The number 79 has a deep and powerful meaning in Maryborough, the heart of the Central Goldfields Shire in the state’s north-west. Victoria has 79 local government areas, and when you cast a ruler of disadvantage over them, a ranking emerges of best to worst.
So it is that the shire and Maryborough, a town of almost 8000, has regularly come in at 79.
On a crisp winter’s day, the weak sun gives a golden glow to the facades of the goldrush buildings and the glorious and improbably grand Maryborough Station, described by Mark Twain as a station with a town attached. This seems a picture of prosperity. How could this be 79th?
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Maryborough
The glorious and improbably grand Maryborough Station, described by Mark Twain as a station with a town attached. Photo by Rodger Cummins.It is hard to exactly pinpoint a eureka moment of realisation; rather, it’s been a gradual dawning that Maryborough and the shire didn’t want to be 79 any more, and was determined to do something about it — a town fighting back.
‘‘We’re 79 at the moment,’’ says Mark Johnston, the shire’s chief executive officer. ‘‘To a degree you can trade on that, because you’ve got some leverage. What we want to do is leave 79. But when we leave 79, you can’t trade on 75 or 73.
Maryborough mayor Chris Meddows-Taylor, Margaret Kent and shire CEO Mark Johnston. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones ‘‘At the moment, we’ve got all the priority picks so we’re going to make sure everyone of those is a winner,’’ adds Johnston, a devoted Bulldogs fan who favours football analogies. ‘‘But when we leave 79, we will make a quantum leap.’’
The story of Maryborough has largely slipped under the radar of public awareness, except for those with a close knowledge of the area. Think of the goldfields, and it’s an image of the boom that made Victoria, of the grandeur of Ballarat and Bendigo. Maryborough sits exactly at the half way point of 65 km between the two towns.
In the lead up to the November state election, a comprehensive report was tabled in the Victorian Parliament that, in part, told the town’s story to a wider audience.
The Inquiry into the Extent and Nature of Disadvantage and Inequity in Rural and Regional Victoria runs to almost 500 pages. The parliamentary committee was chaired by Damian Drum, the Bendigo-based state Nationals MP who has successful moved from an AFL playing and coaching career into politics.
The committee, with a majority of Liberal and National MPs, tells a compelling and disturbing story of disadvantage across rural Victoria. Country people are not as healthy or as well educated as their city counterparts, nor do they have the same incomes and access to services. They do not live as long. Yet in the face of adversity, the inquiry found a strong sense of community.
There are, in fact, two reports. There was a deep split between the committee’s Coalition MPs and the three Labor MPs. Drum says in the report the Labor members were hostile, and wanted to minimise damage to the then Labor government. In their minority report, the Labor MPs said they were extremely disappointed by the negative terms of reference.
Perhaps such a split was inevitable in an election year. The report, tabled only weeks before polling day, gained scant public attention.
The surprise victory by the Coalition has suddenly given the report a new relevance. It makes 54 recommendations, including establishing an independent advisory body to protect the interests of rural Victoria, and the establishment of a ‘‘social contract’’ with rural communities that sets out minimum standards of wellbeing and services to be provided. The Coalition now has a chance to act on the findings, and a response is expected soon.
Despite the split on the committee, a powerful narrative emerges from the majority report, that tells of hardship and struggle in the lives of those who live beyond Melbourne, compounded by a decade of drought.
The story is one of two Victorias, and nowhere has this been more evident than in the city of Maryborough.
Booms came twice to Maryborough. First came the gold, then the factories that would turn it into a regional manufacturing hub.
The discovery of gold in 1854 began the foundations of a great civic centre, the bricks and mortar reminders of which are still found in Maryborough today. The old town hall, post office and court house wrap around a square at the top of town, while the remarkable 1890 station flanks the other side.
‘‘Don’t you overlook that Maryborough station, if you take an interest in governmental curiosities,’’ enthused Mark Twain when he visited in 1895.
‘‘Why, you can put the whole population of Maryborough into it, and give them a sofa apiece, and have room for more. You haven’t fifteen stations in America that are as big, and you probably haven’t five that are half as fine. Why, it’s perfectly elegant.’’
When the gold ran out in the early 20th century, the opening of the Maryborough Knitting Mills began the town’s arrival as a manufacturing hub that reached its peak in the 1960s.
Then, as competition from overseas increased, the local textile factories started to close their doors. So began the beginnings of Maryborough’s decline to 79.
In 1993, the then Kennett government shut down the passenger rail service as part of it slash-and-burn cost cutting. The grand station that Twain described as perfectly elegant no longer had a reason for being. Like so many other country towns that lost their trains, the blow was both tangible and psychological.
As Mayor Chris Meddows-Taylor explains, there is no shame at being 79 — the shame would come from not doing anything about it.
What state was Maryborough in?
There is a system of socio-economic indexes that looks at disadvantage, economic resources, education and occupation. Combined, they consistently put the area at the lowest in the state. Unemployment figures from the end of last year put the jobless rate close to 11 per cent, one of the highest in Victoria, compared to a statewide rate of about 5 per cent.
In 2007, a report was commissioned by the council as part of the efforts to kick-start lasting change. This was part of facing up to the problem. The Gold Prospects report was based on 130 interviews, and ‘‘uncovered an overwhelming case of disadvantage’’ centred mainly in Maryborough but spread throughout the shire.
The Maryborough region, it found, was suffering from entrenched poverty. Using the measures developed by Tony Vinson in 2007 in his landmark work that mapped disadvantage in Australia, the report found:
Anecdotal evidence of poor child health, including an unacceptable proportion of very young children suffering malnourishment, dental decay, and social, emotional and developmental delays;
Average weekly income was about half the national average; Almost 11 per cent of people had run out of food in the previous 12 months, and could not afford to buy more (compared to a state average of 6.1 per cent); A lower life expectancy for females.
Much of the material was presented to the parliamentary inquiry. ‘‘It certainly made an impact, and in some respects we were shocked to hear firstly that Maryborough was ranked quite poorly in the socio-economic status rankings,’’ says Drum. ‘‘It was quite confronting.’’
Drum, who is now parliamentary secretary for regional development, says Maryborough’s ranking needs to be taken in context. There are pockets of Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong that are extremely poor, but they are in local government areas that have wealthy areas.
‘‘I think that Maryborough probably ranks 79th because it doesn’t have a substantial pocket of wealth to mask the problems,’’ he says.
Yet the ranking and picture portrayed by the evidence points to a significant problem. ‘‘I suppose it gives you a choice either to pretend its not happening or to accept that that’s the facts, and then, what are we going to do about it?’’
It is here that the Maryborough story shifts from despair to hope and change.
There had been some fantastic work on what Chris Meddows-Taylor he calls the traditional levers — a new sports centre, police station and new primary and secondary schools. The council was trying to attract new industry and the jobs that would bring. But despite the efforts, ‘‘we weren’t getting the turnaround’’.
Having identified the gap, the search, then, was for a new way, to purge the town’s nickname in surrounding areas: ‘‘Scaryborough’’.
The new approach was built around bringing together all the agencies working in the area, with the council as the organising force — as Mark Johnston puts it, the council is the one body with ‘‘the sole purpose to advance this patch’’.
There were a lot of agencies putting in resources and working hard, but there needed to be a central focus on the area. ‘‘We needed the Maryborough solution,’’ says Johnston.
There had to be a change in Maryborough’s community culture. As part of identifying what was going on in the community, a strong message emerged that the community was resilient. But while admirable, was did else did it say about the state of the community?
‘‘It was resilient because we batten down and support each other when we were losing industries,’’ says Meddows-Taylor. ‘‘And it was a good thing to have. But it wasn’t an aspirational culture. It wasn’t looking forward. Our kids didn’t have that aspiration, about looking forward to the future. The community view was: let’s just hold out and hope that we don’t lose any more jobs.
‘‘Resilience is good. We want to support each other when things go bad... but we had to develop aspiration.’’
The future, he says, would not look like the past.
And so to crafting the future. The early work in identifying the gap was followed by a plan — a vision, if you like — for a different kind of Maryborough.
In economic terms, there’s a strategy to make Maryborough a place people want to live — traditionally, workers would live in the town, bosses would choose to live outside the community.
The plan also involves attracting tourists to its rich history, and developing a major retail centre.
Every opportunity was taken to make the case for Maryborough, such as the 2008 visit by then Labor government community cabinet. Meddows-Taylor says given the forum, most councils would argue for a new bridge or road. Instead, the case was made for funding to close the gap — the details of the gap between Maryborough and the rest were given to the cabinet. The ministers were ‘‘gobsmacked’’, recalls Meddows-Taylor. The town previously didn’t qualify for funding for the neighbourhood renewal program, which focuses on disadvantaged areas. After the cabinet meeting, Maryborough got the support.
There have been other boosts. The train station that so inspired Mark Twain has become a symbol of the wider revival, thanks in no small part to Glenda James, who took over the derelict buildings and developed a thriving antiques shop and restaurant in the old dining room.
The council also won federal money to develop the area in front of the station to its former glory. Portable classrooms from the old tech school were moved away, replaced by a sweeping approach from the street.
But what was a glorious station without trains? A year ago, Labor made good on its promise to restore the passenger service — albeit, only early morning one service out to Melbourne, returning in the evening. ‘‘It was a huge boost for this place,’’ says Meddows-Taylor. There are hopes for more services.
The latest breakthrough has been winning $2.5 million in the last state budget for its ‘‘Go Goldfields’’ strategy, which targets change in the 0-19 years bracket, and includes money for early years speech pathology, literacy and support for parents.
Margaret Kent runs the Maryborough Neighbourhood Renewal, which provides the on-the-ground support to help individuals turn their lives around.
Apart from bringing agencies together, there was a new approach to projects — only spending money if you knew something was going to work. While it may seem like common sense, in other ways it was revolutionary. There was a focus on the social determinants of health — essentials such as food, work and transport. These are basic things, says Kent, that determine whether people are able to take control over their own lives and change their circumstances.
‘‘We know from a long history of health promotion work that we can’t give people control over their own lives, but we can support them to take control over their own lives.’’
‘‘There’s not much point in talking to people about giving up smoking when they are experiencing extreme hardship, like family violence,’’ she says.
‘‘The low income people in Maryborough have very complex lives, and an incredible number of issues that impact on their daily lives — things that you and I probably wouldn’t survive. So I really admire the resilience of people who are doing it hard.’’
To improve the understanding of what people were going through, community and council workers have attended ‘‘Understanding Poverty’’ workshops, in part to address some middle-class prejudices and counter the desire to impose middle-class values.
The workshops have looked at the importance of relationships in the day-to-day survival of people in poverty, the support of family and friends, and why entertainment is so important.
‘‘There’s been a value judgment of people living in poverty around that aspect of their lives because its seen as not necessary,’’ she says. ‘‘But if we had to live the day to day existence of low income people, believe me, we would want entertainment to escape the reality of what’s a very, very difficult existence.’’
Faced with a poverty trap that has captured generation after generation, the critical question is at what stage to break the cycle. The resounding answer has been in the early years — and Maryborough and the Drum inquiry have embraced this.
‘‘We came to the realisation that the early years are the crucial years,’’ says Drum. ‘‘’’So if you’re trying to break the cycle from one generation to the next, it should be done in those 0 to 5 years and it had to be done ... working with the parents as well.’’
It is this intervention in the early years to break the cycle that wins the support of one of the most respected voices on the subject of disadvantage, Tony Vinson. A former head of prisons in NSW who led an inquiry into public education in the state, his 2007 work Dropping off the Edge is regarded as the benchmark study into the distribution of disadvantage in Australia.
The work, commissioned by Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services, has inspired much of the work being done to turn around places such as Maryborough. Vinson ranked areas across Australia. In Victoria, Maryborough was among the six areas regarded as most disadvantaged.
His life’s work puts him in a unique position to appreciate the extent of the problem.
‘‘For me it’s been very revealing to see the extent to which society continues to mine the same locations, and ever more intensively, to fill places like our institutions,’’ he says.
Vinson says the most dramatic lesson he’s learned personally is to go to some of the areas that emerge as being highly disadvantaged on the statistics and the meet the children.
‘‘To meet directly, and to talk with and to sit in the room with four year olds coming from very disadvantaged backgrounds is to visit the springs of disadvantage in our society, and to have forcibly brought home to you the origins of the people that you’ve otherwise dealt with in adult life in places like jail,’’ he says.
‘‘The extent of that disadvantage is certainly stronger in the minds of the teachers in those locations. But I just wish there were ways of sharing more intensely the revelations of such encounters with people generally.
‘‘I think we wear blinkers when it comes to the way in which disadvantage begets disadvantage, and the cycles of disadvantage that cut across generations. It’s a very sad thing to meet a little child and think perhaps we’ll meet up again in your adult life in somewhere like a prison.’’
The blinkers, explains Vinson, are part of trying to avoid confronting the problem.
‘‘Perhaps it’s like a number of other issues where to fully acknowledge the discrepancies between one’s own life opportunities and the stunted possibilities for those children ... it’s avoided,’’ he says.
‘‘Our pattern of living, the striving for achievement that we instil in our children and our grandchildren, looks morally so fragile alongside what is going to happen to many of these other kids. So I think we put blinkers on to avoid the disconcerting and destabilising patterns of life that we take to be average within a country like Australia.’’
Vinson agrees ‘‘100 per cent’’ with the early years approach.
‘‘These children have missed out on the precursors to formal education,’’ he says. ‘‘They haven’t held a book in their hands, they haven’t held a pencil. It’s not a matter of creating just an improved physical environment for them when they come to school. There’s so much to be done — I won’t even be ambitious enough to say close the gap - to narrow the gap between their readiness for education and that of perhaps the majority of children.’’
The consequences show up in the classrooms, where children have become demoralised to the point of being disruptive.
‘‘’You see the beginnings of a conveyor belt from which they are going to hop off at the earliest possible opportunity to escape from all that.’’
There are two compelling personal stories in Maryborough that tell much about the wider movement to make this a better place. The experiences of Susan and Jane (the names and some personal details have been changed to protect their identities) are those of lives improving.
Susan, a mother of three young children, moved to Maryborough about two years ago, when a Housing Commission place became available.
Life before was one of struggle and despair. In the last country town in which she lived, putting food on the table was a battle she could only win in part.
‘‘At one stage, living back there, I was probably going without food five days a week to feed my children,’’ she says.
‘‘I was probably eating dinner twice a week and that was it, so the rest of the family had food. You can’t let your kids go hungry, you’ve got to go without for them.’’
The move to Maryborough has improved her life. Each Tuesday, she attends a gold coin lunch at the community house, where residents take it turn to produce healthy meals.
Susan has also been attending the ‘‘Getting Ahead’’ program, designed to get a life back on track: how to manage finances and get out of the low income trap, to set goals.
She finished school at Year 9, and through the course, is looking at returning to study, realising how her limited education has reduced her employment opportunities.
‘‘Personally, I feel like the reason I got myself where I am today, I haven’t got much education. I dropped out of school young, I was 15, I only had a year 9 pass. All the jobs I’ve had are manual jobs, like fruit picking, factory work and stuff like that.’’
Maryborough’s high unemployment and limited transport restrict her options, but she’s hoping that there may be a future career in aged care.
As much as anything, it’s been the community support that has made such a big difference.
‘‘I found that even sitting around the house myself with young children, at kinder and school, it is depressing, just sitting in the same four walls,’’ says Susan.
‘‘To get out and have a cup of coffee with some nice people, it really does pick a lot of people up. That’s all some people do. With limited funds, they can’t go out. so a simple thing like a cup of coffee up at the community house is pretty much their weekly thing.’’
‘‘Moving to Maryborough,’’ says Susan, ‘‘ was one of the best things I’ve done.’’
Jane’s story is also one of building a better life. Raised in Maryborough, she began her working life at the knitting mills, and lost her job when it closed.
‘‘It was a big knock to the town,’’ she recalls.
‘‘Imagine 300 people out of work, just like that.’’
She left Maryborough, returning as as single mother with three children in her care. They slept on her mum’s floor initially, before finding a house to rent. She’s managed to find a good primary school her two youngest children, where they are getting the support they need.
And then there is Jane’s own development though the Neighbourhood Renewal programs that are being offered. A shy person, she recently found herself being asked to make a speech. ‘‘I was put out there,’’ she recalls.
‘‘No one saw me shaking, there were no ums and aahs, apparently it went off well and they were very pleased with it.’’
She is also involved in the life course, and was recently accepted to a course at Bendigo TAFE. Her ambition is to own her own home — ‘‘to be able to paint a wall if I wanted to paint a wall, to have that space that’s mine.’’
In Maryborough, she says the efforts of the Neighbourhood Renewal team are making a difference.
‘‘They’re trying to help people see there is hope, there is something. It’s not quite as bad as maybe as what it was before and it takes everybody’s contribution to help make it a better place.’’
Shane Green is a senior writer
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