Bindi - valuing difference: The History of Bindi, Central Australia's First Disability Service for Adults 1978 - 2012

By Joyce Bowden OAM and Anne McNamara

The History of Bindi portrays the struggle to obtain services for adults with a disability and their families in Central Australia; and the formation of Bindi Inc. in 1978 by a small group of parents and supporters, as the first service to enable young adults with significant intellectual disabilities to live as active participants within their community instead of being sent away to live in interstate institutions.

Bindi remains the only service in Central Australia to offer supported employment to adults with any type of disability.

Throughout its history, Bindi has played a key role in educating the community and government policy makers about the needs and aspirations of people with significant cognitive impairment. It has been influential in awakening government, service providers and the general public to another way of thinking about intellectual disability.

From inception, Bindi has been committed to promoting the rights of people with a disability, improving their social image and assisting them to develop personal skills, self-image and self-worth. Over the years, the organisation has supported more than 300 young adults with disability in their life journey. Many of these have successfully gained and succeeded in open employment and independent living, while others have much higher degrees of independence and community acceptance than would otherwise have been their lot.

These are their stories, the stories of their families and the communities of Central Australia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lifestyle Solutions (Aust) Ltd
• Release date: Sep 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925786088

Book preview

Copyright

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

Alice from the air, early 1960s

(Pictures NT) ‘Alice Springs.’ Helyar, Geoff & Lois, Lois & Geoff Helyar Collection. PH0092/0040. Northern Territory Library

In 1962 Alice Springs was a remote and isolated railhead town whose main income derived from the cattle industry (tourism and mining were yet to be fully developed). With a population of 4,668 (1961 census figure) it was difficult and expensive to reach. Planes were turbo prop – slow and expensive and could not always land because of dust. The bus took three days on a dirt road from Adelaide and the train two days, provided it did not rain and wash the track away. Yet, by the mid-1980s, Alice Springs would become a leader in the delivery of disability services in Australia thanks to a small girl called Bronwyn and the heart warming story of her parents Telka and Taffy Williams whose far-seeing actions and determination to give their daughter opportunities for a fulfilling life enriched the future for all children with disabilities in Central Australia.

Todd Street, Alice Springs, early 1960s Photograph: Vivian Collection, Alice Springs Public Library

Telka’s story

From an interview with Joyce Bowden and Anne McNamara, 6 May 2014.

Bronwyn, the youngest child of Telka and Taffy Williams, was born in Alice Springs in 1962. The medical superintendent and the Catholic priest (who was later very supportive) both advised them to place Bronny in an institution in Adelaide. Alice Springs had no relevant support services and at that time, all over Australia, it was the norm to institutionalise similar children. Telka was horrified at the idea but, as the family were about to go south on leave, the hospital suggested they leave the baby with them, go on leave, and consider their actions.

On return Telka said to her husband, That child is our child, she is not going into an institution.

Taffy replied, I do agree, I just was waiting for you to say that.

Once home, a friend — a nurse — helped Telka cope. Telka described her as ‘a wonderful person, very down to earth’.

She remembers the town reaction to Bronwyn, saying;

These children in the past had been hidden away and never got outside into the community at all and this was still very prevalent at the times I am speaking about. When I took Bronny up the street in a stroller nobody would look at her. Even my closest friends avoided looking at her and I got extremely indignant and one day I remember saying to one woman ‘She won’t bite you, you know. Just look at her beautiful smile. Just look at her.’ I was so angry!

Telka immediately began to look into the future and, with the help of local lady Agnes East, surveyed the town and found six other children with special needs whose families needed help to give them an education. She also learned that to start a special school there had to be a minimum of 11 children with special needs.

Telka remembers what happened next.

We chin wagged about this for a little while to see what the next move was. So I decided I would go down to see the chief psychologist of the educational system in Adelaide to see what he could do to help get a school established. He was marvellous. I forget his name, I ranted on and on and on and on and I can still see him in my mind now putting his hand on his head and down onto his desk as if to say, ‘for goodness sake shut up’. Then he said ‘Alright Mrs Williams you have convinced me.’

By this time Bronwyn was three years old; too young for school but a start had been made.

Telka had explained about the difficulties of distance and isolation but was told that he (the chief psychologist) was expecting a teacher from England who wanted to work in country South Australia. The teacher, Kay Queen, and her small daughter visited Alice Springs, initially for a holiday, and stayed.

With the assistance of the NT Administrator, Telka obtained the use of a house on Hartley Street at a peppercorn rental. The town was very supportive; families and companies donated equipment and furniture and the ‘Sunny Centre’ opened in 1965.

The school was fortunate in employing Kay Queen. Telka can’t praise her highly enough:

She was wonderful. She had wonderful ideas; she was very progressive in thought. In fact we were the first group to take disabled children away on their own. They put all sorts of difficulties in our way and she said, ‘I know it can be done’. We had to have an itinerary showing toilet stops on the Stuart Highway, please. We obviously had to do this so what we did was to do what they said — but, the moment we got on the bus to go to Darwin, we just threw it away and forgot about them. It was quite funny really. We only took five children and Bronny, who was not yet part of the school. (Telka named some of the children and staff). We had a wonderful time. One of the boys had never seen the sea — and the little hermit crabs; you should have seen him chasing them!

Sunny Centre bus setting out for Darwin T. Williams Private Collection

She remembered the support given them, including food and petrol from one service station up ‘the track’ who was so impressed by their effort.

At the Sunny Centre (much later to be replaced by Acacia Hill Special School) Bronny, and others, learned to read and print, if not write. The wife of the high school headmaster, Alan Fields, had special needs qualifications and used to go into the centre and give one-on-one teaching. Telka was asked to place Bronny in high school when she was old enough but preferred the one-on-one attention she got at the Sunny Centre, believing Bron’s needs would ‘get lost’ in a larger classroom.

Sixteen was the official age for leaving school but well before this Telka was thinking of the next step. She knew Australia had sheltered workshops but the work offered was limited and boring. And there was certainly nothing in Alice Springs.

Then in the mid-1970s:

I heard some people talking about sheltered workshops, as they were then known, and that they were thought to be very advanced in New Zealand. I happened to be going over to New Zealand on a Girl Guide training camp. Well, I made arrangements to go and inspect three of the sheltered workshops in Auckland to give me a better idea of what I was looking for. They did have a workshop in Adelaide but all they were doing was packing sugar and surely there was more to do than that and (in Auckland) it was very well set up with courses in literature etc and I thought ‘Um!!!’

By 1977 Alice Springs had grown to a town of about 14,700 and was much easier to get to. Planes now had jet engines and fares, though still relatively expensive, had dropped slightly. The Ghan train was still the same; the new line did not open until 1980 and the south road was still unsealed. The Sunny Centre, now called the Alice Springs Special School, had approximately 10 students. However, there was nothing for older children and adults. Either they stayed at home with nothing to do or went ‘south’ to one of the big institutions.

If institutions for children were generally less than homely, most of those for adults were far from good. They gave adults little opportunity to develop. What sheltered workshops were available usually did mind-bogglingly boring work. (Anne remembers visiting a similar one in London in the early 1960s where elderly people without disabilities tested Biro pens by writing the word ‘Biro’ all day; the work was awful but the conversation wonderful.)

Throughout the Western world most people with intellectual and profound disabilities were still ‘hidden away’ unlike Alice Springs where the emphasis was on enriching the children’s lives, not limiting them. Parents could still send children south but those who chose to keep them in the Northern Territory to be educated at home usually had a different approach to their needs. Alice Springs was fortunate in the employment of the principal at the Special School who had a similar focus to the parents.

Kay Queen had no intention of hiding the children of the Sunny Centre and they were regularly seen about town and joining in generic children’s events. Kay was a special-school teacher with a radically different approach to education of children with disabilities and learning difficulties, from that which was the accepted norm. She saw community as a classroom — education came not only from books but from experience; children learned more from ‘doing’ than abstract teaching. For example, you do not learn to shop by playing shops. Rather, you do so by actually shopping with your family. If you are segregated and institutionalised, ‘shopping’ may never become a real thing, just a game. Her own experience in the field had shown Kay what she believed to be the ‘bad’ of isolation and segregation from the community.

Every Friday the whole school went to a local café for lunch, walking through town to get there — and Anne says she was not the only business person or shopkeeper who managed their Friday routine to be free to greet a ‘small mob’ of confident happy youngsters. Sometimes they just said hello and sometimes they had a story to tell but always someone would have a smile that lit up your day. That someone was usually Bronwyn.

You were considered ‘brave’ if you kept your adult son or daughter with a disability at home, especially if that disability was intellectual or involved multi-disabilities. But the other option was institutions which at the best offered little opportunity for development and at the worst hid gross abuse of every type: physical, sexual, emotional, psychological and intellectual.

Michele’s story

From an interview with Anne McNamara, 23 October 2014.

Michele Castagna Photo from Bindi Archives

Michele Castagna was a local woman who, after becoming a polio victim at seven years old, was left with severe physical disabilities. She was wheelchair-bound, her legs and arms were paralysed, leaving the small muscles in her hands so damaged that she could not hold a pen or pencil. She recalled, after being diagnosed in 1952, being sent to Adelaide Children’s Hospital then to the Somerton Crippled Children’s Home in Adelaide, to get the help she needed. The idea of going south, so far from her family, terrified her. She stayed there for seven years before returning home. She learned to write and taught herself to paint, holding the brush, pen and other implements in her mouth. At the time this latter skill was unusual.

Michele’s memories of Somerton were happy. The home was designed for children whose disabilities were due to polio. It was on the beach and, although rehabilitation was limited, opportunities were given. She remembered one of her paintings being entered in an art show, the only entry where the artist had held the brush in their mouth. However at 14 it was time for her to leave Somerton and move to the Julia Farr Home for Incurables, a large home for adults with disabilities, most of whom were bedridden or in wheelchairs. (In 1978 Julia Farr Home for Incurables accommodated 826 ‘patients’.¹)

Michele’s physiotherapist stepped in. He had visited America to see what happened there and was impressed that most similar cases to Michele went back to their homes and communities rather than be institutionalised. In Adelaide, she would have been sent to a sheltered workshop where she would have little to do because of physical limitations, and then only boring repetitive tasks.

It was thought that educating her beyond the minimum or sending her to rehab was a ‘waste of time’ because she was ‘too disabled to do anything like get a job, and anyway probably would not live much past her 30th birthday’. But with the intervention of her physiotherapist, Michele went home to spend her remaining years with her family. Eventually, and again at the intervention of her physiotherapist who had travelled from Adelaide to visit her and found her bored and depressed, the Alice Springs community came to her rescue. Kay Queen offered her a job, first in a volunteer position at the Sunny Centre; later it came with a small salary. Quota, the women’s service club, helped her buy a motorised wheelchair, giving her independent mobility, and from there she became unstoppable.

Her impressive resume includes: Teacher’s aide at the Special School, Co-ordinator of the Disabled Person’s Bureau for Central Australia which later became the NT Office of Disability, and, on retirement, Disability Services Advocate for Central Australia. Instrumental in establishing Multicultural Services in Alice Springs, she was later made a life member of the organisation. Michele has also served as an alderman in the Alice Springs Town Council, was a member of the Board of Bindi Inc. as well as various other organisations. She represented the Northern Territory at the Inaugural Handicapped Person of the Year Award, became the NT representative on the National Committee for the UN International Year of Disabled Persons and became a budding artist. In 1988 Michele was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for Services to People with a Disability.

One cannot help wondering what she would have done if she had been offered a full education. (She said probably a teacher and saw her ‘lack of opportunity’ as a challenge to prove everyone wrong.) Sadly, Michele passed away in September 2016.

One also wonders how much skill base was lost to Australia by the intellectual abuse of people with disabilities who had not an I can do it attitude combined with the determination and persistence to succeed in a ‘non-disabled’ world as shown by Michele, as well as the opportunity to exercise it.

Telka’s story continued

In the early 1970s after her trip to New Zealand, Telka realised just what was needed in Alice Springs for Bronwyn and for other children with similar disabilities. This story is part of the next chapter.

Telka’s family relocated to Queensland in 1984 and, apart from visits, she did not return until 2002. While in Queensland Bronwyn attended a sheltered workshop where, although she was happy, she was limited because the association had ‘men’s jobs’ including woodwork, and ‘women’s jobs’ which were things like removing buttons from clothes to cut up for rags. She also became a medal-winning sportswoman excelling in javelin, shot put and discus.

When they returned to Alice Springs Bronwyn went back to Bindi where she worked in the woodwork shop and joined the Art’s co-operative. She loved being back. Telka said that she felt that the difference between the small start of Bindi and its programs when they left Alice and the service on her return in 2002 was phenomenal. She was very impressed with the work Bindi was doing.

Bronwyn with her parents, Taffy and Telka, and grandmother in the Todd Mall, 2000 Photo from T. Williams Private Collection

Sadly, Bronwyn’s health began to decline as she grew older and eventually she became too ill and frail to attend Bindi. In June 2011 Bronwyn passed away.

Telka and Bron on Bronwyn’s birthday, 2005 Photo from T. Williams Private Collection

Key Events: Chapter 1

1952

Michele Castagna sent south to Adelaide after contracting poliomyelitis at seven years of age.

1959

Michele Castagna returns home.

1962

Birth of Bronwyn Williams.

1965

The Sunny Centre opens.

Michele starts work.

Early 1970s

Telka visits sheltered workshops in New Zealand.

1984

The Williams family move to Queensland.

2002

The Williams family returns to Alice Springs and Bronwyn returns to Bindi to work in the woodwork shop then to become an artist.

2011

Bronwyn passed away.

2016

Michele passed away.

1 http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/80465/20100521-0933/history.dircsa.org.au/1800-1899/home-for-incurables/index.html

Chapter 2

Getting Started

Telka’s story continued

In the early 1970s Telka had travelled to New Zealand, inspected three sheltered workshops, and was impressed with what she saw. They were very well set up with courses in literature and everything else, she said. Bronwyn was still too young to leave school but Telka realised she needed to start early so in 1978 she set up a meeting of concerned parents at which a steering committee was formed to establish the Handicapped Persons’ Service and Activity Centre. The first need was a suitable location for the centre.

Telka was president of the local Red Cross so she approached the NT Executive Officer, Dan Conway, for assistance. Before this appointment Dan had been the District Officer in Alice Springs and, using his connections and the backing of Red Cross, within a very few days the medical superintendent of the hospital offered the committee the use of a vacant demountable ward on the hospital campus.

Staffing then became the issue. Bryn, Telka’s youngest son, had just completed a psychology degree and was at home for a short time so he started developing life skills programs for the clients (then called trainees). Then Telka heard of two young women who were visiting Alice Springs. Carmen Grech and Miranda Parkes had worked at Kew Cottages in Melbourne and were very, very interested. They agreed to start, even though the centre had no money to pay them. They packed shelves at night to get an income and ran the centre by day without pay.

The centre opened with three trainees; two girls and a boy in their mid teens.

To help find money for the centre, Carmen, Miranda and the trainees started a laundry service, ironing clothes for about $1.00 per basket.

In May 1978, within a month of the hospital demountable being made available, Bindi, initially called the Handicapped Person’s Service and Activity Centre, had opened its doors and, unfunded, was ‘in business’.

By early 1979 the number of young people participating at the centre had risen to 12, and, through general discussion with them, it was found that they did not like the stigma of being classed as handicapped.

Telka continues

The service needed a better name. So Telka and the staff asked the trainees. They came up with some really funny names. Then one young lady said, I get bindi-eyes every time I walk round here. So, after dropping the ‘eyes,’ Bindi got its name. (For the uninitiated bindi-eyes [bindii] are small prickly burrs).

These young people, having decided that they would prefer their centre to be called ‘The Bindi Centre,’ also insisted the service needed its own logo – which they then helped design. The logo stylises the bindii burr that inspired the trainees’ name for the Bindi Centre.

Bindi’s first logo, hand-drawn, 1979. From Bindi Archives

Telka

The philosophy and attitude that defined Bindi grew out of a ‘need to do so can do’ attitude by everyone concerned, rather than knowledge of actual theory. Work was a part of the centre from the beginning even though for the first few years hobbies and craft were also part of the program.

Miranda did not stay long but Taffy Evans, a case and cabinet maker, joined the staff and opened the woodwork shop.

Fundraising was organised and staff were volunteers. Support came from all over the town. Once again the people of Alice Springs demonstrated their generosity. There was enormous community goodwill and support to establish the centre.

May 1978: Bindi’s first week of operation. Papier mache work.

L to R: Miranda Parkes, Martin Armstead, Carmen Grech, Maria Nocera, Bronwyn Williams and Jane Parkes. Photo from Bindi Archives.

Donations of time, money and equipment came from many sources.

For example, Carmen Grech and Miranda Parkes volunteered their services from May until October to operate the centre; Bryn Williams and Virginia Quin donated their time to assess trainees’ skills and help establish activities that were suitable; Lions Club and Rag Doll candidate for the Miss Personality Quest 1978, Suzanne O’Brien, donated 20 per cent of the funds she raised; Ross Park Red Cross and Junior Red Cross held functions such as a bike-a-thon, raffles, cake stalls and photo guesses to raise funds to buy an ironing press and other equipment; the Dustbowl donated 50 cents a game for two weeks; fundraising venues were provided free of charge or at a heavily discounted rate; the Centralian Advocate and The Star took a keen interest in Bindi’s progress, providing regular updates and promoting the centre — the list goes on.

Bindi calls for a volunteer carpenter

Regrettably, the authors have been unable to find further information about George Harwood, but we can assume from the clipping that he worked on a voluntary basis to help establish activities, and was clearly appreciated. (Ed.)

Clipping from Public Notices in The Star c.1979–1980 found in Bindi Archives.

Thanks to Bryn and Virginia, from the very beginning each trainee had their own Individual Program Plan (IPP) – a plan that showed their skills and interests but also areas of need and outlined what training was necessary. Assessment and plans are essential. Without these, real needs can be missed and training duplicated, wandering into unnecessary areas.

Amongst the very early fundraising events were ‘Thong Clapathons’ – pub sing-alongs with the clapping led by legendary balladeer Ted Egan (a wonderful supporter of Bindi’s fund-raising events over subsequent years), with Taffy Evans and other bands and great sponsorship from Alice’s hoteliers and the many local businesses who donated prizes to raffle.

Thong Clapathons involved music, singing and the rhythmic clapping of that iconic Australian footwear – worn on the hands instead of the feet – whilst staff and other volunteers rattled the donations tin or sold raffle tickets among the merry patrons.

One extra-special gig was held at the Stuart Arms Hotel in April 1980. Australia’s paralympic team member and world-class wheelchair sprinter, Robert Turner, was flown into town by TAA to attend the ‘Thongclappers Ball’. The funds raised at the ball were shared between Bindi and the Quadriplegic and Paraplegic Association of Australia. Thongs were the only dress stipulation and, to much merriment, the judges awarded prizes to the King and Queen of Clap.

By July 1978, the trainees had fulfilled their first commercial contract – a batch of coloured, silk-screen printed T-shirts for the Women’s Centre. Bob Kessing of K-Signs had donated his time for two weeks to teach the centre’s trainees how to use the silk screen.

Screen-printing T-shirts, 1980. Suzanne Bullen working with others. Photo from Bindi Archives.

Screen-printing customers, ranging from local clubs to the tourist industry, regularly placed orders for screen-printed T-shirts, tea towels, posters and other items, creating quite a lucrative trade in those early days. Due to its small population, isolation and remoteness, the Alice Springs market was relatively untapped by franchises and the large interstate companies that would, in later years, corner the tourist market, bringing in cheaper imported products.

Screen-printers in action: Martin Armstead, Bronwyn Williams, Carmen Grech, Melita Nabanunga, and Margaret Holt. Photo from Bindi Archives.

Over the years local businesses and community organisations continued to grow their interest and support by contracting with Bindi for work that needed to be done.

The burgeoning Central Australian tourist industry proved a great source of work. Within its first year of operation, Carmen reported in an interview with the Centralian Advocate¹ that more than 8,000 screen-printed articles had been produced, much of which was contract work for the tourist souvenir industry, with Bernie Joyner’s Aldette and Barker’s Souvenirs as the major customers. Underscoring the tourist souvenir market, the trainees later put together thousands of entrepreneur John Dare’s famous ‘bush barometer’ and mixed and packaged his damper recipe – using the expensive scales donated by Egars to weigh out the damper mix. In the first months, trainees had also made stubby holders for Apex and were preparing products – toffees, cakes, arts and crafts – for a stall at the Alice Springs Show to be held in July.

From the beginning Bindi received generous positive support from the media. Just two months after commencing operations