By Anna Kelsey-Sugg and Lyn Gallacher, ABC News
Then-teacher Rob Hunter (centre) with his students in 1977, just after their incredible ordeal. Photo: Victoria Police / supplied
It took until 10.30am for an ordinary primary school day to take a very dramatic turn.
Monday, 14 February, 1977 was the ninth day of term one at Wooreen primary, a tiny school nestled in the regional Victorian bush.
All nine students, ranging from grades one to six, were enjoying their recess break when something stopped them in their tracks.
What unfolded was a day none of them could have foreseen. It involved hostages, a car chase, a police shootout - and an outrageous ransom request.
Failed kidnapper's escape from jail
That day, students ran back inside from their break to tell their teacher, Rob Hunter, that there was a man outside with a gun.
One of those students, Ray Argento, tells ABC Radio National's The History Listen that he recalls his teacher thinking it was a prank.
"His comment was, 'If this is a joke, I don't think it's very funny'," he says.
But the gunman, 26-year-old Edwin John Eastwood, was no joke. After a failed kidnapping years earlier, he'd come to Wooreen for a second attempt.
In 1972, at another primary school in Faraday, a town 250km away, Eastwood kidnapped teacher Mary Gibbs and her students in a failed attempt to secure a $1 million ransom.
Gibbs' bravery and quick thinking spoiled the kidnapper's plan, and Eastwood was jailed.
But a few years later, in December 1976, Eastwood escaped the maximum-security Geelong Gaol with another inmate by using stolen butter knives to dig tunnels through the prison walls.
Two months later, he set out to secure another much more ambitious ransom.
Edwin John Eastwood. Photo: ABC Archives
'Where are you going to take us?'
In the Wooreen schoolyard, Eastwood herded everyone into a classroom.
"I had a gun pointed directly at my chest with this stressed character with a balaclava over his head saying, 'Get back inside, or I'll effin' shoot you'," Hunter says.
"He then dragged the chains out of his bag… we were all chained by the wrist and told to keep quiet."
Some kids spoke up anyway: "Where are you going to take us?" or "Do we need our lunch?" they asked.
Hunter recalls Eastwood's warning to the group: "Don't do anything stupid or I'll shoot you kids. I'm not a bad man, but as long as you do what I say, you'll be OK."
100kg of cocaine and heroin
Eastwood had targeted a small school so he could kidnap everyone there, but fit them all in the back of his ute. And that's just what he did.
He chained the students together and bundled them into his ute, while Hunter, chained and gagged, was forced to crouch in the passenger footwell.
After setting off, Eastwood pulled over to post his ransom note. Addressed to then-state minister for education Lindsay Thompson, it read:
"Greetings maggot. Round two. This time … my demands are US$7 million, 100 kilos of pure cocaine and 100 kilos of heroin, automatic weapons, an escape vehicle and the release of these 17 prisoners…"
Eastwood hurtled along the country roads, swerving recklessly. He took a hairpin bend poorly, and the ute collided with an oncoming truck.
No one was badly hurt, but Eastwood no longer had a functional car. However, he did have two extra hostages - truck driver Robin Smith and his 16-year-old brother, who had hopped out to help.
Along with the other hostages, they were chained up and told to lie down in a ditch near the truck.
When another truck stopped, Eastwood collected the driver and his passenger as two more hostages.
"At this stage, we were up to 14 hostages," Hunter says.
"So we sat there for what seemed like probably an hour or so. We're in the middle of nowhere. What vehicle could come along that would transport nine children and six adults?" Hunter says.
The answer was a passing Kombi van, driven by two 50-year-old women, Joy Edward and Muriel Deipenau.
When they stopped at the scene, Eastwood ordered them at gunpoint to join the others. Then he ushered everyone - now 16 hostages - into the back of the van.
Hunter considers the women "angels", as they comforted the children while the terrifying journey went on.
A sneaky run for it
By the time the group reached the South Gippsland Highway, the school day had ended and parents were arriving at school. When they found it empty, they called the police.
Soon more than 60 police officers and much of the community - including farmers and the local pony club - were involved in the search.
At about 5pm, the kidnapped gang arrived at Eastwood's hideout, a remote camping spot about 170 kilometres away from the primary school.
For hours the men sat chained to a tree, while the women and children huddled near each other. Eventually, the children dozed and - at about 4am - so did Eastwood.
Truck driver Robin Smith had silently worked himself free of his chains and thought this was his moment to sneak off for help.
"I waited for a bit of a breeze to come up to make some noise in the trees in case I stepped on a twig or something. If he'd put the torch on and seen me, he would have marched me over to the bush and shot me," he told SBS News.
In school teacher Rob Hunter's book about the kidnapping, entitled Day 9 at Wooreen, Smith explains that leaving his brother behind at the campsite "was the hardest decision in my life".
He describes "running to hopefully get the cops and be back before Eastwood realised I was missing".
Gunshots and a speeding Kombi
By the time Smith made it to a farmhouse and phoned police, it was 6.45am.
And, back at the hideout, Eastwood had woken up.
Then-student Argento remembers the "angry kidnapper demanding to know where one of his incarcerated truck drivers was".
"It was a scary moment," Hunter says.
"We wondered whether someone might have got shot at that moment because of his angst. We all did what we were told, and then got into the vehicle and off we set again."
But soon the Kombi van met with a police car.
"It was only when I saw the police car coming towards us that I thought, 'We're going to be OK, it's over'," Maree, the oldest Wooreen student at the time, says.
But it wasn't over - not quite.
Eastwood veered off the road and onto another dirt road towards a farmer's paddock to try to lose the police, who were now following him.
"We then drove north like madmen, where there [were] police cars galore … We passed as fast as possible through a couple of roadblocks where shots were exchanged," Hunter says.
Eastwood had taken out his revolver and was firing at police. In their return fire, the police eventually shot out one of the Kombi's front tyres and the van came to a standstill.
Eastwood was captured, again.
He was given a 21-year prison sentence and was released, after 16, in 1993.
Robin Smith and other hostages are immortalised in this mural, designed by Wayne Tindall and painted by Heesco Khosnaran, at Yarram, in regional Victoria. Photo: Lyn Gallacher
'I'm still here'
The impact of that shocking day has lingered for the hostages.
"We all carry scars from that event," truck driver Smith says in Hunter's book.
For years, Maree felt too deeply traumatised to even talk about the day.
"Having to send my children off to school, I wanted to be the first parent there at 3.30pm every day to make sure they came home. Because one day I didn't come home."
But, she says: "I'm still here. We survived."
"We can recover from trauma and I think that's an important message to get out to people.
"These things do happen but we can recover and you don't have to make it define you."
- ABC News
