After 52 years, kidnapping survivor Robyn Howarth is reclaiming her narrative and rediscovering Faraday

But that’s not the whole story.

For Robyn Howarth and the other five abducted schoolchildren, this is just one part.

“I always thought the press didn’t really get the story,” she said.

“They got the drama and the violence, but not the real human story of how it affected these little innocent kids.

“We lost our stories. After 1972, there was only one story in town.”

Now, after 52 years, Robyn is reclaiming her narrative.

In her recently published book, Faraday: A Community Rediscovered, Robyn takes readers to her childhood farm in a humble town, through the survival and the aftermath, and on her long road to peace.

Furthermore, she is embarking on a tour of the Goulburn Valley, a place she once called home for more than 25 years, to speak about her first (and admittedly last) book.

It’s a book that almost ceased to exist.

After receiving a call from her editor, Robyn admitted she was plagued by self-doubt and tore her manuscript to shreds.

“But then, this little voice appeared in my head and wouldn’t leave,” Robyn said.

“It was a 10-year-old girl from the ’70s, my younger self, telling me, ‘I’ve got something I want to say, and I’ve never had the chance. It’s my turn’.”

That ‘something’ is the life of a child from regional Victoria turned survivor.

Before she was abducted and before the mention of her town caused a shudder, Faraday was known as a tranquil farming community.

“The most exciting thing that ever happened to us before then was the day Mum ran over our pet sheep, Sally,” Robyn said.

“She got stuck under the car, and the car went airborne, but Sally had this big thick fleece and a very bad attitude, and she was fine.”

The events of October 6, 1972, far surpassed the mayhem that Sally the sheep caused.

At about 1.35pm, six children and their teacher were yanked out of their classroom by two balaclava-clad men menacing them with a sawn-off rifle.

Strong-armed into a van, they were driven away.

With ransom payments the main motivation, the perpetrators left a note in the classroom demanding $1 million from the Victorian Government.

At the bottom, it read, “We will not waste anyone’s time by making idle threats, so we will cut it short by saying that any attempt to trace us or apprehend us will result in the annihilation of every hostage”.

In the chaos, Robyn said her 10-year-old self could not make sense of something so alien to her.

“My first thought was, Dad is going to be so wild with that man,” she said.

“You never wave a gun around like that — it had to be always kept unloaded, and you don’t touch it.

“I thought that man’s dad must have never taught him how to manage a gun.”

At about 7.30am the following day, their teacher kicked out the back panel of the van and, with all students in tow, they fled for help.

Shell-shocked but intact, they had survived their kidnapping.

With the world watching and the media swarming, the teacher and students were catapulted to fame, splashed across front pages worldwide.

Public interest in the Faraday case has never subsided, but those affected hailed from a generation taught to zip their lips.

Even in the decades since, Robyn found herself too riddled with guilt to write about her experience.

A tale of a badass sheep was the lesser of two evils.

“It was very much the era of you don’t talk about anything like that, and you just got on with things,” she said.

Silence was impossible when the kidnapping had consequences beyond the men who were tried and jailed.

“As a teenager, I had the most horrific nightmares, and I’d wake up screaming,” Robyn said.

“It was always the same dream — a perpetrator is standing over me, they’re about to stab or shoot me.”

What Faraday: A Community Rediscovered does best is hold a mirror to trauma, acknowledging that despite life continuing to unfold for Robyn — moving to the GV, getting married, and having three beautiful children — the trauma lives within.

It creeps into the front of the mind when it wants and stays there as long as it wants.

Though Faraday was never spoken about, for Robyn a school remained a landscape of horror and haunting.

“It should be the safest thing in the world, sending your children to school,” she said.

“When it was time to send one of my little ones to school, I was really triggered.

“I would drive laps around the school, making sure that no intruders or men in balaclavas were lurking nearby.”

Today, Robyn recognises the ridiculousness of this thinking.

However, for herself and many others living with post-traumatic stress disorder, the mind remains on permanent alert for danger.

“It took me a long time to go and seek counselling, but it was the best thing I could have done,” Robyn said.

Her disorder has become her superpower as a maternal and child health nurse, giving her great understanding and empathy to encourage others who have experienced trauma to speak up and seek professional help.

“If you don’t keep talking, it will keep coming up to claim you over and over,” Robyn said.

“I’ve experienced an enormous amount of peace and closure in the past few years, and, surprisingly, part of that came from writing this book.”

Robyn returned to Faraday this year and stood before the former school, which is now a residential property.

Her mind repainted her childhood pictures in a flashback: playing, chasing, making daisy chains.

“I’m proud that I’ve come from that, and I’m proud to say that I’m Robyn Howarth,” she said.

Her 10-year-old self would be proud, too.

Robyn will visit six regional locations for her author talk from October 2 to 4.

Copies of Faraday: A Community Rediscovered will be available for purchase at each event.

To book, contact Goulburn Valley Libraries on 1300 374 765, email gvlibraries@gvlibraries.com.au or visit www.gvlibraries.com.au/events to book online.