Malcolm Franks
I grew up 14 mile out of town at Mount Olive where I went to a one-room school, until they eventually got another building there. All the kinders to sixth class in this one classroom and only one teacher.
After school I worked out at the Army Camp but I ended up leaving there after fifteen years and working for my brother in the Indigenous side of things. We looked at old sites and things from where the mines dig them up.
It’s amazing, you go to a site and you mark out where you are going to do the dig, it’s just grass so you slowly take five centimetres at a time working your way down very slowly. You are on your knees or on your belly laying down and just slowly taking just little bits and brush, like a little paint brush and like Indiana Jones, same thing sort of thing.
Some of the archaeologists, they look down on you and say we’re not going to show you, but you had a few out there that actually took time, if you asked the right questions and were willing to learn something.
In Singleton, through the ACDF, I’ve had the chance to initiate an adult dental program, through which we are paying basic dental for the adults over 18. It’s tied in with mental health and health itself, and a lot of people have actually gone to see the dentist that wouldn’t otherwise have had the opportunity.
There is always setbacks in life, my theory is you don’t let it get to you. You have always got someone putting you down and looking down at you, but they put their pants on the same way as you do and that’s the way I look at it sort of thing. They belittle themselves not you.
“You will always have someone pulling you down,
but we all put our pants on the same way.”
