Geoff Anderson is at the forefront of an Aboriginal language revival that has spread across his NSW town and garnered international attention. But 10 years ago he was too scared to leave his house.

"Just getting to the postbox, you'd be thinking the whole world was looking at you," he says.

"It was just horrific ... I'd run to the mailbox and run back."

He was hiding away in his family's house on the eastern fringe of Parkes, a small town in the central west of NSW.

A greenkeeper by trade, he had previously been a gregarious personality, the kind of person who was always making jokes at work.

Then one day at work, a motorised roller ran over him when his seat cover got caught in the machinery.

The anguish caused by the injury was compounded by the fact that no doctor could find anything wrong with his back.

Much later, another doctor identified the need for surgery on his spine, but in the meantime, the pain and confusion resulting from the lack of treatment ended in a fully-fledged mental breakdown.

He retreated to his house, where he felt no-one would hurt him, and he wouldn't hurt anyone.

"It was a place where I could be in pain with my back and be in pain with my thoughts by myself," he says.

He was later diagnosed with agoraphobia. If he left the house, a panic attack could come on at any moment.

A language resurgence

A decade later, walking across the grounds of a local school at lunchtime, kids run up to Mr Anderson and greet him with smiles. He is well known at Parkes East Public.

Around 20 per cent of the school's students identify as Aboriginal, and it was here that crucial seeds were sown for a language revolution that eventually spread across the whole town.

The proliferation of classes in the local Aboriginal language, Wiradjuri, has attracted interest from researchers from as far afield as Brazil.

It only takes 10 minutes in a classroom with Mr Anderson to understand why the teaching of Wiradjuri in Parkes is now the subject of such intense interest.

Upon standing in front of the classroom, he's immediately subject to a barrage of curiosity and questions about Aboriginal culture.

"What's the Wiradjuri word for turtle? How did those fish traps work? Was there a ceremony to give people their totem animal?"

Hand-painted signs in Wiradjuri have been hung up around Parkes East Public School. ( ABC RN: Tim Roxburgh )

The Aboriginal children in the class speak of their families with pride, and the non-Aboriginal kids listen with admiration in their eyes.

This isn't something that's done for a visit by an ABC journalist, or for a NAIDOC week celebration.

Signs translated into Wiradjuri are scattered across the school, and the language classes have been operating for years.

"It's just what we do ... it's nothing out of the ordinary for us," says the principal of Parkes East, Michael Ostler.

"It's part of our everyday living, we don't need to set aside that one event for the year to recognise that our Indigenous kids have an amazing cultural background."

Healing through language

Mr Anderson's rediscovery of his Aboriginal identity was one of the keys that unlocked this explosion of interest in the Wiradjuri language. First, though, he had to heal himself.

In 2004 a friend convinced him to get out of the house and attend a Wiradjuri lesson run by Stan Grant senior. Dr Grant is a Wiradjuri elder, and the father of the journalist Stan Grant.

His detailed knowledge of the language has been relied upon by thousands of students and teachers across Wiradjuri country to guide the language back to life.

He was taught the language by his grandfather, Budyaan.

Budyaan was once thrown in jail when a police officer heard him speaking Wiradjuri in the town of Griffith, but he persisted in teaching the language when the family was out bush hunting for rabbits.

"What he got thrown in jail for speaking, I now get paid to teach," Dr Grant says.

Geoff Anderson has a copy of a Wiradjuri dictionary compiled by Stan Grant and John Rudder. ( ABC RN: Tim Roxburgh )

It was at a language lesson led by Dr Grant in Forbes that Mr Anderson first felt he had rediscovered a part of his identity that had been lost.

Dr Grant says that initially, Mr Anderson said very little.

"Geoff was a strange character ... he wouldn't even talk to people," he says.

"So anyway Geoff stayed for the class and he rung me about a week later and said: 'Mate, I thoroughly enjoyed that.'"

The lessons set Mr Anderson on a path of rediscovering his family history.



"We knew we were Aboriginal, it was just never really spoken about much," he says.

"My parents worked their guts out and hid a lot from me, because they saw my siblings suffer, and they didn't want that to happen to me. I was the first one of their kids to be brought up in town."

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes

After a few lessons with Dr Grant, Mr Anderson found he was able to get out and about a bit more by himself.

"The more words I was learning, the more I was finding myself," he says.

His wife Lindy had begun to work at Parkes East school as a teacher's aide, just around the corner from his house.

One day he ventured into the library to see if there were any books on Wiradjuri culture.

Instead, he stumbled upon a lesson in full swing, with the kids in the midst of singing "heads, shoulders, knees and toes".

He mentioned to the teacher, Angela Fitzpatrick, that he knew the song in another language, and before he could protest, he was installed in front of the class to teach the kids.

Angela Fitzpatrick was the first to push Geoff Anderson to stand up in front of a classroom. ( ABC RN: Tim Roxburgh )

She remembered being surprised about what happened next.

"I just assumed it might have been French or German. I didn't realise at all that he'd been learning the Wiradjuri language," she says.

Soon after, Ms Fitzpatrick asked him to come back and teach the kids some more words, and it eventually turned into a regular visit.

The teacher was amazed at the effect it was having on the kids in the class.

"I remember a little girl turning to the student next to her who was Aboriginal, and she said: 'Wow, you're so lucky, I wish I was Aboriginal,'" she says.

"And for me, growing up in Parkes, being young myself, the Aboriginal people did not identify with being Aboriginal, because back in those days it was something that was embarrassing.

"To see the Aboriginal children start to feel proud of their culture, that really made me think, wow, we've really got to do something with this."

A language explosion

The principal at the time, Bill Cox, quickly recognised the value of having his kids learn Wiradjuri language, and wanted to put them into every class in the school.

"We developed a program... we were the first school in NSW to actually publish a program that was tied to the board of studies, and the board of studies actually recognised it and approved it."

Not feeling up to teaching every single class, Mr Anderson nominated his nephew, Ron Wardrop, to step in and teach at the school.

Meanwhile, momentum was building in other quarters. The high school had been chosen for a Board of Studies pilot project to have Wiradjuri language classes, and Ron Wardrop ended up teaching there, too.

Geoff Anderson answers students' questions at Parkes East Public School. ( ABC RN: Tim Roxburgh )

As interest in the language grew, Mr Anderson was invited to attend a meeting of the local Aboriginal Educational Consultative Group, and was promptly installed as its president.

"I've walked out and I'm going, what just happened?" he says.

"This was a group group that could get every principal in the town in the one room."



The successful language programs at some schools in Parkes put pressure on the other schools to step up to the plate. Over the course of years, one by one, they came on board.

Finally, in 2016, the local Catholic school also came on board.

More work to do

Former principal Mr Cox says there is still more work to be done, including the unresolved issue of teachers' wages.

"You've got people that are working as Wiradjuri language teachers that are still only being paid teacher aide salary," he says.

Occasionally, the teachers drop out or move on to other jobs, and it can be a struggle to replace them.

Mr Anderson continues to help co-ordinate the teachers, and works with First Languages Australia.

All his work is on a voluntary basis, which is the way he wants it. If he gets paid more than his costs, he says he feels like he creates expectations that he may not be able to fill.

Geoff Anderson, who no longer suffers from agoraphobia, walks his dogs near his home in Parkes. ( ABC RN: Tim Roxburgh )

Mr Cox says the work Mr Anderson does is priceless.

"He's worth a motza ... more than the community will ever be able to put together," he says.

Jason O'Neill, a 21-year-old Wiradjuri man from Parkes, says Mr Anderson's teaching had a huge effect on him as a teenager.

"The impact of those first classes was intense and will probably go for the rest of my life, unfortunately," he says with a smile, "because I'm too addicted to turn back.

"Geoff grew up without language at all, and lived a long time until he got to start this journey with the language.

"I — because of Geoff — was able to find the Wiradjuri language very early in life, and because of that I probably avoided having that ... torment over culture and knowing who I am."

If this story has raised concerns for you or someone you know, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978.