ups to try and get in shape, running around the University of Sydney in our budgy smugglers shooting promo videos (there’s some classic YouTube clips on our channel, of Linny and I doing some of our best creative work…), we ended up raising $20K, and with the SVA cash advance we were almost there.

Strut the Streets was born and was set to have a shelf life of five years and produce some utterly odd promo videos including the notably weird Strut the Streets vid ‘JMB working week in Budgy Smugglers’. For the 2013 Strut I said if I raised over $20K I’d spend my working week in budgy smugglers and thanks to a last minute donation, my bluff was called. The week included a keynote to 500 people, job interviews, a board meeting (including a few run-ins with Commonwealth Bank security!), walking through the streets of Redfern, staff meetings and meeting with a new corporate partner in Melbourne.

So, how did we connect a company that sells tiny lycra bathing suits to a program for Indigenous kids? It was a total stitch-up, but we managed to find a line that could pull it all together. We focused on the message that we would “go to any lengths to see a day where Indigenous kids finished school at the same rate as every Australian child.”

Let’s play a little game, a communications game. I’m going to flip some cards and you have to see if you can take these 182

random cards and put them into an event with a key message and purpose.

Ready?

Deal.

Card one: Indigenous Australian kids.

Card two: Cash shortage.

Card three: Revealing swimwear.

Card four: Sydney CBD. Card five: Five weeks.

Card six: Guinness World Record.

What message would you land on to bring it together?

Over the course of the next few years over 2000 people of all ages strutted through the streets of Sydney in their budgy smugglers and smugglettes. We raised over $200K across five Struts. Daryl Braithwaite performed and Wendell Sailor, Anthony Mundine, Bangarra dancers, the Waratahs, Sunny Abberton and the Bondi Rescue crew all strutted. We had epic after-parties at the Ivy pool bar. At one Strut, Wendell ran up to me saying, “Brother this is one of the most amazing gigs I’ve ever been to – how about the energy!” It was the same way Wok looked at me and Kabir backstage at that first Carnivale.

Why did it work? I think it was a combination of being absurd and meaningful at the same time. It really was pure, innocent, playful and fun, plus it had a fundraising element that provided an ‘out’ for people who thought, “There is no way I’m doing that, so I’ll sponsor you instead.”

We actually became renowned for it, the Strut reflecting a deeper element of AIME’s character; to try new things, have fun, and do whatever it takes. I’d often be introduced by 183

CEOs to their mates with the line, “These are the guys that do the Strut in their budgies.”

Marketing genius or desperation?

Strut the Streets is an example of how some of the best creative ideas are born out of poverty. Absolutely farcical and only now can I admit to how ridiculous it was that anyone even did it.

With all that said, we still had the challenge of trying to find the extra $80K to get through the year. It was December and the clock was almost out of time. …

Thorpie came good on his word and managed to get us in the room by googling Google. Walking into the Google office felt like we’d made it big time as we strode past the table tennis tables, video game rooms, open plan offices and trees growing inside the room – all the things they are known for.

I was 24 and thinking, am I dreaming?

We walked into a meeting room with multi-coloured chairs and met Leticia Lentini, one of the first Google staff in Australia. ‘Teesh’ was so warm and responsive. She offered to help us with everything she could and explained that while Google didn’t give funding, they could help with our email systems by providing Gmail for business for free and help with any other in-kind pieces.

We were using an email server that just didn’t work. For a month I didn’t have emails coming through to me – isn’t that a wild concept? And we were paying for it. Getting Gmail was a saviour. Funny how far the world has advanced technologically in the last seven years.

I was stoked. We could put Google down as a partner.

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And there was a pleasant surprise to come.

On December 17 and still short close to $80K after Strut the Streets, I received what looked like a spam email. Turned out it was for real. Teesh was cc’d in. The first of many magical moments she would bring to life from behind the scenes at Google, in order to supercharge our efforts to change a country and the world.

Dear Jack As the holidays approach, the crew here at Google wanted to thank you for the amazing work Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience is doing to make the world a better place. In recognition of the terrific work you’ve done, and to support your continued success, we’d like to give Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience a one-time grant of $100,000 US. We’ve recommended the grant to be made from our donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. Your grant is still pending final approval, so please treat this as confidential for now. If approved, you’ll receive a grant agreement from Tides in the new year.

Thanks again for all you do to bring joy to so many.

Nikesh Words can’t do this justice. Smile? I couldn’t wipe mine off my face. The grant was confirmed and we could tell everyone we met, that as part of this Christmas gift from Google, we were the only group in Australia to receive funding, one of only 25 organisations from across the world.

Google was in the AIME game.

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…

To round off 2009 I fired my sister.

The first person I’d ever fired.

In so many ways Ella had answered the call for that year as the Program Manager at Sydney University – she was only 21. But because I didn’t know what success looked like, and I couldn’t communicate it before El started, I failed her by not laying out clear expectations for the role. The end game meant that by the time we reached the close of the year it was clear that we needed a different level of experience to take the program up a gear. Man, the changes happen quickly.

It’s super hard when you are in start-up mode. You’ve got a limited network of influence so you hire people who you can trust. For me that was friends and family. You’re not sure what you need. So you go with people who have the passion who will work with and for you. Then as you start to work out what you are doing, you start to realise what skills you need, and at a certain point passion isn’t enough if you want to see your train really fly across the tracks. So you’ve got to let people go.

As I said earlier, one regret I have is that I wasn’t more graceful and thankful for those people who played their role stoking the fire in those early years. I did try to show that I cared about what they’d done, but I could have been better.

Firing Ella was really hard.

I watched my little sister sit across from me, crying, as I said, “You can make it back if you go and get more experience. The door is always open.” I’m a psycho. It was like another voice speaking. A robot. Because inside, my heart broke watching my little sister’s tears stream down. I was crushing her and doing it with a straight face.

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It is never comfortable letting people go from your organisation but over time I’ve learned some things, which make it a world easier.

The first lesson comes before the relationship between employer and employee even commences.

Think of a girl walking through a bar and seeing a guy she likes. Their eyes connect and that first look sets expectations.

What does he see? What does she see? What are they dressed like? What’s the pub they are in renowned for? What music is playing?

That first look is your job ad and your application page on your website.

Then, let’s say the girl approaches the guy.

The tone, smile, welcome and what you say, are all critical in that first opening.

That’s the first time you call your employee for a phone interview.

The guy and the girl start talking.

They’ve both now reached a critical moment. As tempting as it is to put the best foot forward, they have a very small window to be really honest and upfront about their expectations, but also about who they are, in order to save a lot of pain later.

That’s the job interview.

And as an employer I’ve learned that this is the best time to show your cards. Warts and all.

I want people who want to work at AIME for five to ten years. I don’t want dickheads. I want people who are going to make life easier for everyone. And if they don’t get results in the first six months we’ll part ways, because we are doing them a disservice by employing them in a role where they can’t succeed.

Be honest, be upfront, set clear expectations.

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So the guy is talking to the girl and then they make plans to share contact details and go on a date again. In text messages before the first date, and during the date, they start to let the other person know what they are looking for.

This is the role of a position description.

The position description is your home – don’t you dare be like that stubborn golf ball that sent Happy Gilmore round the bend. Don’t be too good for your home. Make your position description count. Sweat the detail. It’s worth a day’s work to get someone in a role that may last a lifetime. It is the most important piece of communication you have. Use honest language. Be raw. Be clear. Avoid generalisations like, ‘well rounded individual, multi-tasking, team player’ blah blah blah.

Try to be punchy, “I want you to perform this role to work with kids. We expect a 24-hour email turnaround. There are these clear outcomes to be met. We’ll offer you this support and this is what you can expect from us.” When in doubt refer to the ad that the children wrote for Mary Poppins.

Your applicant has been to your website, read the job description, put in an application, completed a phone interview, now it’s time for the grand finale, the face-to-face interview.

Use this moment to be honest once more. Ask the tough questions. “If you weren’t to get this job why do you think it might be? Do you really want this thing? Do you know how hard it is? How exhausting it is?”

Make your expectations, boundaries and plans very clear.

To be able to do this in both the personal and professional worlds it’s on you to get your own house in order first. You have to answer the most important question, which is what the position description provides a template for – what is it you actually want from this person? Why do you want it?

How does it fit into your bigger plan?

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The guy and girl commit to start dating and the employee accepts your job offer.

The first six months are make or break.

As the guy and girl start to get to know each other they are slowly sharing more and more of themselves. They are gifting their lives to the other. As you and your employee are doing.

If it’s working, you know within six months. Heck, you kinda know within six days. This applies to both the world of recruitment and dating.

So don’t hope to change the person sitting across from you.

Don’t think you can transform them dramatically. If it’s not working, in life or work, you have failed the most critical test, you haven’t been clear and honest with yourself about what you truly want and need. And you haven’t been able to communicate it clearly.

Round peg, square hole.

When it doesn’t work, end it. Fire fast and early. Let each other be free to find true happiness in the world and in doing so, you’ll avoid having to fire your sister four days before Christmas. …

2009 Annual Report Report from the CEO It was the year we had to have.

When reflecting on last year I am suddenly struck with some of the lyrics from the Midnight Oil track ‘Forgotten Years’: The hardest years, the darkest years…

These should not be forgotten years…

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Etched in the memory are the challenges associated with rapid growth and a young, relatively inexperienced management team. As we sat in the basement of a retail building of Sydney University, the loading dock and bin area as our neighbours, there were moments when it was only human to think, “Can we pull this off?”

From three staff we grew to thirteen. Systems were needed – internal communication channels struggled and technology was our answer. Who would have thought technology wasn’t that simple. Getting a server was like trying to order a Big Mac in a vegetarian restaurant. Then our emails went down.

Text messages didn’t work. Org charts were revised, strategies reviewed, we were doing everything at pace. But growing quickly also means you learn quickly.

It was flight or fight. As we stood up to fight in ’09 it felt like AIME was standing in the ring between Ali and Frazier in Manila. But we didn’t go down. We didn’t make the same mistake twice.

If the kids were going to step up to their challenges and walk with us, then we had no excuses. As Obama said, “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.”

Well we’re running down that path Mr President.

There are some bloody big boulders in the way and it hurts when you hit one. But every time we hit the ground one of you reading this report picked us up, patted us off and said, “Back you go.”

Our partners, our friends, our mentors, our teachers and our families, believe in our mission.

They have believed in our ability to change the nation and they have believed in our mentors’ and mentees’ desire to lead this change. Change in 2009 included: 190

• Two Aboriginal students becoming the first ever Captains of their schools.

• Two AIME sites had 100% progression from Year 11 to Year 12 – the state average was 63%.

• In the first year of operation at two new sites we achieved 90% and 96% progression rates from Year 9 to Year 10.

• At our oldest site, AIME kids were 11 times more likely to go to university than other Indigenous kids in the state.

And the list goes on and on.

As I sit on the plane writing this report I look at the date, it’s the 19 April 2010. I’ve just finished the AIME training at Monash University and am flying to Brisbane to deliver our final training session for mentors at QUT. I can’t help but think how far we’ve come. I know this has been because of the selfless attitude of so many and because of all the hard work that has been done before us.

Constantly at AIME, we see people step up years before they are ready. My sister Ella Bancroft, the Program Manager at Sydney City in 2009, was one of those people. As we sat in the car park at Balmain in December 2008 I said to Ella, “El, I need you to take my place and run the Program at Sydney Uni.” She was 20 years old, mid-way through a degree, and we both knew that she still had a lot of growing up to do.

But these kids needed a role model – a young Indigenous person who was ready to step up and show the way. She said, “I’m in”.

Ella stepped up because the situation needed it. Unsure and inexperienced, but passionate and driven, Ella shouldered the responsibility. Her role in 2009 left a legacy that saw 400 USYD students turn up to be involved in AIME in 2010.

AIME’s journey is like Ella’s.

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Young, inexperienced and often lacking in the skills needed.

Our will and desire is forcing us ahead. These kids are forcing us ahead, the mentors are forcing us ahead and so are you.

The nation deserves AIME to be something bigger for us all.

And as I sit on the plane in 2010 I’m happy to say to you all, we are now ready to take on this responsibility.

Jack Manning Bancroft CEO …

I talked a big game but when I got home each night I was plagued with self-doubt. I was tentative to stand in front of staff, some of whom were more than 25 years older than me, and direct them. I was scared to lead.

It’s intimidating. You have to completely put yourself out there.

When you watch a seasoned athlete run onto the field, you just know that they are going to win. Like watching Federer at the height of his powers, Freeman at the top of her 400m mark for the Sydney Olympics, Michael Phelps every time he steps onto the pool deck, Sachin Tendulkar or Brian Charles Lara as they strode to the batting crease, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and co in the star-studded Brazilian team of the 1990s and 2000s.

When you watch the great performers enter a stage, you know they belong. You want it to last forever when Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé or Bruce Springsteen walks up to the microphone. Or you see Fleetwood Mac work the crowd, or the Beatles. At a certain point they bust through their ‘rookie’ 192

seasons, which are filled with energy, passion, spark, ingenuity and ‘newness’, and they just own it all.

Fame fades but class lasts forever.

I reckon you find class when you’ve been humbled again and again by failure. Your better angels shout down your demons and scream for you to get back up, to keep pushing forward.

If you ever reach the top of the mountain you are climbing, class is when you never forget what it felt like to be humble, to have nothing. The ones at the top have been hardened by failures and experiences, and inspired by success and moments of ecstasy. There is a theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become a master of any skill. Despite all of my energy, I was nowhere near my 10,000 hours. So I had to push on. I hadn’t come close to mastering my skill as a leader and it showed in the way people looked at me.

It’s a fine line between ‘faking it until you make it’ and ‘being full of shit’. The difference between the two? Whether you can hang in there long enough to make it.

Almost every single thing that I have done for the first time, I’ve stuffed up. Almost every single one. It’s mused that the most successful people in the world are the ones who have failed the most – the thing that makes them successful is that they get back up, time and time again.

I wasn’t ready, but there was no other choice but to push on. …

In 2010, in our sixth year of operation, after constantly hitting the canvas, we started to have a few wins. We’d locked in our ‘national’ university partners, and now it was time to try and get corporate Australia and the philanthropic sector on board.

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You’ve heard of Sir Richard Branson and Virgin? And Google? And in Australia you would know Commonwealth Bank, one of our biggest banks? Let me tell you how in 2010 we got our foot in the door with these three organisations, which over the next six years would lead to millions of dollars of funding, the world’s first ever sky-high mentoring session, the breaking of expensive vases in corporate function rooms, the riding of coloured bicycles through Silicon Valley, the making of video games, and how I ended up spending time with their respective bosses.

“Oi Jack, I think we need a new bank account. We are getting nailed on these fees.”

“Sweet, Linny. I know a dude called Phil Lockyer at Comm Bank, why don’t you write to him and go see if they can help us out.”

The following week Linny headed off to CBA dressed like he was heading to the beach.

Bring Bring, Bring Bring.

“JMB, it’s Linny.”

“Yeah bro, what’s up?”

“Maaate, that was weird.”

“What happened?”

“Well I went in wanting to open a bank account, and Phil was there with two of his team members.”

“Yeah.”

“And they started asking me all these questions about the program, about how we are funded, about how partnerships work.”

“Uh huh.”

“Basically I think they may want to fund us. They asked how much we needed and I think I said around $100K if they wanted to be our first national partner. They didn’t blink.

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They want to meet with you and I again and talk more about a partnership.”

“Stop it. You go in to open a bank account and walk out with our first national partner, that’ll do me.”

Phil Lockyer is one of the quiet heroes of the AIME story.

An incredibly kind and generous Aboriginal fella from WA. I first met him as a youngster when he was at the Aboriginal Employment Strategy. Phil was one of the key reasons we got that funding and he’d later bring on another corporate partner as well. Another player behind the scenes. …

“Maaate.”

“Yeah Lin.” “Last night I was having dinner with my family and talking to my old man about how they do their contracts and partnerships.

As you know he works in desalination plants, and with engineering there is always something that goes wrong. So when they pitch to potential clients they always make sure that no matter how exciting the project, that they under-promise so they can over-deliver. If they think the project will take four weeks, they say it will take six. If they think it will cost $4 million, they say it will cost $5 million. If they think they will be able to provide weekly updates, they say they will provide fortnightly updates. If they think they’ll be home for dinner at seven, they tell their wives and husbands they’ll be home at eight.”

“Got it, so for the Comm Bank proposal let’s say we’ll work with 100 kids, when we think we can hit 120. Still a high enough number for them to be excited about but we’ve got some room to over-deliver… Then everyone is stoked.”

“Exactly. Under-promise, over-deliver.”

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…

How do you get partners to come with you? You have to ask, right? But asking for help is hard.

Telling the story was the easy part; “This is what we do, this is why we do it. AIME is great etc etc.”

Every time it started to get towards the end of the meeting I’d feel a lump building in my throat as it came down to crunch time. The time to ask for cash.

Early on I’d simply tell the story and then follow up with an email asking for money, because I felt so uncomfortable.

At the end of every one of these funding meetings, after being compelled by the story, the person on the other side of the table would say, “So what do you want from me? How can I help?”

“Ahhhh, ummm, ahhh, well funding would really help, but only if that’s okay…”

Let’s imagine you walk into an ice cream store.

The sun’s pelting the earth with its rays, you and the world are melting in reply. You line up for 30 minutes, salivating, scanning the 45 options. Finally you make it to the front of the line and the person at the counter asks, “What’ll it be today, sir?”

“Ummm, ahhh, ice cream?”

“Well sir, there are 45 different flavours.”

“Oh, but I just want ice cream.”

If you want to buy a house you don’t just type into the old search engine ‘house’. At a certain point you have to make some decisions about what you want, and just as importantly, what you don’t want.

I want a house by the beach. I don’t want a house in the country.

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I want a school nearby.

I want three bedrooms or more.

I want a backyard.

And I’m willing to pay $500,000 or less for it.

Now we are starting to get somewhere. Your lens is focusing in. You have a much better chance of finding what you are after because you have asked yourself the most important question, “What do I want and need?”

Before you meet a potential partner you really gotta work out what you want, and what you don’t want.

For example, “We want 10 funders that provide $100K or more. We don’t want to have to deal with 200 funders who provide $5K. We want multi-year funding and people that are committed to building a partnership for the long run.”

Now we are starting to warm up.

You know the other thing I learned along the way? To ASK the potential partner on the other side, what they are looking for. Ask them how much they are willing to give. Find out what their capacity is, and then you can tailor the ask to what they are looking for.

Ask them…“Why are you interested in supporting us?

Why did you take the meeting? What’s your connection to our work? What partnerships work for you? What partnerships haven’t worked in the past? Why?” Information is key, right Sherlock?

Ask them. Ask them. Ask them. It’s a two-way process.

Michael Traill passed on this tip to me as a final lesson; “Get over yourself… Zoom out of your own discomfort and realise what your role is in terms of the big picture. When you are sitting in that room, you are providing a gateway for that funder or partner to have a chance to change the world. To change people’s lives. You are not asking for their money to 197

help you. You are asking for their money so that the funder can change someone’s life.”

Over time I’ve extended this language even further. You are providing an opportunity for a person to create change. This is what they want. They want their dollar to make a difference. To change either someone’s life or the world at large.

You are the one committing to do the work.

You are the one rolling up your sleeves to take the hits.

You are the one who will take the emotional toll.

You are the soldier on the front line.

Don’t you ever, ever, ever feel bad about asking someone to provide funding to make that happen. Because you aren’t actually even asking them for anything, you are providing an opportunity to make change. …

“Mate, remember how in your first week of work you broke a $5K vase as we launched our partnership with Comm Bank?

You can’t script that… ‘Hey guys this is one of my best mates Viv, I’m giving him a job because he’s got skills, there’s no nepotism here… he’ll be good for it…’ Then at the launch of our partnership with our first ever national partner, you shatter a vase and look like a pisshead!”

“To be fair I didn’t see it, and it was weirdly placed in the middle of the room. Who does that? Plus I almost caught it!”

“Haha, yeah righto.”

“And also, you don’t know this, but that wasn’t my first experience with members of the vase family…”

“Go on…”

“Well I found a lamp a couple of weeks ago in my backyard. And you know how I love Aladdin, so I thought, 198

stuff it, let’s give old lampy a shine. And WHAMMO, out popped a genie. He said, ‘Okay kid, you know the drill? Three wishes.’ So for my first wish, I asked to see into the future.

He said one day you’ll be working with your best mate and everyone at CBA will have forgotten about the vase incident, Jack will be kicking it with the CEO of the bank, Ian Narev, who will say that he thinks AIME is ‘arguably one of the greatest start-up stories in Australian history’. Don’t stress, you’ll dodge that bullet.”

“Well that’s good to know, Vivo. What were your other wishes?”

“That someone in Australia would start funding organisations in the first six years so I didn’t have to listen to you rabbit on about begging, borrowing and stealing for the first six years. And how people used to tell you that AIME had to prove it could be sustainable and you’d think, ‘How the fuck can we be sustainable without any cash? We can’t magically arrive at the six year mark.’ So I wished for more groups like SVA, and for investors to take more risks early, on ideas that had evidence they worked, had the potential for scale, had leaders they could back, and were addressing a problem with a solution that could eventually solve it.”

“Bet you that’s the weirdest wish the genie ever heard?”

“Yeah, he said it was second. One bloke wished he could be a donkey that spoke penguin.”

“Of course he did. Final wish?”

“That one day I’d be the mascot for the Wests Tigers.” …

Bowling cricket balls in Balmain as a kid I visualised a lot of things, but I never saw myself being the CEO of an 199

organisation at 25 trying to change a country and walking down George Street, Sydney, to meet Ian Thorpe for sushi with the Virgin Blue team (now Virgin Australia).

“C’mon mate, they are upstairs.”

“Okay.”

“They’ve got a bit of background on AIME, just go through the story and what you are looking for. You can take off when we wrap up the AIME chat.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We walked into the restaurant above Establishment on George Street – it was completely empty. Did they clear this place for Ian? It was dark and dingy, and I was half expecting to see Pacino jump out screaming, “Say hello to my little friend.” In the corner sat the Virgin ‘mob’. We approached, careful not to make any sudden movements.

As we sat in the corner of the empty eatery, Ian explained why he believed in AIME, as he spoke to Mark Gilmour and Danielle Keighery, two of the key staff of Virgin Blue. “… and this is where we are at now, looking at trying to change the country, and what we’d love is some in-kind support with flights as our team is having to travel across Australia to deliver the shows for the kids.”

“Mate, it’s brilliant. We are definitely keen to see more Indigenous staff and pilots, so let’s see what we can do to help you out by investing in the talent pipeline.”

“I agree, Mark. Jack, this is fantastic, you should be so proud of what you’ve done. Send us an email with what you’re after and we’ll go from there.”

Empty restaurant was departed from, leaving Olympic stars and airline bosses behind, a couple of bewildered head shakes took place trying to fathom what just happened, the follow-up email was sent. Then silence.

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A year later Danielle wrote to me. “Jack, we are keen to do something, can you make it up to Brisbane to meet with me and Mark?”

Heck yeah I could.

At Virgin HQ. In a room with Mark Gilmour and Danielle, completing the shortest partnership meeting of my life.

“Mate, if you can get over to WA and get these kids through school so we can employ them, I’ll be a happy man.”

We signed the deal for three years. Since then we have had an incredible partnership together over the last 5+ years – they are dreamers and believers at Virgin, always pushing to imagine what can be.

And what a ride it’s been.

Endless stories published in their in-flight magazine, continually amplifying our message of hope.

Our storytellers flown around the country.

Sir Richard Branson on a stage to launch our expansion into South Australia in 2013.

In 2014, they called, “Hey, we want to do something crazy like chartering a flight. We are thinking maybe the world’s first ever sky-high mentoring session?”

And that’s just what we did.

We had a concert in the sky with rappers, singers, guitarists and a bunch of kids who had come through one of our shows called ‘AIME’s Got Game’, where the kids are challenged to step up and show their talents. On the plane one of the mentees, Caitie Hughes from Rockhampton in Queensland, got the chance to sing a song in the sky. The rappers put on a freestyle show for the parents of the kids, that took place in the back section. We had an Indigenous pilot, Kali Bellear, and an all Indigenous flight crew.

Indigenous success was flying.

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…

Oompa loompa doompety doo I’ve got a perfect puzzle for you Oompa loompa doompety dee If you are wise you’ll listen to me What do you get when you guzzle down sweets Eating as much as an elephant eats What are you at, getting terribly fat What do you think will come of that I don’t like the look of it Oompa loompa doompety da If you’re not greedy, you will go far You will live in happiness too Like the Oompa Loompa Doompety do Doompety do — ‘Oompa Loompa Augustus Gloop Song’, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory Sitting in the Google Garden in Silicon Valley, at Google’s headquarters on October 2, 2012 was like being in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. There were these perfectly wild flower beds being diligently tended to, people rode by on multicoloured pushbikes, the buildings dripped with blue, yellow, red and green, and it was definitely the first time I’d had a wildberryfruitsensation smoothie.

What is a brand?

I think it’s like the soul of a person; you can’t quite touch it, but you feel it.

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Tortured souls scare us away, beautiful souls captivate us. I think brands do the same, some are a heck more manipulative, but at the end of the day, they find a way to captivate us, inspire us to act.

I was in Silicon Valley to connect with the Google and YouTube peeps to find out what it took to build the most powerful brand in the world.

I wanted to know how I could make caring cool.

My thought was that there would always be limitations with how much we could do manually. There’s only so many staff we can employ, only so many kids etc. We were never going to end Indigenous inequality and change the world by helping say 6000 kids.

But when I looked at brands like Coke, Google, Nike, I watched the consumers doing the work for them. The Air Jordans are everywhere. Kids grow up wanting to rock Nikes or drink Coke. We’re talking millions upon millions of kids across the globe. These big brands influence our behaviour, every single day. There’s only one Michael Jordan, but there are millions that wanna be like Mike…

What if we could do that with mentoring? How could we be a group that inspired millions to want to mentor? What if we could inspire people to want to teach like us, to unlock kids’ imaginations through theatre and colour? Imagine every school principal at the first staff meeting of the year opening with the line, ‘what are we going to do to light up kids’ imaginations this year?’

Free food, 4th dimensions, happy people…. so many happy people… everywhere…Silicon Valley – it’s a giant adult playground.

A couple of things from my time in the Valley stood out.

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The first was the almost evangelical belief that the Googlers had in the power of Google. I’m not sure what it was about the power of Google, specifically. Maybe the power to influence, but everyone I met was a believer.

The second was that the Valley had attracted some of the best minds in the world.

Over lunch on the second day I was sharing a meal with one of those minds, at YouTube HQ, Lee Hunter, a fellow Aussie, his role was Brand at YouTube.

“Jack, it’s pretty simple in the end. To amplify to the level you are talking about, you have to give it away, let people co-create the story with you, help them feel like they are in the room with those kids, or even better, inspire them to create their own room, their own AIME. Give it away mate.” …

Dear Jack, What’s life like in 2016? How’s Mum and Dad? Are you still bowling leg breaks or are your days numbered? You managed to get a girlfriend yet or what? Did you get into Stanford?

How’s AIME going, bruz? Were you able to build that global brand? What happened after that convo with Lee? Anyways mate – as you know, because you wrote this, it’s a message in a bottle.

If you find a way to reply and send the message back with Marty in the Delorian that’d be sweet… otherwise maybe one day you’ll write a book and this will prove a handy device to explain the brand journey…

Lots of Love, Jack MB 204

October 5, 2012, Silicon Valley, USA. Jacko!!

Mate great to hear from you. It has been a wild ride, I’m currently sitting on a Dartmouth Coach, traveling from Woodstock, Vermont to New York City. It’s 9.56am on August 8, 2016.

Funnily enough I’m heading down to New York to get some partners for a global campaign, to share the AIME model around the world. I know you were talking about that to the Google peeps back in 2012 – well it’s finally happening. I was also in the Valley a few months ago, and in San Fran, meeting with Google, YouTube, and Twitter.

Things change, but things stay the same, hey?

Mum and Dad are great. Mum is as mad as ever, her artworks are heading to another dimension. So beautiful! Dad is well.

He’s writing a lot, focusing more on the education commentary and he’s back teaching. Lily and Joe are keeping him young.

I’ve finished up with cricket, wrapped it up earlier this year.

I did get into Stanford in 2013 – the scholarship panel were impressed by you going to meet the Stanford crew during your trip. May have tipped us over the line. No girlfriend… but I’ve got a lot of love in my life from great friends and family. I’m in a good place at the moment.

How have we gone at giving it away? Not bad.

On the plane home after meeting Lee and spending that time in the Valley I started to think about what AIME had.

Our rooms where we deliver our shows, where the kids and mentors are, it’s just like the theatre, right? Live, raw and special for that audience.

You know how we both love Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet? I reckon that’s nirvana for AIME, taking a play from the stage, from the room, and sharing it with the world.

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This global campaign will be the closest we have got to nirvana.

We are looking at releasing an online film in Feb/March 2017, and pushing for it to go viral. When I met Twitter in San Fran they agreed to host a live screening in Australia and share it to their offices around the world. That’s pretty cool, hey?

The target audience of the film is uni students globally.

Once the film has gone live we will have applications open for 20 Golden Tickets – Willie Wonka style.

Oompa loompa doompety doo, we’ve got 20 golden tickets for you, oompa loompa doompety dee, let’s go change the world we see…

The 20 Golden Tickets will go to 20 university students – people like 19-year-old Jack looking to change the world – from 20 different countries. Their Golden Ticket will be open for 3 years. They will get to come to Australia and I’ll go work with them to see if they can take our model and rip a generation of powerless people out of inequality. Think women in India, Sudanese refugees in Paris and so on.

Pretty pumped about it.

We’ve come a fair way since the first National Hoodie Day in 2010, where we had to unload 3,000 hoodies in the rain, laughing after the truck driver asked if we had a forklift.

Remember that?

Since then we’ve had over 20,000 AIME hoodies enter the world. Last year we launched a clothing brand featuring designs from the kids who complete the Art show as part of our Year 9 program – that’s going well. Again, another chance for people to feel like they are in the room with us. Wanna be like Mike, right?

I updated the Hip Hop shows to become ‘AIME’s Got Game’, copying the TV show template. Over the last few years the 206

winners from two categories, showstoppers and vocalists, have come to Sydney to create and perform a dance, or write and record a song.

There’s a show we created called ‘Be Better Tomorrow’ for Year 11 students. As part of it they write cards and hand them out to people when they leave the room. Just last night a mother wrote this on our Facebook page with the picture of the card her daughter had left her: “I found this on my window sill in my shower this morning from my beautiful daughter Jamila… things have been tough but she is what keeps me going. Thanks AIME for helping support her and helping her understand how strong she is :) The note read as follows, under the card title ‘Never Give Up’: ‘Hey Mumma, I know it’s been rough. But just remember a storm doesn’t last forever! It always passes! I love you! xxx’” This year we turned our YouTube channel into AIME Unplugged, a place for artists to share the love. I’m writing this book as a way of helping people get in the room. So overall I’d say we’ve gone good since 2012 and that chat with Lee. More than ever I reckon there is a huge chance for us to ramp up our shows with the kids from facing inwards and us operating in our own AIME bubble, to shining outwards to the 160,000 Indigenous kids in school who are looking for inspiration. And even further beyond the AIME bubble to everyday people looking for a mentor, guide and leader to help them make sense of this crazy world.

As always, plenty on the horizon, and lots to do. Thank you mate for having the vision and for being curious enough to kick start the flame around this brand piece. You were on the right track.

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The AIME soul is growing into a more and more a beautiful thing every single day, we just gotta keep sharing it.

Lots of love back at ya, JMB August 8, 2016, Dartmouth Coach to New York City …

Robin of Locksley: Have we lost them?

Azeem: No, my horse carries two and yours is lame. We cannot outrun them.

Duncan: Leave me, Master Robin, I slow your escape.

Robin of Locksley: We can lose them in the forest.

Duncan: Sherwood Forrest is haunted, master.

Robin of Locksley: Either we take our chances with the ghosts or become ghosts ourselves.

— Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves March 9, 2011. 1am. I’m rolling from side to side on my bed. Can’t sleep. Brain is whirring in overdrive. Sounds like a projector before it dies, or when the wheel starts spinning on your computer. I’m in fifth gear and the clutch is broken.

Why don’t they understand? Why is there gossiping about me? Why are they second-guessing my ideas, the vision moving forward? Why don’t they just get it?

I love Robin Hood, and was in love with the Prince of Thieves story as a kid. I remember sitting in Dad’s backyard carving out arrows with a pocketknife, just like the Merry Men. It’s the tale of good vs. evil, equality vs. inequality. Not until now did the thought pass my mind that the moment when Robin, Azeem and Duncan plunge into Sherwood Forest, into 208

the darkness and the unknown, is the dive that a lot of leaders make when they take people with them into new territories.

The result in Robin’s story is, they unlock a gem. An army waiting to be inspired. A richness of untapped human potential.

I’d plunged into Sherwood Forrest in 2011 and was getting knocked left, right and centre by Little John. I was drowning.

I kept asking myself, Why don’t they understand? I’d get angry and frustrated at the staff who were firing new ideas at me 24/7, or worse, doing their own thing. I’d get frustrated that everybody seemed to want a slice of my time. Time, the one commodity we can’t trade.

I blamed them for not understanding. I got angry that universities wouldn’t respond to our proposals. Why don’t they just get it?

The reality was, we had grown from a small organism of human interaction. A couple of offices, a team of 10 to 20, to now being a team of 30-odd. We were operating out of 11 different offices spanning across three states and covering 1949km of the Australian east coast.

Quickly, it had become a complex human organisation with a wide variety of factors at play. We needed to create more advanced channels of communication. And I needed to become a clearer communicator. ASAP. How do you do mass communication and maintain intimacy and a personal touch?

How can one person be everywhere?

How come I keep asking the question ‘Why don’t they understand?’

Maybe… I haven’t created the right environment for the message to be heard? Maybe the message isn’t clear? Maybe I don’t have any idea what I’m babbling on about…

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Every great piece of art has a background that lays the foundation. Then they add layer upon layer upon layer, there’s a world of depth behind simplicity. I was throwing paint at the canvas, then turning to the audience saying, ‘See… what about now…” And they were trying to see, but more often than not looked up at the work squinting in a bemused fashion, some just left the room.

I had to distil the big ideas from the little ones.

What were the critical things people needed to know, the non-negotiables? The contract to sign on to? Like the contract Robin asked of the Merry Men; “Will we fight for justice?”

The non-negotiables are your boulders, which in time become the walls from which the river of your voice can flow downstream. You know what to expect when you go to Niagara Falls – people describe it as beautiful, awesome, stunning. That’s a very different reaction to the descriptions you hear when people see a tidal wave coming at them, or floodwaters exploding down the hills into their hometown.

It’s then you hear the words ‘horrifying’, ‘disaster’, ‘scary’.

I was hitting them like a tidal wave.

I was the reason they couldn’t understand.

I was to blame.

Not them.

Our team was desperate for a leader who could help them explain the world they lived in. I offered moments of hope but overall it was a rollercoaster. Sometimes making sense, sometimes not.

I was leading on passion and my spoken word. I could hold an audience, and when in the room I always had them.

But we were scaling. I didn’t speak to mentors any more, or kids and even some of the staff. So I had to write. That was harder. A more difficult platform to teach from and a tougher 210

medium to convey feeling. You can’t hide from words; they either make sense or they don’t. It’s the ultimate litmus test for your ideas. Da Vinci’s line rings true; “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Often, when you believe in something, you are so passionate about the idea that the words can’t keep up. The people following you get confused.

Passion is great. Vision is brilliant. But it means nothing if you run off alone. Robin would have died without the Merry Men. There would have been no revolution. Just another crazy man plunging head first down a path of destruction, fuelled by an inner passion of righteousness.

As much as it curdles the emotional side, which is firing on all cylinders, you must stop and speak to people. If they don’t come with you the reality is that you haven’t distilled the emotion and vision into a path. People need to be able to see the path.

And you have the light. It is your voice. It is your words.

Every single word you write lights up the path ahead.

A position description offers light. As do manuals. Training videos. Values. Internal newsletters. Monthly updates. Staff retreats. Distilling your mission into a single sentence. It’s worth getting right, or at least trying to.

A lot of 2011 I blocked out; I was traumatised because I felt like people let me down. The reality was different.

I wasn’t a good enough leader.

I was the one who didn’t know how to coach people.

I didn’t know how to ask the questions I didn’t want to hear the answers to.

I wasn’t strong enough to be honest about who I was and what I believed in, to let people choose to stand with me or not.

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I wanted to be liked, too badly.

I didn’t understand what ‘strategy’ meant.

My planning skills were erratic.

I felt like AIME owned me and I would never escape and that I’d lost my youth.

Last year I met with the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party in Australia, Tanya Plibersek, to explore what a life in politics would look like. Tanya said, “How would you feel instantly being disliked by half the people that know you because you’ve chosen a side?”

Not very good. I wanted to be liked. Don’t we all?

You can’t always be liked if you want people to change.

When you ask them to change you are creating discomfort, you are moving people from what they know to what they don’t know, and due to our survival instinct we fear the unknown. As the leader creating that change, you are also creating fear, until you land them in the new world and everything settles again.

I couldn’t handle the emotional response that came back from people when I pushed them.

I was the one who didn’t know how to frame expectations to buy myself the most precious of all resources – time.

I was the one afraid to show my weaknesses. To expose myself because I thought it would undermine my leadership.

Be wary here; you can show your weaknesses, but only when you know where you are going. Otherwise weakness and indecision become a fatal pill.

In Life of Pi, Pi holds a piece of meat through the bars into Richard Parker’s cage, beckoning him. As the Tiger stalks forward, Pi’s father, Santosh Patel, comes screaming through, ripping his son away from the cage.

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Santosh Patel: You think tiger is your friend, he is an animal, not a playmate.

Pi: Animals have souls… I have seen it in their eyes.

Santosh Patel: (yells at Pi) Animals don’t think like we do!

People who forget that get themselves killed. When you look into an animal’s eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you, and nothing else.

— Life of Pi I don’t necessarily agree with old Santosh but I like the imagery of seeing your own emotions being reflected back at you through others’ eyes.

In 2011, universities dropped out, partners questioned my ability to lead and there was discontent from within the team, who were questioning my motivations.

Why? Because I couldn’t explain my ideas to them well enough.

Up until this moment I blamed them for being assholes etc… When in fact, it was me that failed them. A good tradesman never blames his tools.

In 2011 there was gossip, bickering, disunity, confusion, stress and insecurity. I was seeing it all around me in other people and questioning why. But what I was really seeing was my reflection in ‘Richard Parker’s eyes’.

People reflect the inner workings of their leaders more clearly than any mirror can.

This is what my Mum said about that year, during an interview: “Yeah, there were tough times, really tough times. I remember distinctly once in 2011 and he rang me up as he was going to 213

give a speech in Melbourne and he was like, ‘God, Mum I’ve been here, here, here, here…’ and the sustainability of energy that he needed – and he had to go and deliver a speech – and it was like 6 o’clock – he said, ‘I’ve had it – I’m really fucked.’

I kept him on the phone and we talked for a little bit longer.

Then I said, ‘All you’ve got to realise to re-energise yourself is that there is a long line of Aboriginal men in the timeline of the history of this country, that would stand up and take your place, right now, if they ever had the opportunity – so if you can find some energy around that to go in and deliver, know there are thousands of people who are standing there with you.’

And those sort of little things that we had to do when he’s rotating or going through a tough time – there were a lot of them in the first instance, and despairing – where he was like, ‘Wow, what have I started here?’ It’s like, it’s probably like stretching yourself across, you know, a canyon, you’re reaching to the other side and your feet are still there, but there’s this huge abyss… you’ve got to get to the other side and there’s nothing working for you to make it work. So, yeah, they were pretty tough those first couple of years.”

It was hard, but you know what? I chose this path. No one else was forcing me to do it. I failed some of the people around me in those early years. I simply wasn’t good enough. …

I thought I was tough. In 2012 I found out that no matter how tough you are, if you keep pushing yourself hard enough, eventually, you crack. I’d just come out of a really hard break-up. It was my first really crazy deep love. That love 214

where you throw yourselves completely into each other’s lives.

And when it ends, there isn’t a hurricane on earth that can match the internal destruction of pain ripping through you.

The torment of loss, sadness, anger, love and dullness. This one got me big time! I felt depressed. I’d lost my spark and energy. I felt dull – my defences were down.

I was alone.

I looked around for help. I was employing my closest friends and living with two of them, so I didn’t feel I could share with them the pressure I felt was mounting on my shoulders every day.

It’s hard when you employ your friends. Often they don’t wanna hang with you as much socially anymore, they feel like they’ve clocked friend time seeing you eight hours a day, but they don’t know that for those eight or so hours you’re wearing a mask.

We had learned how to ‘switch characters’, which is not healthy. From work mode to friend mode. Friend mode was where I felt I should take a back seat socially. I got to star in the show during the week. So in social situations I found myself going to talk then saying, “Shut up Jack,” inside my head, sometimes out loud.

I was scared to talk to Mum because she really knew how close to breaking point I was, and every time I showed any sign of weakness she’d send in the army of support. Probably would have helped, but I didn’t want it then.

I just wanted to feel happy again.

I wanted to feel like a kid.

I wanted to be young.

I didn’t want to have to deal with all this shit.

I didn’t want to have staff members questioning my Aboriginality, my purpose, my ethics, my qualities as a human being.

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I didn’t want to have to walk into rooms any more and have people look me up and down as if I was nothing, forcing me to perform like some sort of circus clown in order to break down their distrust and ‘win them over’.

I didn’t want to have to keep baring my soul, my life, my story, to strangers. I was tired. And I was hurt.

I just couldn’t get rid of the sadness and eventually got myself on a plane to go see my Dad who was down in Melbourne. I remember sitting in the lounge room, crying before dinner. In front of everyone. In front of my little bro Joe, and sis Lily, in front of my Dad’s wife Maz. One by one they came up and hugged me. The tears just kept pouring. I’d bottled up so much.

From the moment in 2009 when I had to sit across from El in that food court at Sydney Uni and tell her she was fired and wasn’t going to have a contract any more. I made my sister’s heart break and watched her look at me like I was the worst person on the planet. Then we went to Christmas four days later and I gave her a present. She didn’t want to talk to me.

We mended in time.

How do people do this stuff without bottling it up?

I bottled up the feeling when Paul ‘Sinco’ Sinclair pulled me outside the office in 2011 and said, “Man, I just can’t do this any more. I can’t do the juggle with family and everything this needs.” I understood but it sucked! We were absolutely magic together. A chemistry that happens so rarely. On a stage we lit up the room. When we wrote shows together for the kids it was one voice on the page. He deserved to be standing alongside me changing the whole world, more of a star than I’d ever be. But with Paul gone, I’d have to find another gear. Bottle it up and learn the skills he had. Fill the void. Grow. Again.

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I’d bottled up the sadness when I went home to my apartment by myself feeling left out because I chose not to go to the pub with the crew from uni anymore, to let my hair down. I was their boss now. There had to be boundaries.

I bottled up the pain when one of our partners told a couple of other people that I had a problem with working with women.

And on that day at Dad’s it was all coming out.

I bottled up the feeling when we’d asked a uni if they wanted to meet us and one of their staff accidentally ‘replied all’ and looped us in, saying, “These guys need to be kept out of our offices at all costs, they are known for being very pushy and their program quality highly questionable.”

I bottled up the feeling of walking into a room and being made to feel like I was selling uranium, when I just wanted to help kids.

I bottled up the sadness of watching kids drift by and not having the power to change them.

I bottled it all up – everything.

I didn’t show sadness.

I didn’t even get happy anymore when good things happened.

I just learned to keep it stable.

When Ian Thorpe introduced us to Google and Virgin I said, “cool”. I was so fragile that I couldn’t let myself feel the wins. Because I knew if I did, the pendulum would swing back even harder and nail me when the next loss came.

For close to 8 years, I didn’t feel anything.

I kept my gloves up, always.

And then I broke.

After dinner Dad said he thought I should go see a counsellor.

Good call Dad. 217

The other pressure piece was that my story and the AIME journey were about to go live on national TV for Australian Story.

I was shitting myself in fear of being judged poorly. I was so worried that people wouldn’t like me. That I would say something controversial that would anger people. I was trying so hard to be apolitical. To dance across one of Australia’s most emotionally charged landscapes and move as softly as I could without breaking any egg shells. I felt like a mini politician. How do those guys do it? They are human right?

Where do they hide their feelings?

It must be exhausting.

After heading back to Sydney, I made the time to go and sit down with the counsellor. My first ever counselling session.

The year was 2012, I was 26.

It’s absolute bullshit the stigma we have around going to see a counsellor. I’d paid for endless yoga and Pilates classes, private cricket coaches, gym memberships, swimming passes – you name it, all to help train my body.

What’s wrong with going to a counsellor to help train your mind? Does that make you crazy? Do we call people crazy who do exercise?

No, we are impressed by their commitment, drive and determination. How about we try aligning some of those values with people who show a commitment to train the brain.

As I sat in my debut brain training sesh, I spoke of my fear of being judged. Of whether the TV show would result in attention that I couldn’t handle. Whether it would change things and add even more pressure to my personal relationships.

Another point I brought up: it sucks standing out from your peers.

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It’s great when a crowd is around. But when the crowd goes, it’s you and your friends and the things you’ve done can dwarf them in conversation. So you end up not talking because you know, in a weird way, you might make them feel less valuable. They are your friends and family, and you love them and don’t want to hurt them or make them feel bad.

So you just stop sharing. You stop sharing some of the most amazingly ridiculous moments in your life, because those moments suck the air out of the room and no one knows what to say next.

I was scared Australian Story was only going to heighten this.

I spoke to the doc about my fears. About my sadness and loss. About not being able to feel the wins. I spoke about trying to stay calm as a leader and more balanced.

As all good counsellors do, she listened.

I went back.

She listened more.

I went back.

And she listened more and waited.

Then spoke.

“Jack, I’m so worried that you are going to live one of the most amazing lives, and one day you’ll be lying on your death bed and you’ll look at all the photos on the walls.

You’ll lie there reading the articles on what you’ve achieved.

You’ll cast your mind back to the moments. And lying there all you’ll remember is endless show reels of black and white.

No colour. You will remember what happened, but you won’t remember what it felt like. You’ve got to find a way to feel those experiences. To enjoy them. To share them. No matter how afraid you are that it may hurt you at a later date because you are being exposed and vulnerable. No matter how much 219

it may affect your friendships or family relationships. If you have the right people around you, they will want to share your life, and victories and failures with you. They really will.

Life is full of pendulum moments of happiness and sadness, it would be a shame to never feel happy again because you were afraid that sadness might come afterwards. Live those moments, they are special, so special, you must try and live them. Maybe you need more outlets and people around you that you can share the good, the bad and the ugly with, but I want to you try, to be mindful of the wonderful life you are living, just as you are living those feelings with me right now.”

She was right.

I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get here. There’s a phrase I use with the kids; “If you surround yourself with positive people you will be happy.” I’d invented a mentoring program so people could have mentors and I hadn’t put the same support base around me. I felt like a moron!

What I needed was outlets for sharing. I also needed to be more strategic with my energy output. I spent so much of my life giving energy to people, giving energy to create environments or events, giving energy to creating documents and explaining ideas. Where was my energy coming from?

Where were my fuel stops? Who was giving energy to me?

I didn’t want to be in this place again.

I needed to be more strategic with the friends that I spent time with – spend more time with the ones who give energy to me and not just take it. The ones who leave me feeling happy and full from our time spent together. More than anything, I needed to be around people who were not afraid of or intimidated by dreams, ideas, passion and desire, but inspired, excited and happy for me… People that wanted to share my life and be happy with me.

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First stop, friend update.

Next, I needed to build my support team of mentors, coaches and counsellors.

In the process I had to somehow work out who I was, so that the ebbs and flows of AIME didn’t completely define me. I had to know why I was here. Why I was doing what I was doing.

The first mentor I reached out to was Greg Hutchinson.

Man, talk about a guru! Behind every single person who does something special in our world is a huge team of people. The quiet heroes. The stage managers, directors, producers and writers of the show. Greg has been one of the greats standing behind the stage. He doesn’t take curtain calls, he does what he does because he truly wants to help me change the world.

And that’s enough.

Greg and I connected and had a couple of magic moments straight away.

“Jack, what do you want out of your life?”

“Mate, I want to live 10 lives. I want every decade to feel like a lifetime. Every week to feel like a month. Every day to feel like a week. I want to push the limits of what’s possible.”

“Well, your gonna need one of the best support teams around, if you have any chance of pulling it off. What mentors do you have at the moment?”

“I suppose you’re the first person I’ve reached out to formally. Oh and there’s my counsellor as well.”

“That’s a good start. When I was about your age, someone much smarter than me passed on a pearl of advice, he said, ‘You need a personal board of advisors. In a similar way that a business has a board of directors. You should work out what skills and areas of advice that you need and seek out people to help fill those gaps for you.’”

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“Like a suite of mentors?”

“Exactly.”

Story checked out.

“But, before you can identify the mentors, you’ve gotta know your mission and your plan, in the same way a company needs to set its vision before seeking out partners, directors etc. And I’ve got an idea to help us get there.”

“Yeah?”

“There is a guy, Greg Smith, that we use for some of our Bain and Co leaders, for a fully immersive two-day one-on-one coaching experience. Apparently it’s pretty confronting. The output he seeks is helping people find their purpose on the planet. It’s about $5K and if you’re up for it I’d be happy to sponsor you to give it a go.”

I never wanted to feel the pain I’d felt that year again. To feel so depressed and lost, desperate and alone.

“I’m in.” …

Anton was by far the stronger swimmer, and he had no excuse to fail.

— Gattaca Fixed results. Life is destined to play out. We can’t change the force of it.

The story of Gattaca features, amongst other characters, the lead, Vincent Freeman and his brother Anton. Vincent is naturally born and, like all human beings, has physical flaws.

Anton has been genetically engineered to be as close to perfect as possible. Vincent dreams of one day being an astronaut.

“Maybe it was the love of the planets, maybe it was just my 222

growing dislike for this one, but for as long as I can remember I had dreamed of going into space.”

His father replies, “The only way that you’ll see the inside of a spaceship is if you’re cleaning it.”

Underpinning the held beliefs of the ‘Gattaca’ society is that DNA determined destiny.

As kids, Anton and Vincent used to have a swimming race at the beach, to see who could go the farthest without turning back. The one who stopped swimming and showed their fear would lose. As kids, the genetically superior Anton wins.

Later as teenagers they swim again. But this time, the most unlikely of scenes plays out.

Vincent beats Anton.

As they lie out in the depths of the ocean Vincent rushes back to help his brother breathe and get back to shore. Swimming back in, Vincent reflects, “It was the one moment in our lives where Anton was not as strong as he believed, and I not as weak.

It was the moment that made everything else possible.”

Gattaca Institute is the home of the space program and in order to become an astronaut you have to pass all the tests, including showing perfect DNA. At the Institute, Vincent’s father’s vision came to life. Vincent was a cleaner, cleaning spaceships before they departed, “I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal, than when I was standing right beside it.”

But he doesn’t give up.

Jerome Eugene Morrow is a former Olympic athlete who is now paralysed. Vincent seeks out Jerome and they enter into a partnership where Jerome becomes a DNA donor for Vincent, allowing him to use DNA samples to pass all the required tests. It’s a complicated conspiracy, which gets Vincent through the Institute’s application process.

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When his brother Anton finds out, he threatens to expose him.

The two have a heated argument. As Anton threatens to reveal Vincent’s secret, Vincent responds, “Is that the only way you can succeed; to see me fail? God, even you are gonna tell me what I can and can’t do now.” They bring up the time when Vincent beat Anton, and Anton challenges him to a third swimming contest.

Unlike the other races, this swimming scene takes place at night, with the pitch-black sky and dark waves emphasising the danger and seriousness of the final competition. They swim so far out that Anton urges them to turn around, but Vincent refuses to back down. When they are both on the verge of drowning, Vincent explains, “This is how I did it – I never saved anything for the swim back.”

As I sat with Greg Smith on a secluded beach in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, on the evening of December 17, 2012, with the sun setting, I looked around.

There were these huge, sheer cliffs crowding in on us. We’d walked through a national park to get here and were now sitting on two deck chairs that we’d carried from the car. We were the only people on the beach, a stretch that ran about 100 feet, with a sand bank of about 10 metres. Beautiful golden Australian sand. As we sat, I felt the cliff faces watching us, like an amphitheatre of life. It was a truly epic moment.

It reminded me of those swimming scenes in Gattaca. We were stripping back everything to try and get to the heart of who I was and, like Vincent, I was feeling that for the next stint, I didn’t want to hold anything back.

I believe, like Vincent, that if you work hard enough you can be anything. I believe our future is not fixed by our DNA or birthplace and we can work our way to anything.

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Dreams are worth fighting for and the more people say you can’t, you won’t, that you should use that to fuel the fire inside you. I believe we all have the chance of exploding and showcasing the true potential of human life, in defiance of the idea that some are destined to succeed and others should just accept failure because of the hand they were dealt.

Fittingly for the scene, Greg turned to me and asked one question. “What is your purpose on this planet?”

It’s the sort of question that makes you squirm. It’s the sort of question that you get laughed at for asking someone in a bar. It’s the sort of question your friends or family deflect away from; “Wow man, that’s a bit deep.”

But it’s the only question that matters.

I had no escape route. I wanted to make a joke about the moment being awkward. Something to break the ice I was feeling. But against all my instincts I jumped off the diving board and into the ocean of my life. And I swam, deeper, and deeper and deeper still.

I offered Greg a few phrases. “Impossible is nothing,” “I want to help people,” “I want to work with kids,” “I want to change the world.”

“I think there’s more there mate, that doesn’t quite feel right yet, keep searching.”

I looked to the ocean, to the horizon where earth meets sea, and pondered.

We returned to our lodges and Greg left me for the night in my little cabin with one request. “I want an answer from you by the end of tomorrow.” I ran a bath for the first time in about 10 years. As I lay in it, I let the history of my life wash over me.

At 27, over the course of those two days I reflected on the person I’d become, both personally and professionally.

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I was challenged to look into my past and explore my ideal future and the future that would play out if I didn’t make any changes.

Greg had me working on a bunch of questions and activities that would eventually form my personal vision document. I wrote a lot of things into that document and made my plans. The next few paragraphs touch on some of the notes, ideas and plans I jotted down in my vision doc.

One of my fears was that I would lose my youth to AIME – you’re not alone Dorian Gray. To mitigate this, I set out to ‘reclaim the 17-year-old that is hopeful, has positivity, and energy’.

As you know, a reason I was doing this work with Greg was because I was in danger of isolating myself emotionally.

To mitigate this I set plans to build up my mentor team.

Over the years since, I’ve been beyond lucky to have so many people take on a role as a formal mentor or guide for me. Some have been there for one session, others for a lifetime. I haven’t included all of my influencers, like my friends, other family members etc, but more the people who have played that guidance role, with a mentor hat on. So thank you to my mentors and guides, you’ve given me light.

Simon McGrath, Mark Carnegie, Mark Arbib, Bob Bryan, Greg Hutchinson, Merhdad Bagghai, Jenn Morris, Jono Harley, Danielle Keighery, Chris Bartlett, Tom Calma, Phil Clark, Chris Sarra, Ian Narev, Stevie O’Keefe, Paul Sinclair, Lochie Harris, Maurice Shipp, Al Cowie, Emma Hogan, Stephen Brady, Ned and Phoebe, Marie Bashir, Michael Traill, Andy Light, DKP, Duncan Peppercorn, Brennan, Matt Francis, Catherine Lumby, Chris Boys, Jill and Keith, Uncle Pat, Aunty Eva, Malcolm Knox, George Giovas, Geoff Lovell, Kerry Paul, Mayrah Sonter, Jason Eades, Geoff and Ros 226

Morgan, Jim Alexander, Andy Cornish, Thorpie, Tony Berg, Susan Diggs, Mum and Dad. Thank you to every person in my life that has been generous enough to give me the greatest gift of all – your knowledge, your experience and your time.

It is truly the mentors that maketh the man.

As I sat in southern Victoria, before I’d had the chance to meet many of the aforementioned mentors, I was using my hawk skills to hone in on my weaknesses, on who I was. One of the goals I wrote was to find ways to ‘feel’ the moments more, so I set some goals around this including, “I will write the book about my story before I turn 30 so I can relive, enjoy, appreciate and learn from my journey.” Thirty-one now, not far off the mark ‘Soothsayer Jack’.

Another objective was around changing the world with AIME; “I will get clarity within the next 12 months around the international expansion piece particularly in the first three months of 2013”. Four years later I think we are finally there with the vision, as 2017 is set to be the year. Doesn’t matter if the goal takes more time, as long as you get there in the end.

I wrote down my dreams of playing cricket professionally and having one last crack. Earlier this year I put that one to bed. I tried, but wasn’t good enough.

I wrote down a goal to surf, which I also haven’t pulled off yet. An encounter with Sam Refshauge on a secluded South Coast beach didn’t help. Sam and I were in the surf paddling away with some tiny waves and I looked over and saw a fin. I said, “Bro what’s that?” He looked back and then yelled, “Fuck man! Paddle!” I was on a tiny board and prayed that I didn’t fall off. I’ve never paddled harder.

Waves came over us as we headed to shore. The whitewash picked us up and swept us into the sand. After taking a deep breath we gathered ourselves up and walked over 227

the rocks to check out the fin. There were three of them!

Three… Dolphins.

Another dream that I noted was to play guitar, sing and make music with and for people. Goal met. During my five months on the road in the North America, I played a gig in a band as the lead guitarist in Toronto, with Matt Dwyer playing drums – a Canadian fella who worked for us for four years, making films to help tell our story, and video resources for the shows. I constantly gave Matt the brief, “Just blow shit up”. I love some of the work we did together. In particular, check out on YouTube the ‘AIME 2010 Film’ and ‘AIME 2011 film’.

In other guitar escapades last year I played ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ in front of 2,500 kids as part of a leadership conference at the netball stadium that was used for the Sydney Olympics.

“Kids, one of my goals is to sing, play guitar and share songs with people, so take it easy on me, I’m gonna give this a whirl.”

After making it through the first verse, my gaze was drawn to a couple of girls in the top right-hand corner of the stadium who were swaying side to side holding their iPhones up in the air with the camera lights on, shining brightly. I smiled at them and looked down to the strings to strum the next chords. As I looked back up I was blown away. 2500 kids suddenly had their phones out and were swaying side to side lighting up the stadium, singing in chorus.

I love singing. I love guitar. And I love the magic it can create between people. The power of human connection. I was in Portland a few months back busking for the first time, with my mate Justin who is on a similar learning curve with music. He also doubles as a fireman. Guitar playing, 228

singing fireman? Plus he’s really good looking and kind and weird. Ladies, fellas, they do exist! Get to Portland ASAP! His number is… and his address… not a dating book JMB, get back to it… As I was saying, we were playing out the front of the Baghdad Theatre and had been going for about five minutes when an 85-year-old lady came shuffling up, grinned and dropped a dollar in my guitar case. A smile exploded across my face. I felt like a little kid. Usually I play everything cool, but I felt this so deeply – we were sharing ourselves, our souls and our songs. At our most vulnerable moment she gave us strength, with a smile, a nod and one single dollar.

When I first started singing, as my former housemates Tom and Viv will attest, it was horrible. I’m a long way from good now, but you know, one thing I’ve learned along the way is that we can all sing. We can. We all have a voice and we can all sing. Being afraid of expressing yourself means you are robbing others around you of joy. You are hiding your voice.

So, sing. Sing loud and sing proud.

And if you keep singing, guess what? You get better.

Back at the ranch, while exploring my future world and purpose on the planet, one commitment I made was, and yep, it is a double negative, “I don’t want to not feel supported, ever again. I want to make sure that I have the right team, the right culture, and right vision.”

Arguably the most important goal that I jotted down, one that has been a constant struggle was “Be careful not to be too self-reliant or independent.” I needed to be able to ‘feel the love’ again in the meaningful relationships that mattered to me. And to let more people into the room who could support me.

So you want to know what makes me who I am? Well these are the values I wrote during those two days, values I wanted to build my life around and be defined by: 229

Drive – motivated by a dream of something bigger and better.

Pigheaded hope – myself and the world around me can always be better.

Discipline and Integrity – if I set a goal for myself, no excuse will get in the way, it will get done.

Dreamer – imagining worlds unseen.

Idiot/Jester – consistently dancing in the realm of the ridiculous.

Loyal/Service – being in the trenches with those that I care about, for them to know that I have their back.

Happily impatient – only one life to live, wisdom can come later.

Storytelling – with words I can move mountains.

As for my ‘Gattaca’ moment? Defining my purpose in this world, the statement I’d lay on my deathbed and look at, to judge my life’s worth? These are the words I chose to take with me as I drove away from the Mornington Peninsula on December 18, 2012: “Don’t be afraid of greatness, embrace it. Don’t ever stop trying to push the limits of human potential. Don’t ever stop loving, laughing, dreaming and believing.” …

I used to think true love was reserved to your ‘lovers’, your girlfriends or boyfriends, husbands or wives.

I’ve been lucky to have a couple of deep loves. One with a powerful force of a human being named Merindah Donnelly, who taught me about passion and belief, and was probably the first person in my life to break down the emotional defences I’d built up from my childhood.

The other deep love was with Alex Linforth, the younger sister of Linny. Let’s just say there were a couple of interesting 230

negotiations that took place with Lin before Alex and I ended up together. Alex helped me love myself and be able to smile again. We’re not together anymore, but I’m beyond thankful for the special joy that we had bonding over happiness. I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders and smiling doesn’t come easily – I feel the pain of a world that is seemingly tearing itself apart. Heath Ledger’s line as the Joker often springs to mind; “Why so serious?”

Alex and her family brought light into my life. Her brothers Adam and Nathan, parents Stasia and Steve, alongside the extended Linforth clan, are giving, kind people who generously share their lives with others. They share joy with the world.

What a great lesson that is for all of us. I’ll never forget the image of their late grandfather Don in his Hawaiian shirt, strumming away on the ukulele, holding the crowd in a trance with a smile, a gift of happiness floating from his lips to our hearts, a man on top of a mountain with love as his weapon.

I reckon we are too uptight about telling people we love them.

We are pretty quick to jump on the hate train, but we won’t tell someone we love them unless they are our intimate partners. I feel like since the ’60s the ideals of love and peace have been given a pretty average PR run. Love has been pushed into a corner, only to be used in times of extremes or desperation.

In the 60’s, love and peace were two emotional drivers that helped power the movements that stood up for the environment and our world, and for those without a voice in the form of black people and women. Love and peace even powered the end of a war.

Upon deeper reflection it is simply the love from others that has given me any chance to be where I am today and to do what I’ve done.

Love is everywhere.

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It’s in the smile Dr Chris Sarra gave me on the bus as we headed to meet the Prime Minister for the Australian of the Year awards. It’s in the moment Al Cowie, the head of the USYD Union, sitting at a board meeting in downtown Sydney, grinned as he offered us $1 a year rent for office space. It’s in Adam Spencer giving me time on the radio in Sydney, again and again and again. It’s in Leticia Lentini from Google sending me emails with crazy ideas, showing me that I am in her heart and mind. That I matter to her. It’s in Quentin Bryce taking me on the road. It’s in Arthur Little making me feel like a brother, like I belong. It’s in Marie Bashir’s eyes when she looks at me – that unquestionable belief.

It’s in Jimmy Allen’s honesty when he explains to me that I’m not that unique, that the bigger AIME gets the more everyone is going to want to go all post hoc ergo propter hoc on me (after the fact, therefore because of the fact… yep, that’s Latin… and yep, I only know it because I’ve watched The West Wing 7000 times) and tell me how much of a genius I am as they look back on the journey, with the reality being that it’s only because of a variety of lightning bolts landing around me, including where I was born and in what time in history, that I’ve had a sliver of a chance to do what I’ve done.

The love is in the Aboriginal people that have made me feel like family, too many to name. It’s in the generals who have stayed loyal, despite my best endeavours as I showed them my insanity, impatience, and immaturity. Despite the flaws they have stayed the course and believed in my better self.

They’ve walked through walls with and for me. I’m talking about people like Sam Perry who followed Sinco into the shoes of the National Director of Programs, a non-Indigenous dude from a private school in Sydney, rising to fill the void and helping lead our national expansion. A true believer. I’m 232

talking about Hannah Donaldson stepping into a role above and beyond her experience. I know she saw in my eyes that I believed in her, and that was enough for Hannah to move mountains. I’m talking about Sam Refshauge who literally answered the call when I wasn’t happy with the candidates to replace Sam Perry. I said, “Mate I trust you, you can do this.” He’d go on to work closely with me for three more years and oversee the biggest growth in AIME’s history. As loyal as they come. Ditto for Drew Higgins, who would ride the creative wave of my thousand ideas a minute and help translate them into some functional sense – including when he helped lead ‘The Other Election’, a campaign where we put videos online of our kids delivering their speeches from one of our shows called ‘Imagine What’s Possible’. In this show kids write, rehearse and then deliver a speech as the first Indigenous Prime Minister.

In 2013, through ‘The Other Election’, we welcomed the country into the room with hundreds of videos of kids’ speeches – voices of a new generation. Hopeful and determined to carve out a better future for us all. 70,000 online votes and a flurry of media coverage later, we had three finalists who got the chance to head to Parliament House and meet with the Prime Minister and Governor General and then deliver their speeches.

I love our staff. I really do. I love that I have the chance to make their lives better and them mine. Not just through providing a job, but giving them love – letting them know I value them as human beings. That’s at the core of what love is. Giving your emotional energy to someone else, your time and your care, so they know that they matter to you and they are important to you. That you value them. When I do that for our staff, and when I’m good at it, they have all the fuel 233

they need to be able to pass it on to our mentors, our kids, our schools, our country and our world.

When I’m open, the love pours back from my team. We are a family. I’ve received some of the most remarkably passionate and beautiful notes of thanks from staff over the last few years, and I feel it’s because I’ve learned to be more vulnerable since 2012.

I think of people like our current COO Jess Timmins, who I share a deep human connection with, who is allowing us to overcome the most ridiculous of challenges. The same can be said of Helen Caldwell, our Director of Partnering, and Alison Dunn, our Director of Media and Social Comms, and you’ve already read about Deb Kirby-Parsons who is like a second mother to me. These women are family. They are not just staff. We share a respectful, important love for one another and have an insanely strong bond. Nothing can tear that down. You’d better believe it.

If you water the garden of life with love you’ll be astounded by what will grow.

In 2008 Deb asked me and Clarky over for dinner with her kids Alice and Jack Kirby-Cook. Jack later would be known as JKC. He had agoraphobia, which manifested itself during Year 10 when, in a short space of time he got mugged by some guys and then hit by a car running a red light. Not a great 1, 2 combo.

For over eight years JKC hadn’t left the house. Clarky and I would be the first strangers he’d met in all that time. We headed over, opened a Corona or two and I reckon between me and Clark’s rubbish chat we may have cracked one or two smiles. During dinner JKC offered to help with the website, saying he’d been learning some stuff online. I suppose that’s one bonus of not leaving the house – mad coding skills.

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A few years later, after JKC had been volunteering his skills for the website, both him and Deb moved out to Mudgee, where DKP still works, managing our enquiries line, working on endless proposals and being a general voice of reason in the madhouse.

It was 2010 and we’d scored a bit of extra cash. So I picked up the phone.

“Deb, is Jack there?”

“Yes Darling, I’ll put him on.”

“Hey mate.”

“Hi.” “Sooooo, how do you feel about taking on a full-time contract with us as the web designer, $40K, start tomorrow.”

Silence.

“Umm yeah, sounds good.”

“Cool. I’ll send through the contract.”

“Okay… thanks.”

He was shell-shocked. This was a way out, a way back to reality.

Deb called me five minutes later balling her eyes out. “Thank you Darling, (tears, spluttering), I just (more tears) can’t… remember the last time I saw… (tears) him smile like he is now.”

JKC is still with AIME. He’s a brilliant mind and one that may have been lost if we weren’t lucky enough to meet and have the chance to see him unlock his potential. Just before I left for this trip, we both met with Seafolly CEO Anthony Halas to lock in a partnership. JKC walked out and said, “Well I never thought that I’d be doing that in my life. I’ve come a long way, hey?”

Yes you have.

Those are the moments that matter. That’s how you change people’s lives. You have to be willing to care enough. To love.

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Love and peace aren’t about wearing tie-dyed shirts, or growing your hair long. It’s not about telling your parents to get fucked or going all James Dean on the world.

Almost 60 years after the movements from the hippies that pushed us to believe in love and hope and peace and kindness for each other and our world, what legacy is left?

I don’t do drugs, I don’t smoke weed… one of the great misnomers of all time is that if you talk about ideas, if you talk of love, if you talk of dreams, then you are a ‘dreamer’, a ‘stoner’, a ‘hippie’. Man, ole Will Shakespeare would have been shipped off to Byron Bay in a heartbeat if that rang true.

We can beat hate with love.

We can beat broadcast ideologies that divide us by building individual relationships and celebrating our differences, to unite us.

I’ve seen it happen through mentoring, through the simple power of human relationships. It’s why I wrote Mentors 4 Life, an off-the-shelf pair of six-month journals for mentor and mentee, so anyone, anywhere in the world can use it to start a conversation, to construct a bridge, to reach out a hand to someone else and create the world we want to see, a world where kindness connects us.

It’s only when we build enough bridges, create enough links between each other, and develop deep bonds filled with love, that we can build a wall so strongly reinforced by our human connections, that it will never be penetrated by hate and the links will never be broken.

We must love widely, there’s a lot at stake. As Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Tell your friends you love them.

Tell your family you love them.

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Tell your mentors you love them.

Tell the people you admire you love the way they live their lives.

I love so many people and I haven’t told them as much as I should. I love my friends, I love my team. I love people that have helped me. I love the fact that I get a chance to live. I love the world that has let me walk on its surface. We should tell people we love them more. If we don’t, the bad guys win, and there are bad guys out there who will divide us, push us, prod us, until we can’t recognise ourselves anymore.

So I’m gonna try to make up for lost time with a note of love for some of the people I haven’t mentioned thus far: To… My little siblings Ella, Lily, Joe and Ruby – thank you for giving me a reason to live. For inspiring me with your attitude, your frustrations, your happiness. I love you.

Chris Sarra, thank you for believing in me. For welcoming me into your home before Australian Story. For sending me notes and being a man and mentor I can look up to. I love you.

To Jill and Keith and Billy. Jill and Keith, you showed me that love and marriage can work. You’ve cared for me like your own, and Billy it is soooo weird that you now work for AIME but know this, I look at you like a little brother. I love you guys.

Paul Chandler! You are absolutely one in a million. The kindness and care you have shown for me as a Board Director and as a friend has been immense. The chance you took on me by getting Wollongong Uni on board is unparalleled. Your belief has been a constant source of fuel. Love you.

Haim Ayalon, a.k.a. DJ Wanted. Well lad, I bet you never thought that a career as a DJ would see you work with me on over 20 different gigs and make you no money! Your 237

generosity and ‘yes, man’ attitude has always kept me going.

No matter how outrageous the idea has been you’ve been good for it. From Strut the Streets, to DJing as our staff arrived at camp in 2012, to KiNDLiNG, Halloween Warehouse events, silent discos, kids’ parties, Indigenous Carnivale… we’ve done it all. I love you.

Stevie O’Keefe, thanks for being a guy I can look up to, and a weirdo to boot! You’re a phenomenally driven human being and I couldn’t be happier watching you play for Australia and live out your dreams. Love you brother.

Mark Carnegie, your belief is enough. Love you mate.

Simon McGrath, every time we meet I am stronger and smarter than before. I love you for what you have done for me.

Steve Crombie, I love your spirit of adventure, your zest for life, your willingness to push me and challenge me and I love that every time we meet I feel more inspired and more alive. I love you.

Mr Narev, I’m not sure if many people in the bank would write this as a note to you, but I love you mate. I love the time you have given me. Most importantly I love that you have always made me feel like I was your equal, and that I can do anything.

Fely Irvine and Tai Hara, I love you. You are my family, forever.

To Aunty Eva, Barban, Jeremy and all the mad nutters that have been around Mum’s house over the years – love you. Ditto for my Dad’s family and friends, gathering around the dinner table, exploring the world of ideas. Thank you for showing me that life is most definitely worth living. I love you all.

To the AIME mentors I have nothing but love for you.

To all the mentees, past and present, you know I love you guys.

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To our staff, of yesterday and today, I work for you. I love the people you are and strive to be.

To everyone walking with us and to you reading this book, I love you for daring to imagine a better way, a better world.

So how about this – let’s make love cool again and fuck the rest of the bullshit.

Life is a song – sing it.

Life is a game – play it.

Life is a sacrifice – offer it.

Life is love – enjoy it.

— Sai Baba …

2013 was ballistic, a breakthrough year both personally and professionally. They say the night is darkest just before the dawn. After 2012 almost broke me, 2013 inspired me, challenged me, but most importantly, gave me a taste of greatness. The year showed me how much capacity I still had and that people would follow me. That’s a pretty wild revelation to truly understand. I also started to feel smart. That was satisfying after the doubt from my early years at uni and my time at high school where I thought sport was the only thing I’d be good at. Unfortunately the feeling of being smart doesn’t last, because very quickly you start to realise that the more you know, the more you understand how little you know.

That’s the wonder of the endless world of ideas and possibilities that we call life.

In 2013 I launched the Mentors 4 Life program with Richard Branson. We expanded AIME to Western Australia 239

and South Australia, doubling the staff and the reach of AIME instantly. I travelled on Australia’s ‘Air Force One (…having a West Wing moment)’ as part of an official Australian delegation around Canada and the US with the Governor General, Quentin Bryce. On that trip I found myself sharing a meal in the sky with the GG’s Chief of Staff, Stephen Brady, who would become another guide and mentor, having one ‘mentoring session’ where Alex and I had dinner with him and his partner Peter at the Australian Embassy in Paris, overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Stephen is now the Australian Ambassador to France, the first openly gay Australian ambassador. Another special, generous, committed mind.

In 2013 we got voted 26th in the BRW Top 50 places to work in Australia. And it was also the year that I scored a scholarship to go to Stanford as the inaugural recipient of the John Dyson Bequest.

The scholarship was for Stanford’s most exclusive business program – their six-week Business Executive Program. 140-odd executives from the commercial sector, from over 40 countries.

The head of Nike’s creative global was there, alongside the dude running Starbucks in North America and another bloke in my tutorial group led the research and development for a organisation called SK who build the memory chips for iPhones. His budget was $1 billion – no biggie!

During my time at Stanford I zoomed out to reflect on what AIME had become and what it could be.

For the first week everyone thought I was one of the Stanford students volunteering to help administer the program. That changed when Emma Hogan started running my publicity. Emma was in the program and at the time was the head of Foxtel’s HR in Australia. She told anyone who would listen about my story and AIME. Over the next few 240

years Emma would become a great friend and supporter and is currently a director on the AIME board.

It was truly remarkable to see how they all responded to the AIME story. Each mealtime a different person would come and sit next to me and ask about everything. Why we did it.

How I started it so young. What I’d learned. For many, the idea that you would do something and not do it for money was a foreign concept.

The Stanford organisers then asked if I could share my story over a lunch. I had my guitar with me and one of my new ‘bucket list’ items was to have a crack at playing and singing in front of an audience…

“Jack has done incredible things back home, and I know many of you have been waiting to hear his story, so let’s get him up.”

“Thanks Emma, our story is a simple one. When I was 19 I got frustrated with the complaining about the problems facing Indigenous people back home…”

As I spoke the journey, they hung off every word. “… I wanted to finish today by sharing a song with you.

It’s the story of an Aboriginal fella named Vincent Lingiari…”

“Come gather round people…”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a great singer, and at that point was just learning where to put my fingers on the guitar. But you know what? I owned that moment. I felt every single word, connected with every note, and was a vessel for those people in the room to be transported to another time and place. It was a magical feeling. The power of song to transform and open up an audience is, I think, unparalleled.

Following my ‘show’, the participants on the course asked if they could do a fundraiser for us. Remember this number – $50K. That was what my scholarship was worth…

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A week later we were back in the same lunchroom for the fundraiser. A standard conference centre room that opened onto a beautiful sandstone courtyard, fountains and all.

The MC was a New Zealand fella, Simon Wickham. Not a professional MC but you couldn’t tell! We kicked off the auction. It was mayhem. People were donating their beach houses on the run. At a certain point Simon said (pun intended), “Okay, how much for a fist full of air?” as he raised his left hand clenched in a fist. “300, 400, 500. Once, twice, sold. Okay, what about for the other hand? 500? The lady up the back? Once, twice, sold.”

We raised close to US$90K, and split the money between AIME and another program that built schools in Cambodia.

I emailed John Dyson straight away and told him the story and that I hoped he was happy that I’d managed to match his investment within four weeks.

At the end of the course, after a few drinks, one of the US guys pulled me aside and said, “Man you gotta realise how special you are. You’ve got charisma and you can’t buy that.

People want to follow you. You make sure you never forget it and you make the most of it.”

During those six weeks, for the first time, I started to truly think that I could play ball on a global scale. It wasn’t as foreign to me anymore. What I was good at back home worked here too, with people from all backgrounds. They all wanted hope and positivity, with a bit of fun thrown into the mix. And most importantly, they wanted to see someone who would walk the talk.

Stanford challenged me to believe the words I’d been espousing to so many others – that anything is possible.

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…

I wrote three blogs throughout 2013. One on the experience in Canada, one on a couple of unlikely heroes who joined our team, and one on Branson and our expansion across the nation. Here they are.

Two of the Greats Their two lives have made such an impact in shaping the way we think about our identity as Australians. One of them, Governor General, Quentin Bryce, the first female Australian Governor General and one of the most recognisable Australian women in the world. Sharp, thoughtful, hard-working, determined and oozing class, Her Excellency is a force to be reckoned with.

The other, less well known, but arguably as impressive is sitting at the table across from the Governor General. Hailing from Groote Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, is Tony Wurramarrba, the Chairman of the Anindilyakwa Land Council – his road has been a long one, to be sitting here.

Around these two is an eclectic mix of people, including the top dogs of Canadian life, the Canadian Governor General, Chief Minister, Head of the Business Council, the Australian and Canadian High Commissioners, respectively. This is a serious gathering.

It’s April 5, 2013, and we are sitting in Government House, Ottawa, Canada. Across the road from the Prime Minister’s House and snow is falling outside. It’s the first time that Tony and I have seen snow.

We mention this to one of the Canadian GG’s staff during that traditionally odd and awkward pre-drinks period before an event, and she sparked into life immediately. “You haven’t 243

seen snow! Quick let’s duck outside and teach you how to throw a snowball.” I looked at Tony and he gave me a little nod - next minute, suits and all (yes, I do own one), we threw our first ever snowballs, at Government House in Canada.

Tony was awarded an Order of Australia and the Northern Territory’s local hero for his work playing hardball as the key negotiator with BHP and the Australian Government over a deal with the mining company to see the Groote Island community receive long-term investment in infrastructure development, education and health services. It’s regarded as one of the most comprehensive land agreements in Australian history.

He has a wickedly dry sense of humour. When we went through the security check at JFK airport in New York, they made us take our shoes off. I rolled my eyes at Tony who whispered back, with a hint of a chuckle, “Shirts too?”

The reason we are over here is, we are travelling with the Governor General and an official Australian delegation to check out the Indigenous set-up in Canada and the US. Other members of the delegation include Chris Fry, CEO of Indigenous Businesses Australia, Anne-Marie Roberts, a senior member of FAHCSIA in Australia, and Megan Davis who is the Director of the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW and an expert member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples. A seriously diverse and impressive bunch.

The idea for the trip was all GG Bryce’s work. Our trip saw us meet university and Indigenous reps in Vancouver, then head over to Ottawa to kick it with their GG, Prime Minister and also check out Rideau high school (some cool kids there, over 70 different language groups in 1 school and 30 Indigenous kids…), before we strapped ourselves in for 244

destination Iqaluit, to meet with the Inuit people and see how they did their thing in -35c at the top of the world.

Throughout the whole show I was truly inspired by the GG’s utter professionalism, generosity and class. She’s one of those people, who when she talks to you, you feel like you are the only person in the world.

Quentin grew up in country Queensland and for her whole life has fought for equality, for women, for rural Australians, for Indigenous people, for us all. On this trip I could see her belief in our ability to reach for our potential, to strive to be better, and overcome the challenges that may come.

This type of belief is woven permanently through the veins of Tony as well. They live their lives to make others better.

Back in Ottawa at our dinner table, Tony Wurramarrba AO, is asked by Quentin to share his story with the table.

“Your Excellencies, I want to thank you for your welcome and pay my respect to the people whose land we meet on today…”

Slowly, purposefully and thoughtfully Tony lays out his story with a rhythm that Shakespeare would have been proud of.

There is pin-drop silence – this is presence personified.

“Your Excellencies, I knew we had to take this opportunity because we had to think of life after mining…” Don’t we all. He continued his story of how he left the table 3 times because the offer was not good enough for his community long term, and with the hint of a grin he says.”…I’m not easy to compromise with.”

Sitting here, in the house of the Crown on the other side of the world, with all these people, and all this ridiculous protocol and formality, I couldn’t help but think, “Man, this guy couldn’t be further from his comfort zone right now.” And as I watched the leaders of this country captivated by his every word, images began flicking through my mind of some of the 245

ground-breakers throughout history that have inspired me, the Mandelas, Mabos, Kings… people who were willing to conquer the elements, new worlds, the people that met immovable objects head on with unstoppable force. He was one of them.

When Tony finished and sat down, I looked at him and was so humbled to be Aboriginal, so proud to be Australian, and even more determined to make sure our kids seize the opportunities that have arisen because of people like Tony.

People who have been unfalteringly driven, pigheadedly hopeful, and unwilling to settle for anything but success.

The Governor General, Quentin Bryce and Tony Wurramarrba AO have negotiated with subtlety, patience, class, vision and strength, and the result is a seat at the table for the people who follow in their footsteps.

We are often a pessimistic bunch back home, but after travelling through Canada and the US and seeing the similar challenges they face, I’m convinced that greatness is not far from reach for our country.

It will come from the Tonys, the Quentins, it will come from you and from me, if we are willing to step up to the challenge to help shape a world where everyone gets a seat at the table. …

From Indonesia to Indigenous Australia It’s the year 2010 and we find ourselves in the tropical surf, off the coast of Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia, watching a couple of young Australian men, waiting for a wave, who are only a few steps away from being an instrumental part of shaping Australia’s future national identity and it’s relationship with Indigenous Australia.

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At 22, Drew Higgins has landed in Indonesia to take part in the AusAID youth program (AYAD), and is working on community economic development projects in Jakarta’s poorest urban suburbs, with trash pickers who collect rubbish and sell it for a living. Drew helped build a program that saw the profits raised from the trash pickers, be returned back into education for kids. He says humbly, “Coming from the Northern Beaches in Sydney I reckon it’s fair to say I learnt pretty quickly how much of the world operated very differently to me. And I needed to learn to adapt to succeed.”

Sitting out the back of the surf with Drew, on a 6’6” ‘Soul Cruiser’ surfboard, is his 24-year-old mate, Sam Refshauge.

Sam grew up in the inner west of Sydney, the son of former Labor politician, Andrew Refshauge, he’d lived a life with good opportunity as a youngster. Looking for a new challenge Sam also joined the AusAID program and found himself dropped in Jakarta, as the National Coach of the Indonesian Rugby Union team. “Whilst the boys had some serious speed, there was more than one training session where I felt like the coach of the Jamaican bobsled team in Cool Runnings.”

Amongst their day jobs, they surfed, travelled many of the islands of Indonesia, and with an opportunistic flavour, once their contracts in Jakarta had ended, they spotted the Commonwealth Games were on in India and jumped at the chance to go.

Fast-forward and the boys are now sitting in the shade up against a wall of a stadium between the gymnastics and the cycling at the Comm Games in Delhi, India. It’s hot, there’s noise everywhere, and the sentimentalism of the games has triggered a conversation between Sam and Drew around 247

Australia, what was going on at home, what they’d done in Indonesia and everything in between.

In that same week, the boys had both received an email about jobs going at AIME in 2011. They both decided they’d have a crack at applying, that this would be a way they could represent their country. Little did they know they both applied for the same job.

Back in Sydney after applying for their dream role, they ended up in the final panel interview going head to head. They blew me away with their honesty, integrity, and I got a strong sense of loyalty from them. So I made up a new role for Drew and welcomed them into the fold.

Two years on, the lads have grown rapidly with AIME. They’ve ridden the wave and stepped up to the opportunities that have arisen as AIME has boomed from 20 staff in 2010 in 3 states, to over 60 full-time staff and 30 part-time across Australia, in 2013.

At 27, Sam is now the National Director of Program Operations, and oversees the implementation and delivery of the AIME program across 16 university locations, reaching over 40 different communities, providing the program to 200 schools, in 5 states, and engaging between 2000-3000 Indigenous high school kids, and 1500 university student volunteer mentors this year.

“I’m back home now and the learning curve has been steep.

But I’m just lucky to have the chance to do something special for the country. It’s great to be part of a new generation of young people, Indigenous and non-Indigenous stepping up to help us build an Australia we can be proud of.”

And with a huge level of responsibility in terms of staff to manage, and the delivery of this program in his hands, how is Sam handling the pressure?

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“Loving it, but I must admit by Friday 6pm I think I now feel a little bit like one of those Jamaican bobsledders. I might not know what I’m doing all the time but I’ll keep pushing forward, and keep pushing myself to improve and be the best I can be.

And fingers crossed, that gold is just around the corner.”

At 26, Drew is now working as the Creative Operations Director. If you’ve ever seen any of the AIME team films or our online work, you’ll be amazed at the quality. And it’s done on a shoestring, with $0 marketing budget.

“They are a crazy crew. I’ve been amazed by the passion and ideas that are generated within AIME. Everyone is so energized and inspired, it’s infectious, and we try and pull that all together into content for either the educational program, or our other mediums like YouTube, Facebook, or TV. Sometimes I pinch myself a little and look around at how much ball we are playing. Jack keeps saying we are going to take this around the world and be one of the best businesses in the country, up there with Google, and it’s this year in particular that I’ve looked around and realized that he might be right. AIME’s proven to me the ability that anyone has, to be able to step up and make a difference, if they are focused, they have a plan, stay positive, and work ridiculously hard, then anything really is possible. I’m glad I’ll get to tell my kids that I was on the wave that helped end Indigenous inequality in Australia forever.” …

Fame Fades But Class Lasts Forever Striding up towards me with an entourage in tow is a guy most of us have heard of before, he goes by the name of Sir 249

Richard Branson. I shake his hand and give him a quick brief on what’s to come.

“Mate we’ve got an hour, the Vice Chancellor will introduce us, I’ll then talk for about 15-20, then I’ll do a Q&A with you before we open it up to the crowd. The audience is a mixture of high school kids and uni students, and some other uni peeps.”

“Okay sounds like 30 minutes will suffice.”

Righto Jacky Boy 30 minutes it is, roll with the punches, let’s cut the speech back and get this show on the road.

Walking onto the stage there is a rock star round of applause for Branson.

There was one small moment, as I was mid-interview, where I listened to Richard responding and thought, “Is this all happening?”

Then as quick as it kicked off it was done, we snapped a quick pic together, he was whisked away and then the final play of the game was Richard responding with his own blog that evening and sharing it with his millions of followers. “…It was also a real privilege to speak at a mentoring session with the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME). Their inspiring Founder Jack Manning Bancroft, a bundle of boundless energy and ideas, set up AIME when he was just 19 and they have now expanded across Australia, engaging over 2000 Indigenous high school students and 1000 university students. Their new Mentors 4 Life program can be used by businesses and networks across the world, helping to ingrain the positive message of mentoring within companies globally. The spirit of mentoring should be embedded in all businesses and certainly is at Virgin. AIME reminds me a lot of the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship with its messages of mentorship, leadership and 250

entrepreneurship. It is an excellent example of using business as a force for good.

Mentoring was very important for me personally. For example, Sir Freddie Laker gave me invaluable advice and guidance as we set up Virgin Atlantic, while my mum has been a mentor throughout my life. Nowadays, I find mentors inside and outside of Virgin every day. If you ask any successful businessperson, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road. If you want success then it takes hard work, hard work and more hard work. But it also takes a little help along the way. If you are determined and enthusiastic then people will support you.

If you are looking to make your way in business, try to find a mentor. If you are in a position to share the skills you have learned, give something back by becoming a mentor yourself.”

The reaction of people to fame has always puzzled me. I find myself looking at people, respecting what they’ve done, often being inspired, but never do I drift into the land of adoration.

It’s not fair on the people we cast our dream narratives around. For example a few people said that Richard was not that inspiring at our event… I couldn’t help but think maybe the lad was a bit tired after 40 years of travelling the world telling his story to all and sundry, and drained from being a symbol that people attach themselves to. Maybe he was being generous by letting the AIME story take centre stage…

If you want to be inspired by Richard Branson, look at what he does when the cameras aren’t on. Look at the 15 year old who started writing a paper to stand up against the Vietnam war, and is now set to help lead a civilisation into space. That’s the inspiration. Is he perfect? Nope. Are any of us? Nope.

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By creating this idea of perfection in our celebrities, we are creating an excuse for ourselves. ‘They are born with it’, ‘Naturally gifted’, ‘Freak of nature’. Wanna know what almost every person at the top of their respective trees, famous or otherwise, has in common? They work at it, again and again and again and again… and… again. We all have that in us, there’re everyday people around you that have the same class and capacity as a Branson, maybe they simply don’t have the belief, environment, or luck to recognise it.

Everyday heroes like Tomzarni Dann and Marlee Hutton, two Indigenous uni students in Western Australia who are working for AIME as casual national presenters. After the Branson mayhem, I found myself in a room at Curtin University for our first ever mentor training for AIME… AIME in Western Australia… Curtin Uni is 3959 km from Alex Park Community School, and is a 40-hour drive from where I live in Sydney. Ha! When did that happen?

I looked around and saw the AIME shirts everywhere, the hoodies ready to be handed out, the great bunch of young people streaming through the door. And then watched as these uni students were captivated by the stories of Tomzarni and Marlee who were reaching out to bring these uni kids with them. I couldn’t help but smile. If we can do this in Perth, we can do this anywhere in the world. We had two other staff members in the room that night, Reece Harley and Lauren Cramb another couple of seriously impressive operators and a great example of the future this country can have when young, smart, driven and balanced people commit to working and creating a world that’s better for everyone around them.

A world that’s left in better shape after they leave it, than when they arrived.

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he’s famous for it. But there are everyday people who, in their own right, have the same class.

The world will always have impressive individuals who rise to the top and become beacons of what we think we can be, the popularised images of Oprah, Obama and Mandela spring to mind.

We can learn from these people, but their messages are spread so thinly across the world that when we look at their posters on our walls, we almost forget they are human. We can’t seem to fathom where to find the ladder that will help us climb our way to a point where we can even imagine the lives they live. So we search, we reach, we tweet, but in the Tomzarnis, the Marlees, Reeces and Laurens, of the world, we have our heroes on our doorstep. We have greatness in front of us every day.

Don’t try and replicate the Bransons, don’t feel intimidated by the greats, be yourself, write your own story, and put people around you that love you for that, then watch the magic unfold. …

August 28, 2015. Lismore. 12.30pm. ‘Imagine what’s possible’ show completed. Students, staff, mentors gather in room Y211 for a showcase. Drama, performance, a couple of speeches. Anyone else? The last student to rise and share their speech, as the first Indigenous Prime Minister, is 16-year-old Isaachar Fraser.

“I look around, I see black, I see white, I see Indian, African, Chinese, and Japanese. I see Maori, I see Tongan, Samoan, and African Americans. I see different colours, cultures, clothing and hear different languages. But difference is nothing.

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We all bleed the same COLOUR. Why do we see colours?

Multiculture means different colours, different colours in a community creates a rainbow. A rainbow means happiness.

But why do we hate and discriminate? We all bleed the same colour? And only have differences such as beliefs. My people have lived their life with words in their veins. ‘I hate, those white people, white this, white that.’

And when their blood flows out, their blood flows out feelings. Love, hate, torment, hurt, emptiness, loneliness, pain and happiness. My people have lived a hard life all their days.

Dog tags, discrimination, massacres, loss of belief, loss of connection to the land, loss of culture.

We are not dumb, we are not uncivilised, and we are not poor. We are smart, we are civilised, and educated in the ways of the land and its cultures. We are beautiful and we are one.

As a young Indigenous lady, I believe in a change. A change in Australia’s community and the way others see my people.

I believe we will stand together in recognition of the past and together look forward to a new and brighter future.

Together we, you and I, should admit the past and forgive what happened to move on and believe in reconciliation. I believe in a change. A change for Australia and the existing discrimination in the world.

As the first Indigenous Prime Minister of Australia, I believe and will push forth to see employment for Indigenous people. I will push forth to see equal rights for all cultures and also push forth to see men and women have equal rights within our society. I will push forth opportunities and support connections for all of Australia. I honestly believe and have self-confidence in our youth. I will put education systems into our schooling curriculum for our Indigenous youth for better understanding and connections. I will also give the Indigenous 254

people of the land, better housing and give resources to remote communities around Australia. I will also have support offered for domestic violence, drugs, alcohol and offer protection for our kids.

I want to see a change in my country. That change starts with me, you and us. I strongly believe in a change. And I want this CHANGE. If you choose me to be Australia’s Prime Minister, I will bring forth this change and make this change in our community, society and world.”

I nod at Pat, I’ve got this.

“Isaachar, 11 years ago when I started AIME it was so one day I would see a moment like this. I’ve dreamt of this moment. Today I got to live that dream. In a funny way, today you completed everything I’d ever hoped for. You’ve proven to me this works, and I know the future is safe in your generation’s hands. Everything we do from here, that’s a bonus. Thank you so much, I’ll never forget this.”

Isaachar’s generation is the first generation of Indigenous people in Australian history to not have abject policy working against them. Issachar has been born into a time where Australian people, government, corporations, by and large, want to see success and happiness for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Our job has been to shift the kids’ psychological framework from seeing their identity as an excuse for failure, as opposed to a reason for success. Our job has been to inspire the kids to say, “Don’t look at me as a problem to fix, I’m the answer.”

When Mandela walked onto Ellis Park, June 24, 1995, to present the World Cup to his country, South Africa, wearing the Springbok jersey – a symbol which was part of the apartheid era – a man who had been oppressed beyond imagination, he stood and opened his arms to his oppressor, 255

hugged him, and whispered, “I forgive you, and now I will lead you to a better way.”

It’s the only way it changes.

It sucks because the people who have been beaten black and blue are the ones that have to be able to somehow find the strength, fortitude, depth of forgiveness, heart and capacity to stand eye to eye and forgive the person who has caused them so much pain – and this alone is not enough.

What happens after forgiveness?

We need direction. And it’s up to the oppressed to rise out of the darkness, shine the light, and lead us all forward, black and white.

Isaachar, on that day, reminded me of Nelson at Ellis Park.

We bleed the same colour.

It’s these kids who are the ones that lead the change.

They are the ones who have closed the educational gap, not AIME. They are the ones who go back to their schools and forgive their teachers for having low expectations and then challenge the teachers to imagine a new stereotype for Indigenous students. They are the ones who go home to their parents, forgive them for their anger and distrust of white people and the system, and then lead them to a place of hopefulness, where they feel like everything that they have fought for has not been in vain. The kids are the ones that forgive the mentors for the guilt they have for our past and inspire them to understand a new narrative of Indigenous success. The kids like Isaachar, they do it all. We simply provide the stage.

As Nelson showed, this is the only way it changes. …

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Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

— Gatsby, The Great Gatsby And so my friends, we roll into the close of this story. For close to five months I’ve been on the road, listening, watching, thinking, learning and writing. I’ve had the time and space alone to get to know myself on the deepest level. Over the course of writing this book I have become immensely stronger, as I’ve come to learn and understand what I’ve been through and given myself the chance to feel those feelings again – to relive my life and look deeply at the man in the mirror.

This is my life; I am ready to own it.

I am ready to lead.

I am ready to be clear with what I stand for.

I believe in kids.

As I type away we are gearing up for the next chapter in my life and the AIME story. A life fuelled by love.

I want to see if we can help lead the way to the end of Indigenous educational inequality by 2025. To get there we’ll 257

need to think differently. In Australia they’ve turned old phone booths into wireless hubs. We’ve got a similar opportunity.

Our infrastructure that we’ve built is people-based. The question is how well we can align that energy.

We currently have 150 staff and we work with 2000 mentors and 6000 kids. We are always talking about what we can do for the kids and mentors.

Outside the AIME bubble is 160,000 Indigenous kids in school, without our support. I want to give them all the chance to shine.

How do we get there?

I think the solution will be to turn our gaze from looking in, to looking out. Imagine if we reshaped the program so that we had all 8000 people in the AIME tent, mentees, mentors and staff alike, and we all set our sights on helping end educational inequality for the whole cohort of 160,000 Indigenous kids in school. If we challenged our mentees to grow from the problem that needed to be fixed, to the solution.

Let’s give away the mentoring badge. Give it away. Let’s give away our Theatre of Education and unlock the magic of learning for kids, everywhere.

Let’s build AIME into one of the coolest brands on the planet, take on the Red Bulls and Nikes. So instead of kids wanting to buy soft drinks or sneakers, they want to be mentors and build better human relationships and better worlds.

Let’s focus in on the machine that is spitting out more and more powerful people and more and more powerless people.

Let’s zoom into the machine that sees 50% of the world’s wealth being owned by 1% of the world’s population. When you take your car to the mechanic you say, “hey something is not working”, and the mechanic gets into the machine and finds the cogs and wheels that are out of alignment.

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Instead of us blaming the ‘system’ or ‘machine’, let us be forensic mechanics. Let us zoom into the machine and focus in on the university cog and the school levers. Let us mobilise universities across the globe, university students, to pick up the slack, to throw their hand back and bring the most disadvantaged people with them. Let us see the powerful and powerless come together.

And maybe, just maybe, in our lifetime we’ll see the world’s wealth and people’s opportunity to capitalise on their potential become a lot fairer.

Let’s give it all away.

I want people to see that mentoring can be the peacebuilding tool needed to fight the things that divide us.

I want to see a world where my grandkids live a better life than I have.

In first-world countries we have the biggest ageing population in human history. Let’s put our elders to work.

Why can’t we have retired people as resident elders in early childhood centres? We know early childhood education is the key, and there’s a generation of elders waiting for someone to value them. Let’s put two and two together. What about engaging retired teachers to be resident mentors and coaches for teachers just out of university?

I want to help make a world of we, not I. A world of us, not them. A world together.

A great mentor of mine, Chris Bartlett, asked me during this trip, as we sat down one night to dinner with his wife Barbara in the sublime Woodstock, Vermont, “So mate, in ten years time, you’ll be 41. Where do you want to be?”

I want Indigenous educational disadvantage done.

I want a world where mentoring and human relationships are used as the tools to overcome the issues of our time.

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I want to light up kids’ imaginations, everywhere.

I want to be a leader and role model who inspires people around the world to be the best versions of themselves.

I want to be open to love, to giving and receiving, from friends, family and potentially a partner in crime.

I want to create an Australia where people encourage ideas, big thinking, dreaming – I want us to bust out of the mould of self-deprecating tall poppy bullshit that stops us from being able to share the magic of our country, our spirit, with the world.

I want to create the greatest Theatre of Education the world has ever seen, 50 of the greatest shows to inspire kids, like nothing that has come before.

And I want to do it all with people I love, who love me, and believe that it’s possible, in fact, inevitable, that with enough good people rising, we will leave the world in a better place than when we found it.

Time to get to work.

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