Fifty years of the trickle-up effect

"If we're not doing that, we're not doing our job very well," Coombes, head of Tranby Aboriginal Co-operative College, says.

He became chief executive of the Glebe college - Australia's oldest indigenous education provider - this year after a decade working in Aboriginal Affairs for the NSW Government and for the federal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

The college is in its 50th year and it is interesting to imagine what its founder would make of the opportunities available to Aboriginal students today.

The Reverend Alf Clint, a high church Anglican missionary who had worked in Papua New Guinea, founded Tranby in 1958 as a hostel for young indigenous men training to run co-operatives in the bush.

It has now evolved to teach adults in governance, office skills and Aboriginal history, or in how to negotiate with mining companies and defend someone accused of a crime.

Last month another 50 students graduated, bringing the total number who have passed through its Glebe doors to 5000-plus.

Father Alf, as he was known, would have been proud.

Described as a "Marxist parson", he was one of the "very few really good people" you meet in a lifetime, according to the late writer P. P. McGuinness.

"Alf was … a lovely man, full of humour, who liked a beer and was expert at enlisting union officials and government ministers in the Aboriginal cause," he recalled of his old university friend and fellow Balmain boy in 1997.

But in the late 1990s, as the native title and stolen generations debates raged, McGuinness feared a man of Alf's good intentions might have been denounced "as a dangerous reactionary and probably a racist for his views".

"He did not believe in the preservation of Aboriginal culture at any cost, but instead believed that Aborigines should assimilate into white society to the extent possible, so that they might participate fully in the economic, health and educational benefits of the wider community. He ridiculed anthropologists who wanted Aborigines to stay naked and primitive rather than dressed and educated."

If those views were reactionary a decade ago, they are less so now. Today, Father Alf might have been considered a man of the times, as a Labor Government funds indigenous scholarships to top boarding schools and teams with a billionaire miner and a cadre of indigenous welfare reformists to find corporate jobs for indigenous Australians.

In fact - provided he could overcome his documented abhorrence of capitalists - the reverend might even have approved of the Australian Employment Covenant, a jobs scheme conceived by Andrew Forrest, the chief executive of Fortescue Metals Group.

Lindon Coombes is pursuing a similar course at Tranby.

He will write to the job scheme's administrators this month, he says, to offer them the services of Tranby's 50 graduates for 2008, most of whom have completed two-year diplomas. Some already have jobs, but others will jump at the opportunity.

The next step will be to set up partnerships with corporations and government agencies to guarantee pathways to employment from Tranby's courses.

Unlike the more prominent scholarship and jobs schemes which work from the top down to open doors for indigenous go-getters, Tranby is working from the bottom up to develop the lower skill base in indigenous communities and ensure no one is left behind.

There need to be options that all Aboriginal people can take part in, Coombes says - including those for whom genuine family and cultural responsibilities mean they cannot leave home.

Tranby's two-year, accredited "block release" courses are taught in six intensive sessions each year. "It allows them to stay in their communities and take skills back and share them, because there's a fear that a brain drain will take young Aboriginal people who have the wherewithal to go to university in the cities and they will rarely return to their communities."

Tranby caters to those aged 18 to 70, but mostly to those in their 30s who have realised the limitations of their education or become free to return to study.

"One of the good things about that is we get older people, grandparents maybe [or people who have] had primary care responsibilities for kids and can come back to study and get their reading and writing to where it should be. It's a nice, comfortable re-entry point into education for those people."

Retention rates are a problem, Coombes acknowledges, mainly because of high rates of disease and poor health in indigenous communities, which create ever-changing social responsibilities for students. But he hopes more careful screening of applicants will identify those who are unsuitable from next year.

And as the college enters its next 50 years, Coombes is also determined to find new revenue sources - through selling its specialist skills, and fundraising.

Already Tranby teaches cultural awareness to companies and organisations and trains native title workers and Aboriginal Legal Service lawyers on a fee basis.

"We're not going broke but we need now to think about fund-raising and alternative income streams. It's becoming increasingly evident that we can't rely on government funding to develop into the future," Coombes said.

He is also determined to maintain Tranby's status as an epicentre for social justice campaigns. It hosted early meetings about land rights and Aboriginal deaths in custody, and endured race hate attacks in 1988 when a far-right group broke six windows and spray-painted its name on the edifice.

Tranby remains a co-operative, but most of its board and staff are indigenous and even 1988 seems a long way in the past.

Coombes will have extraordinary community support as he turns the page on Tranby's next chapter. The Friends of Tranby have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. And a 600-seat, 50th anniversary dinner at the Hilton on Friday sold out weeks in advance.