Chris Long says he was 14 years old when he was taken "out bush" to be disciplined for wagging school.
He was more than 700 kilometres away from home, attending a local high school and living in a private student hostel nearby.
A hostel worker had brought him, alone, to "a long stretch" of road, he said, to teach him a lesson.
"He told me to jump out of the car and … just grabbed me by my shirt and then just punched me with one hand," Mr Long said.
"He said to me that he was going to chuck me in a cage and feed me to the dogs.
"The way he was treating me, that's not a good lesson."
The teenager said he was left beside the road to walk back into town alone.
Now 19 years old, the Alyawarr man is from the Indigenous community of Alpurrurulam, known locally as Lake Nash, in the Northern Territory, 300km west of Mount Isa.
Like thousands of other First Nations families with limited access to education, his parents sent him away from home to attend high school.
Mr Long was sent to the Barcaldine Prep-12 State School, and lived at accommodation nearby, known as the Alice River Student Hostel.
There were dozens of other kids there from across Queensland and the Northern Territory, including from the remote towns of Doomadgee, Camooweal and Boulia.
The hostel is run by a local Indigenous businesswoman.
"That's how I felt it was good to send my kid there," his father, Cameron Long, said.
"Plus, away from Mount Isa, because [I've] got most family members here.
"The kid would be distracted, running around loose there, that's why I send them to Barcaldine where they don't know much."
Chris's parents signed forms to allow government funding to be directed to the hostel, a for-profit business, for their son's food and accommodation expenses.
It's a model replicated around the country, whereby a range of providers from government-run hostels to elite boarding schools, share in more than $170 million per year in ABSTUDY funding to support First Nations children going to high school away from home.
Families of the 30 children who live at the hostel at any given time agree to hand their ABSTUDY over to the operator.
The ABC understands the hostel receives about $800,000 a year in total in government payments.
"I trusted them, because I thought my son would learn more around school and even around Indigenous culture there too," Cameron Long said.
"Learn how to respect other places. But what happened to him is unacceptable."
The ABC has obtained a video testimony recorded in 2020 with the then 16-year-old.
"I'm gonna tell you about this guy," Chris Long says in the tape, which was recorded by a second hostel worker.
"The last time, when I used to be here, when I was, like smaller, he used to take me out bush and try to beat me up and stuff, jerking me around by my shirt and punching me," he said.
"And I was crying back at the hostel and I was ringing my mum to come and pick me up."
The second hostel worker told the ABC he took the tape to the Mount Isa police station, but that police would not act unless the teenager approached them and was willing to press charges.
Chris Long said he never heard from the police about the matter.
"Whatever we do, like silly stupid things, break in. Yeah … police can talk to us," the 19-year-old said.
"But when they do that stupid thing to me … no one ever come spoken to me."
The ABC contacted the hostel worker who allegedly assaulted Mr Long.
He described the allegation as "pure nonsense", but did not respond to written questions.
In a statement, Queensland Police said:
"In October 2021, a video was provided to police. Initial enquiries were made, and attempts were made to contact the male in the video, however no formal complaint has been received."
Four dollars and a 'smack on the bottom'
In 2022, Elaine O'Keefe's 13-year-old son was sent to the same hostel facility in Barcaldine.
The Waanyi woman's older boys had been living there as students and she wanted her younger son to be with his brothers.
She said she sent them there "for a good reason, to get educated".
However, the Mount Isa mother said she received a phone call late last year to inform her that her younger son had been admitted to hospital after attempting suicide.
Ms O'Keefe was hundreds of kilometres away in North Queensland, and said she wanted her son to come home to his grandmother in Mount Isa.
However, Ms O'Keefe said, the 13-year-old was put on a public bus, alone, for the 12-hour-trip, just a week after being released from hospital.
ABSTUDY recipients are entitled to $3,000 travel allowance each year.
Hostel workers have confirmed that the Alice River Student Hostel business claimed all travel allowances for children at the hostel.
"[They] sent him back on the bus himself, with no food … gave him only $4 to spend. He's only a kid," Ms O'Keefe said.
In the weeks after he arrived home, the boy told his family that a hostel worker had yelled at him, threatened and "smacked" him on the bottom after his release from hospital.
"[They] threatened to hit him if he does it again, trying to commit suicide or try to do them silly things," Ms O'Keefe said.
"[They] threatened to hit him with a stick."
The worker was not the same staff member who was involved in the alleged altercation with Chris Long.
The ABC has chosen not to fully identify Ms O'Keefe's 13-year-old son, due to his age.
However, the boy told the ABC that he "felt ashamed and embarrassed and upset" after the incident.
"Everyone was looking and staring and doing nothing," he said.
"I started being sad and crying and went to my bed."
The Alice River Student Hostel operator declined to respond to questions from the ABC about the incident.
Ms O'Keefe said she reported the allegations to the mental health team that was providing counselling to her son.
"I said … I'm going to report this. I'm going to try and find, seek help," she said.
She said two detectives from the Mount Isa police station visited her at home earlier this year, "and I said: 'Do I have to go up and put in a statement now? Can we go up now?'
"They said: 'No don't worry about it. We'll contact the Department of Education and we'll let them know about it.'"
In a statement, Queensland Police said:
"In November 2022, a Mount Isa woman and her 13-year-old son engaged with Mount Isa police about her son being “smacked” and verbally abused. No formal complaint was made to police."
Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said in a statement that the Barcaldine State School had followed all reporting requirements.
The minister said the allegations were "very concerning" and that she'd asked the department whether "further steps" could be taken to support the students.
Ms O'Keefe said she has heard nothing further on the matter.
"Put it out there, let everybody know, you know? Whose kids are down there," she said.
"Ask your kids … what's going on down there?"
Federal Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth said in a statement:
"While state and territory governments have responsibility for investigating a board provider’s compliance with relevant child safety and protection requirements and for policing compliance with child safety legislation, the Australian government is undertaking a review, which will identify systemic reform options to better support First Nations boarding students from rural and remote areas."
A spokesperson for the Queensland Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs said the scope of the child protection agency does not include investigating private boarding facilities.
Calls for national boarding standards
The Alice River Student Hostel is just one of around 280 hostel and boarding providers receiving Commonwealth subsidies through ABSTUDY.
Those institutions provide support for more than 4,000 First Nations students across the country and range from elite boarding schools in metropolitan cities to bespoke facilities such as NRL Cowboy House, government-owned hostels and smaller, private providers.
There is no mandated qualification for the workers who act as 'house parents' and supervise the children, and none of the providers are required to meet legislated minimum standards in terms of the quality of care they provide the children.
"This is one of the challenges in Indigenous boarding. It's just the wide variety of experiences that people are having across the facilities," said Jessa Rogers, a Wiradjuri researcher at the Queensland University of Technology.
Dr Rogers researches Indigenous people's experiences of education and is on the board of St Phillips College in Alice Springs.
She said there were no legislated minimum standards for boarding providers nationally.
"And that leaves it up to the facility, or the school, to operate within the guidelines that they have for that particular environment," she said.
Dr Rogers said that, although hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding was flowing into programs designed to assist Indigenous people, the outcomes were unclear.
"When you consider how long a young person is actually away from home during that formative time of their youth, it is a massive responsibility," she said.
"And it is up to those facilities … to communicate with families so that they have that opportunity to really understand exactly what they're signing up for before they go away.
"And, when things do go wrong, there is a line of communication so that things don't get out of hand."
In 2022, families raised concerns about the safety of children at Djarragun College in Cairns, which has about 400 students enrolled from prep to year 12 and a boarding facility that caters for young people from remote communities in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
A brawl in June last year left a 17-year-old student with head injuries and prompted families to accuse the independent institution of failing to provide a duty of care for its students and teachers.
Djarragun College defended the way it operates, saying it "provides education and support that no other school can or will".
The ABC understands other facilities have had to develop their own training and protocols, in the absence of formal qualifications being required for the "house parents" employed to care for boarding students.
A 2016 parliamentary committee held a series of public hearings relating to the administration of ABSTUDY and educational outcomes for First Nations children.
It heard the objectives of the scheme were to "encourage Indigenous peoples to take full advantage of the educational opportunities available" and to improve "equity of educational opportunity; and … educational outcomes" through subsidised living and travelling expenses.
The committee also heard evidence from industry representatives that "anybody" could apply to acquire funding through ABSTUDY.
"There is no audit. There is no check, nothing. There are no standards upon which a check could be made," Anthony Bennett, the chairperson of Indigenous Education and Boarding Australia, told the House of Representatives Committee in 2016.
"There are no qualifications … From a risk perspective, you would have to suggest the risk is significant. Anybody can open one of these things, and they do."
The parliamentary inquiry's 2017 report, The Power of Education, recommended an independent review into ABSTUDY and for minimum standards to be legislated.
Neither the former nor current federal government has acted on either recommendation.
A spokesman for the Department of Social Services — which has policy responsibility for ABSTUDY — said the Australian government supported the current system of "self-assessment" and "an industry-led approach to establish standards covering all aspects of student wellbeing".
"The Australian Government is committed to supporting quality boarding outcomes for First Nations students.
"Board providers who receive payments…do so only where the student, their parent or guardian has authorised this to occur."
The department also noted that hostels receiving funding from the government must "comply with all relevant state and territory legislation related to child safety and protection."
'The kids tried to run away all the time'
The ABC has spoken to more than a dozen former students, workers and their families who have stayed in, or worked at, the Alice River Student Hostel in the years since it opened in 2016.
Former staff reported working for minimum wages, with no penalty rates, often up to 16 hours a day.
Two former house parents, who did not want to be named, said they worked at the hostel for months without a blue card or working-with-children check, which is a legal requirement.
Others confirmed they did have the legally required checks in place.
Workers said they had received training on the job from other house parents and "weren't trained to deal with the behaviour of the kids".
"The kids tried to run away all the time," said Michael, a former house parent who asked for his name to be changed.
"They'd sit outside [the manager's] door knocking, saying 'I want to go home' and [the managers would] ignore them.
"Sometimes, the kids packed up their bags and would walk up the highway and we'd have to go collect them.
"I considered making a complaint, but I didn't know who to speak to."
Bill, who only wants to be identified by his first name, lives next door to the hostel and said children were often running through the streets unsupervised in the early hours of the morning.
"We've witnessed fights in there, there's screaming and yelling … starting at about two o'clock in the afternoon and going until 10 o'clock at night," he said.
He said the situation at the hostel was alarming to him.
"There's no rules. If you're going to do this sort of thing, the general idea is that you're bringing children down here to complete their education," he said.
"How are kids supposed to study if they've been up to four o'clock in the morning?"
In an email to the ABC, the Alice River Student Hostel operator said their students had "self-fulfilled prophesied lives that were usually filled with violence, crime, substance abuse, sexual abuse, premature morbidity and mortality, unemployment, imprisonment and extreme poverty".
The operator said the families who stuck with the hostel were "primarily grateful for the respite that our hostel provides their children from the risks, temptations and predators back home".
"Their attendance at a school is a bonus," the operator said in the email.
"Rather than shine a light upon our successes, you choose to shine a darkness upon us, based upon frivolous and vexatious complaints made by a disgruntled ex-employee and a disgruntled ex-parent."
A million-dollar partnership undone
In 2020, the hostel's operators teamed up with the Silver Lining Foundation Australia in a million-dollar investment to establish an Aboriginal-controlled school campus in Barcaldine for the students to attend, known as Desert Mob Silver Linings School.
In 2021, the school received more than $96,000 in state recurrent funding.
By October 2022, its accreditation was voluntarily surrendered by the Silver Lining Foundation.
No one from Silver Lining was available for an interview but, in a statement, a foundation spokesman said it was "unable to find suitable candidates" to replace staff leaving the organisation and the "school was subsequently closed."
A complaint was made about the operations of the Desert Mob school to the Non-State Schools Accreditation Board (NSSAB) in 2020.
Concerns included allegations that children were being exploited for their labour.
That was because the hostel operator owns a number of other businesses and allegations have emerged that students were being used as unpaid workers to help run them, sometimes during school hours.
The ABC understands the NSSAB sent delegates in August, who asked to see the Alice River Student Hostel, but were refused entry.
In July, 2021, an internal audit was conducted by the Silver Lining Foundation, and the ABC understands allegations of fraud were then reported to Queensland Police and NSSAB, concerning the operator allegedly working in their private businesses during paid school hours and using children from the school for these businesses.
In a statement Queensland Police said:
"Police are currently investigating allegations of fraud at a charity-run school previously on Acacia Street at Barcaldine, which closed in November 2021. This fraud complaint was made in Brisbane in December 2021. No charges have been laid at this time and the investigation is ongoing."
The operator of the hostel has also received more than $470,000 in grants from the National Indigenous Advancement Agency (NIAA) for the purchase of school buses and "strategic activities that focus on getting children to school".
Those buses are being used to transport tourists to the operator's private tourism businesses, the ABC has confirmed, and that no audit has ever been completed on either of the grants' outcomes.
The ABC has been informed that the NIAA was notified of the fraud investigation a month after awarding the $273,000 grant in 2021.
In a statement, the NIAA said the grant was "to provide safe, supported accommodation for Indigenous students who need to study away from home to complete their secondary education".
"[The NIAA] has a range of policies and processes in place to ensure organisations are well governed, services are delivered and grant funds are expended in accordance with the relevant funding agreement, including an acquittal process at the completion of the contract," the statement said.
The Alice River Hostel operator declined to respond to specific questions from the ABC, having earlier said she would not give any allegations against the hostel credit by responding to them.
Services Australia has been made aware about the concerns relating to limited oversight of children at the Alice River Hostel in Barcaldine.
Mr Long said he did not find out about the alleged assault against his son on the deserted road until this year.
"I didn't get full information," Mr Long said.
"I grow them up to be tough and they don't tell me what had happened.
"But … he would have been afraid."
Mr Long said he was angry that Queensland Police do not appear to have acted on the allegations.
"You know how, when you're a kid, and you're away from home, and no one hears you really when you're a kid," he said.
"That really upsets me.
"Kids have a little voice and people need to hear them."
"Even when they're far away from home, from parents … they need to be heard."
