Loading One of the first cases she encountered was a boy with a tumour in his leg. He turned up to his lesson on crutches, and yet “drove beautifully”, she said. He died a few weeks later. “I didn’t lose anyone personally but it has reached and hurt me so much,” she said. “I’m really passionate about this.” Some families say they don't know where to start in searching for answers about why their loved one died. But as someone who has come into contact with many young locals, Ms Hopkins has a different vantage point, and she has helped some families figure out just how many others are in the same boat.

In late 2017, she posted on social media about the alarming incidence of cancers among her students. “Just a quick trip into supermarket for only a couple of things to run into a mum of one of my past students who tells me the devastating news her son passed away last year with a brain tumour,” she wrote on her Facebook page. “Then to say another beautiful girl I enjoyed teaching to drive also passed away with cancer. Strange to think these two all went to the same primary school in Barwon Heads where 10 others all the same age have passed away with various forms of cancer – all my students who I just loved. “Why could so many from the same school and class be struck down and die from cancer?" she asks. “I'm just shattered to hear of these latest two of a long list to pass away all from the one school.”

Billy Soltesz with his son Bowie. Billy, a carpenter from Barwon Heads, died in 2016 aged 26 of a brain tumour. There has been much investigation, including soil testing,at the Drysdale campus of Bellarine Secondary College, which many of these teens attended. Built on the site of a former potato farm in the 1990s, it was the source of complaints during recent building works about the former pesticide dieldrin. Gordon Legal is investigating the cancer deaths of at least two former Bellarine Secondary College students with a view to a test case for a potential class action. The Education Department and local MP Lisa Neville say the high school is operating safely and that tests conducted recently by WorkSafe identified no threat to human health. Dieldrin levels found at the school and surrounding area were well within recommended guidelines. In Barwon Heads, though, many people wonder whether other pesticides could be a factor in the number of young adults who have had cancer.

Asked whether the Education Department was aware of similar concerns related to other schools nearby, particularly in Barwon Heads, a spokeswoman said: “The department is not aware of any similar issues raised by government schools in the area." Much of the housing in the town was developed over the past 30 years on former farmland. Several of those who had cancer lived near Barwon Heads Village Park, home to the pony club, cricket club and skate park. Billy Soltesz grew up in Tremont Court, near the park. The 26-year-old Barwon Heads carpenter died in 2016, just two months after he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He left behind seven siblings, and had a son who was only two years old. His mother, Ros Soltesz, said he had experienced headaches and fatigue and noticed his eyesight was diminishing. His boss suggested he see an optometrist, so he went to one in Ocean Grove. The optometrist said there was nothing wrong with his eyesight, but instead thought he had a mass behind his eye and suggested he see a doctor. It was initially thought to be a pituitary tumour, but the family soon discovered it was a much more serious form of the disease: a glioma of the optic nerve.

Loading Rather than a formal funeral, after Billy's death his family gathered with his friends to place a plaque in his memory on the Barwon Heads jetty. Billy used to jump off the jetty into the sea, a rite of passage for those who grew up there, and worked for a time in the restaurant on the pier. "He accepted his parting," Ms Soltesz said. "He was not afraid, he never complained, it was the most remarkable experience of a journey to death ... "We decided to have a releasing of his ashes, a letting go, a gathering of the crew that knew him, and [installed] the plaque ... I think it’s the finality of it, too, it says it all."

Another who lived nearby was Joel O’Connor. He died in 2016, aged 24, of complications from treatment for acute myeloid leukaemia. His case is similar to that of Georgie Stephenson, a Barwon Heads nurse who died in late 2017. The O'Connors lived in Hopgood Place, which runs alongside the primary school and at one end backs on to the golf course. They knew the Stephenson family, and Joel and Georgie were friends. Jordan O'Connor said his brother, Joel, had been away working on a farm in South Australia when he noticed blood when he went to the toilet. He told his mother and then went for tests, and was diagnosed with leukaemia. "There were no symptoms of anything that I know of until that happened," Jordan said. Mr O'Connor said he family had remained quiet about Joel's illness, but he felt he should speak out due to the number of cases among his brother's peers "for the sake of helping other people out in the future".



