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Head First: The Lost Boys
by Bridget Stenhouse abour Bradley heads to Arnhem Land to spend two weeks in a small town called Yirrkala living completely under the rules of the Intervention. Five years after it was put into effect, Sabour wants to find out what it’s like to live under, by staying in a tent on a beach in the community. On his first night, a suicide attempt by a young future leader shocks him to his core. Sabour starts asking around and finds out that this is a common thing amongst boys in the community. One grandmother puts it simply; “there are very few families in Yirrkala who haven’t been touched by the death of a young man to suicide.” When another boy threatens suicide a night later, Sabour realises there is something going on in this community that goes much deeper than the Intervention and over the next two weeks he sets out to unravel what that is by immersing himself in the lives of the young men. There’s DJ, a 22-year old didgeridoo player with a drinking problem who dreams of following in the footsteps of his famous grandfather Wandjuk and becoming someone the whole community can look up to. Winston, 13, is a former child prodigy
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Young Yirrkala boy on the beach. All images supplied
at school who’s taken to petrol sniffing and in a short space of time has lost everything. He wants to go back out to his ancestral lands (Homeland) to start again. Muzza, 18, is a young Aussie Rules star who once went to Melbourne with dreams of an AFL career but was drawn back to Yirrkala by homesickness. He’s hoping scouts will notice
him and choose him for the NT AFL. Sean, 35, nearly died from substance abuse but saved himself by going back to his traditional homeland of Ghartalala where the traditional and modern worlds seem to sit comfortably side by side. What’s amazing for Sabour though, is that it’s the young men who start coming to him wanting to tell their story.
It starts to make sense when one of the women from the community tells him, “The boys harm themselves because they want someone to notice them. So that for once they’re not invisible.” Living in a tent on a beach in the middle of it all with a camera, Sabour provides an outlet for the young men to be heard in a way they’ve never been heard before. Page 1
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Sabour with one of the Yirrkala kids on his shoulders Shawn B Burarrawanga fishing
Shawn B Burarrawangan teaches Sabour to fish
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