There’s nothing about it that seems extraordinary.
Without knowing the story, it’s just another date on the calendar year.
But for Echuca-Moama people in general, and the Echuca Specialist School in particular, it was a historic moment.
Why?
Because it was the day Education Minister James Merlino arrived in town to announce $16 million in funding to move the specialist school out of deplorable facilities, and into a new school, on the 69th day of the Riverine Herald’s community campaign.
Two years later – Term 4, 2020 – and the school has finally moved into Echuca Twin Rivers Primary School on Wilkinson Drive, 30 years after initial discussions begun.
But remembering why we as a community fought so hard for this to happen, is unsettling.
Our most deserving students were snubbed in the Victorian Government’s budget.
Instead of moving into a state-of-the start facility, the students sat idle in facilities that were at best inadequate and at worst life-threatening.
The school’s sewerage system was starting to collapse, and whether the power would switch on and stay on, on any given day, was at time a stab in the dark – literally.
But here was a school community – students, parents and teachers – who relayed all of the above to the Riverine Herald (and eventually metropolitan media), in an almost neutral tone.
There were tears but they weren’t full of anger. Just sadness. And this feeling of more – not wanting it but needing it. They were asking but they weren’t getting.
Which is how the community campaign was formed, and on the 69th day the government reversed its decision.
Our team remembers that day vividly.
Standing at the press conference, notepad in hand, scribbling Mr Merlino’s words down as he spoke.
When we realised what he said, there were just two words left.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Fast forward to today and those words have somehow returned.
Not for the government but for the community and its people for driving a campaign that was so unrelenting it gave the government no choice but to change its mind.
Thanks to ordinary people who refused to give up – students, parents, teachers, the metropolitan media, our local member.
Everyone who refused to go quietly into the night.
We would not be here celebrating this day if it weren’t for every single one of you.
So, thank you. May we never have to do this again.
Tyla HarringtonRiverine Herald editor
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