When Robyn was 10, she was kidnapped from school. She's just told us her story.

It was a Friday afternoon in October 1972, and Robyn Howarth and the five other students at school that day were playing musical chairs.

The children at Faraday Primary School in rural Victoria were having the time of their lives inside their classroom, as the weather outside was chilly and wet. Their young teacher, Miss Gibbs, had agreed to let them play indoors.

But the children's laughter would soon be replaced by terror, when two strange men appeared at the classroom door.

One of the men wore a balaclava over his face, while the other had a wig, hat and dark sunglasses. As 10-year-old Robyn turned to the classroom door, she noticed something particularly alarming, one of the men was carrying an enormous gun, aiming it directly at them.

Watch: Robyn Howarth on the Faraday kidnapping. Post continues after video.

"The little girl remembers thinking, why would you wear sunglasses inside? That's an odd thing to do," Robyn told Gemma Bath on Mamamia's True Crime Conversations podcast, speaking about herself in third person.

The men were 21-year-old Edwin John Eastwood and Robert Clyde Boland, who was in his mid-thirties. Together, these two Victorian plasterers and fathers had planned the kidnapping for months, staking out the small rural school and observing its routines.

On a few occasions, Robin remembers her sister asking her, "Did you see those men today?".

When the men burst into the classroom, 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs tried to protect her students. "Please not us, please not us," she begged, visibly shaking. But the men were determined. "School's over for the day," one replied before ordering everyone into a van parked outside.

"I remember saying to him, 'You're not going to murder us, are you?'" Robyn recalled asking Eastwood. "Then he looked at me like I was a little insect on the floor. But then I remember thinking they wouldn't rob us because we've got nothing that they could take."

The children were loaded into a van that "smelt of petrol" with "yellow petrol tin up the front." It was "very basic," with the girls sitting "on the wheel, sort of lining seats each side." What the children didn't know was the horrifying extent of the kidnappers' plans.

"They had a gun and a nondescript carry-on bag, very nondescript, but it was full of chains. They had dug a trench out at Landsfield and they had planned to put us in there, chained up, with plaster tapes or something over our mouths.

The crime was described at the time as "the gravest situation of its kind in the history of the Victorian police force" and "Australia's crime of the century." The kidnappers demanded a million-dollar ransom from the state government, threatening "the annihilation of all the hostages" if their demands weren't met.

Throughout the ordeal, the young teacher maintained remarkable composure. "Kudos to Mary Gibbs. None of us had a complete meltdown because she didn't," Robyn said admiringly. "I guess we were used to, you know, this is what we're doing and there was none of us that would be arguing."

The van eventually stopped in remote bushland near Lancefield, Victoria.

"We didn't know where we were," said Robyn. "The thought of escaping didn't even occur to me because where (would) we have gone?"

As night fell, the students huddled together for warmth in the van, trying to stay as far away from their captors as possible. They were given cold chips to eat. Eventually, both men left, telling their captives not to move.

With the kidnappers gone, Miss Gibbs seized the opportunity to free her students.

The young teacher spotted a panel at the back of the van and began to kick at it repeatedly. The students also took turns trying to kick.

Eventually, Miss Gibbs's determination paid off, and the group were able to escape.

As they made their way through the unfamiliar bushland, they heard gunshots, which terrified them. But Miss Gibbs heard women's voices and investigated further. The gunshots were from a group of four friends, who were out rabbit shooting for the weekend.

"They were shocked and very taken aback, but I remember them being very kind," Robyn said. "I suppose they were quite fearful for their safety too. So we all piled into their car and ended up at the Lancefield Police Station."

Meanwhile, a massive search operation had been mobilised after parents had gone to pick up their children from school and found nothing but a ransom note. When the children were finally reunited with their parents, the emotions were overwhelming.

"Our mum was incredibly distressed," Robyn remembered. "And Dad, poor Dad. You know, that was the era to never show any emotion. And I remember seeing him marching up and down as if he was a soldier at the back of the room and I remember thinking to myself, 'You weren't in the army, why are you marching?' And then he walked up to us to shake our hands, and then he burst into tears and hugged us."

Both kidnappers were arrested at their respective homes in Melbourne and Bendigo around 4:30am the following Monday. Eastwood immediately confessed.

But, in a shocking twist, when the identities of the kidnappers were revealed, Robyn's mother recognised one of them.

"That was Robert Clyde Boland," Robyn confirmed. "It turned out that my grandfather and Robert Clive Boland's grandmother were brother and sister. That has caused my family such distress over many years."

Listen to the full episode below.

The legal proceedings that followed further traumatised young Robyn.

"I did develop, like, a post-traumatic stress disorder, and I think the appearance at court was probably the huge trigger for that," she said.

"You're a young girl. You're in a totally foreign environment… You're in a packed court gallery because there was huge interest in this case. Press everywhere, the judiciary everywhere… they were all men. And then you've got the perpetrator directly opposite you, up on a bit of a stand, looking down at you. So it was an exceptionally intimidating space to be in."

Eastwood was sentenced to 15 years with a non-parole period of 10, but Boland's case proved more complicated. He pleaded not guilty and went through three trials. The first two resulted in hung juries, leading to speculation about possible jury tampering. The third trial finally brought a conviction, but only after a significant change to the law.

"Up until that time, a crime like kidnapping, a wife was not compelled to give evidence against her husband and disclose marital conversations," Robyn explained. "The Crimes Act was changed, and Robert Clyde Boland's wife was compelled to take the stand in the third trial and disclose marital conversations, and the jury in that case took 30 minutes to reach a verdict. So it was a real game changer."

Boland testified that her husband "had admitted that he had done it, he knew now where he'd gone wrong," and she "virtually dismantled his alibi". Boland was sentenced to 16 years with a minimum of 12.

Robyn went on to become a maternal health nurse and mother-of-three, but the trauma continued to impact her. "For many, many years I ran away from my past," she admitted. "I'd been having horrific nightmares since I was probably 14, and always the same, a knife coming towards me or a gun or a man in a balaclava."

It wasn't until she experienced postnatal depression after her third child that Robyn finally sought counselling. Her own trauma informed her approach as a maternal health nurse, giving her unique empathy for mothers struggling with past traumas.

"I would often be able to say, 'Please find your voice, don't stop talking and get some good skilled counselling, because if you don't, it will keep rearing its head and really impacting on your life. Because I know that's what happened to me.'"

Robyn has written a book, Faraday: A Community Rediscovered, where she recounts, in vivid detail, the traumatic events that unfolded that day. You can buy Robyn's book here.

Feature Image: Supplied.