Classroom KIDNAPPING!

A GIPPSLAND TEACHER AND HIS PUPILS WERE HELD HOSTAGE BY AN ESCAPED PRISONER

Rob Hunter remembers his first week as a new teacher like it was yesterday.

The Victorian man was only nine days into his first-ever posting when a gunman burst into the classroom taking him, and the entire school, hostage.

Rob, aged just 20, was the sole teacher at Wooreen Primary School in South Gippsland on the morning of February 14, 1977.

Speaking to New Idea about the terrifying ordeal, Rob, now 66, recalls being paralysed with fear for himself and the nine students under his care.

“We had our normal morning lessons and then I let the kids out for recess around 10.30am,” says Rob. “Moments later, they came racing back inside saying, ‘Mr Hunter, Mr Hunter … there’s a man outside with a gun.”

Heading outside to investigate, Rob came face to face with a gunman wearing a balaclava.

“He pointed the gun directly at my chest and said, ‘Get back inside, or I’ll shoot you,’” Rob remembers.

The man, Edwin John Eastwood, was on the run from Geelong Prison.