CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Australia's one of the richest countries in the world, Sydney the 7th most expensive city, yet just hours away from such privilege and wealth lies a community in turmoil and decay. The scale of the dysfunction locked inside the tiny Aboriginal mission of Toomelah is breathtaking. In recent week there's have been rumours of a government-led intervention, or of a complete relocation. Those rumours have amounted to nothing. But the people of Toomelah and the children living amidst the turmoil desperately need help. How has it come to this? Caro Meldrum-Hanna has this special report.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: It's 11pm on a Thursday night, and on the streets of this small Aboriginal community it's unusually quiet. It's bitterly cold, but a group of indigenous children is roaming the streets. They've just lit a bonfire to stay warm.

(speaking to children) So you will be up until midnight, 1am?

ADOLESCENT: About 3, 3:30.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: 3:30 in the morning? And then you go to school?

ADOLESCENT: Yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Does everyone go to school here?

CHILD: We got expelled.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What happened?

CHILD: Took the teacher's car.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: You took the teacher's car?

CHILD: Yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: A few streets away, inside one house the sounds of another long drinking session begin. They will be at it 'til dawn.

Behind me is the Aboriginal mission of Toomelah, located just inside the NSW/Queensland border and surrounded by the muddy waters of the Macintyre River. It sprang to life in 1937 - originally a Pentecostal mission. But today the religious influence is long gone, and the passage of time has not been kind to Toomelah.

This is the local primary school. Considering some of the 52 children enrolled here have been up all night, surprisingly most of them are here today. It's lunchtime but the school canteen isn't open. In fact, it hasn't been open for months. Instead, there's a mobile food truck driven in and out every day.

KAREN STEWART, CATERER: With the canteen it was run by the school but they closed it down because of the number of break-ins, and it was just constant.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It's certainly been put to me that for many kids here this would be actually be maybe their first meal, but possibly their only meal for the day?

KAREN STEWART: That's probably a fair comment, yeah, I would say, yeah.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Children and parents are drifting in from outside the school gates. That's because there's nowhere else to buy food. The local shop is vandalised and boarded up.

RENE ADAMS, TOOMELAH CO-OP: You know, they go home crying to mum and dad if there's nothing in the house for them to eat. You know, they look at our community and say, "Well they're all alcoholics out there. Why are they drinking? What else is there to do? There's no access to employment out here, there's no access to programs. You go and blame that Federal Government down there, they made the decisions. They put us here to start with."

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: For decades the mission and its people went unnoticed and ignored until Marcus Einfeld, then-president of the Human Rights Commission, crossed the divide in 1987, and launched an investigation into the living conditions and the state of housing inside Toomelah. What he found shamed the nation, and forced the Government into action.

MARCUS EINFELD, PRESIDENT, HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION (1988): Well, it should have been drawn to the attention more loudly and more often and you should have stood on the steps of the buildings until they provided the services.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: After that, the dirt roads were paved, housing was built, a sewage system was put in place. But despite the tens of millions of dollars worth of government funding that has poured in over two decades, and the involvement of dozens of government agencies, the problems that plague the Toomelah of yesteryear are somehow still present. Children are still exposed to raw sewage.

(to Sharon Duncan) So Sharon, we're at the back of your property here, and I can see it right in front of us here, that would be the raw sewage?

SHARON DUNCAN, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: Yep, there's been there for two and a half months now.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Just starting to pick up the smell of it too now.

SHARON DUNCAN: Yeah. My baby got sick from it, my one year old.

GLYNIS MCGRADY, TOOMELAH ELDER: It's simple basic stuff to other people in this country but to the people in Toomelah, you know, it's... there's a huge difference in the stories about living in the so-called "lucky country".

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: And the chronic levels of unemployment that existed decades ago have gone from bad to worse. Since four years ago, when the Federal Government wound up the work for the dole program, the CDEP.

RENE ADAMS: So what did they do? They turned to drugs and alcohol. These are men, proud men that were working in their community for their own community; they were seen as a role model for their children because Mum and Dad got up and went to work.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: On the other side of town, Toomelah resident Norman McGrady took us to the community hall. It used to look like this. Once the heart of Toomelah, today it's broken.

NORMAN MCGRADY, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: We used to have discos in this hall and I just don't know what happened, how it come to be like this here.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: We went to the local oval, only to discover that the community's champion football team, the Toomelah Tigers, stopped playing years ago. We found the team's former captain, Michael McGrady, at the nearby pub. He recently returned to Toomelah after nine months in prison.

MICHAEL MCGRADY, TOOMELAH RESIDENT: A bit of a shock when I went out there see Toomelah like that. Breaks your heart.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What did you see?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: I see a mission like no one cares.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Since Michael McGrady left, the Toomelah gym has also been destroyed. Tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment torn out, dumped and left to rot.

NORMAN MCGRADY: We had over millions and millions and millions of dollars put in this community, and we've got jack shit... sorry, we've got jack... sorry, nothing to show for it, you know, nothing to show for it! Nothing.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Where's the money gone?

NORMAN MCGRADY: That's a good question.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: There are now allegations of rorting and mispropation of government funding, and revelations that the local Aboriginal Land Council hasn't filed financial reports or audits for three years.

(to Glynis McGrady) So has it ever been as bad as this?

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Not that I recall, but this is the worst that I've seen it, you know, in my time. Very unsafe.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Local elder and resident, Glynis McGrady, has witnessed the ongoing trauma of Toomelah. Today, the rate of self harm and suicide is on the rise.

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Yeah, present in a huge way. We used... you know, our organisation used to work with support people who were sort of trying to commit suicide, and on average probably... you know, on average, there's sometimes up to three a week.

SHARON DUNCAN: And we do need help, a lot of help. But mainly I reckon the main concern is, like, the young ones. They need help big time, because they are the ones that hasn't got nothing to do, they get that bored, and once they get bored, look what happens.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: This is what happens. Street brawls and fights, fueled by drugs and alcohol.

Sharon Wittwer is a former drug and alcohol worker at Toomelah.

(to Sharon Wittwer) What did the alcohol and drug abuse lead to, what sort of breakdown and dysfunction?

SHARON WITTWER, FORMER DRUG AND ALCOHOL WORKER: Domestic violence, children being abused, women being abused, youth suicide... terrible stuff.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It would have been very distressing working at the front line?

SHARON WITTWER: It was.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: It's clearly stayed with you.

After two years working at the coalface, Sharon Wittwer left Toomelah. She said child sexual abuse was rife, and the abusers were tolerated.

SHARON WITTWER: I don't understand why people who are paedophiles are allowed to live in the community, I don't. If it was a community and people worked together the way they used to in communities, in Aboriginal communities, that wouldn't have been allowed. They would have been turfed out.

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Kids being abused? Yep. In my time there was a lot, but can't say who. Yeah, that's what happened. Too hard to explain it, you know. Yeah... but it did.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: That happened?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Yeah, that happened.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: And that has stayed with you?

MICHAEL MCGRADY: Yeah. It happened.

GLYNIS MCGRADY: Young children... how would I put it... below the ages of, you know, five, that have actually been raped, I mean, physically raped. The victims, you know, the young kids can actually see their perpetrators coming and walking, and they start trembling and shaking and all that sort of stuff and having nightmares - that stuff continues, yeah.

MAUREEN KNIEPP, FORMER TOOMELAH NURSE: There would not be a family at Toomelah or Boggabilla that is not affected in some way by child abuse and neglect.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: For 18 years Maureen Kniepp was the community nurse alternate Toomelah health clinic. Over that time she says she was exposed to the most extreme cases of child sexual abuse imaginable.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Things that happen at night, sometimes the children are not capable of going to school because of their physical appearance after having been abused during the night.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The abuse is to such an extent that they physically cannot get themselves to school?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Yes.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: At one point, the abuse travelled outside the Indigenous community and began to trade at the nearby Boggabilla truck stop.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: The girls were going to truckies, and they were performing sexual favours for cigarettes and money.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: How old were the girls?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Between, I think, nine and 12 at the time.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Maureen Kniepp reported the incident, and the authorities intervened. But many more reports and pleas for help went unanswered. And the trauma of Toomelah has changed her forever.

MAUREEN KNIEPP: I wasn't sleeping, I was drinking a lot of alcohol, I was very depressed, a lot of crying, a lot of soul-searching - yeah, it took a lot out of me.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: What were you searching for?

MAUREEN KNIEPP: Just to come to terms with how things are; that these things are really happening and there's nothing we can do to change things, it has to come from within.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Caro Meldrum-Hanna reporting. And we'll be following up that story tomorrow night.