Alanah Chapman, pictured last year with one of the cameras. Photo: Joe Armao
FIGHTING back tears, teachers at Strathewen Primary have again put on a brave face after thieves raided the school and its young bushfire survivors for the second time this month.
Principal Jane Hayward says it is hard to believe that thieves would twice target children who had already suffered so much.
The original Strathewen school was razed last year by the Black Saturday bushfires, and half the students lost their homes.
The school is now in temporary classrooms 20 kilometres away at Wattle Glen Primary School.
The latest robbery occurred on Tuesday night, with thieves snatching laptops, cameras and portable hard-drives.
The impact on the school community was compounded by the fact that many of the stolen goods had been donated after a theft at the school about 10 days earlier.
In that burglary, the goods stolen had also been donated or bought through fund-raising efforts to replace equipment destroyed in the bushfires.
Student Alanah Chapman last year raised $5000 with friend Duncan Peat, 12, through a photographic exhibition, Nature Heals.
Ten digital cameras were bought for the school with the money raised from photographs of re-emerging foliage at the site of Alanah's old home, which was destroyed in the fires, and nearby parkland. At least five of those cameras are now in the hands of thieves.
When the 39 students of Strathewen Primary arrived in buses to start classes yesterday, they saw police dusting their classrooms for fingerprints and teachers wiping away their tears.
Alanah said the teachers had broken the news to them as the buses pulled into the school.
''It's not very nice,'' said the 11-year-old. But she could take some solace from discovering that five students had taken cameras home for projects.
Ms Hayward said: ''We worked very hard to get through the first burglary, cleaning up, and now this.'' Although staff had been emotional, they were determined to battle on, she said.
''It was very distressing for the older and younger children … but we will keep on going.''
Police said last night David Stewart, 29, of no fixed abode, was a person of interest in relation to the first theft.
