Also about that time, Leon van Erp and I went to see Michael Chaney who was heading up Wesfarmers. He understood how hard it is for a small charitable organisation to get started and he could see we were at a critical stage in our development. He believed in our model and put a submission to the Wesfarmers Board. Wesfarmers agreed to give us generous funding “no strings attached” for five years. In those days funding was generally only given for things like vehicles or buildings. At the end of the five years we had more than survived and were thriving.

In that very first year, before we had settled on the direction we were going to take, we thought we’d give $500 awards to the top four Aboriginal TEE students in WA. I contacted the Department of Education which said they didn’t know who they were, but if we paid them $200 they would interrogate their data-base. They came back some time later and said there were no Aboriginal students in WA who had completed their TEE that year. This was a huge shock to us but it focussed our minds as to what we needed to do. Until then we had thought that sport was the area in which we would probably be more involved, but education was to become our major focus from then on.

May O’Brien, who was involved in many Aboriginal organisations and Indigenous education issues, said to me at the time: “if you want to look at Indigenous education you need to talk to Mark Simpson at Pundulmurra College”. With Hamersley Iron’s help we organised a meeting in South Hedland which I remember well as the room was packed; the interest from industry and education people was immediate. Hamersley Iron agreed to get involved and also agreed to pay for a research proposal and a paper to be put to their Board. From that the first Graham Polly Farmer project, Gumala Mirnuwarni (Coming Together to Learn), was born.

As a direct result of this meeting, Mark Simpson went to work for Hamersley Iron and we were offered 50 per cent of his time to help establish the project. We couldn’t have done it without him. Woodside also came on board as did Dampier Salt, and the Education Department agreed to commit to 50 per cent of the costs of a school teacher who would work fulltime on the project.

The model we were developing was based on providing an after school program for Indigenous secondary school students who wanted to achieve and to finish high school. The Foundation’s role was to manage the project through a local steering committee and to raise funds and basically to provide the glue to hold everything together if and when it was needed. Other important findings to come out of our research were, not surprisingly, that Aboriginal people pretty much wanted what we want for our own children; their kids to get a good education; good jobs; to retain their culture; and their kids to stay local.

Working in the not-for-profit sector has been an amazing experience. I have met so many wonderful and generous people; people who have a genuine commitment to improve the outcomes for our hundreds of students now spread across Australia.