Is this a true story?

Yes. Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx is a real person who shared their own story in their own words. Kintsugi Heroes is a not-for-profit that shares first-person stories of overcoming adversity, told with the person's consent.

What organisation produced this?

Kintsugi Heroes, a registered Australian not-for-profit. Every story is shared with the hero's own consent and reviewed under Kintsugi Heroes' trauma-informed content standard before it goes public.

What did Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx learn from this experience?

Anthony and Brenton learned over 16 years that supervising prisoners meant earning their respect by working alongside them, listening to their personal struggles, and picking up on when someone needed a day off because they weren't coping.

What would Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx want listeners to know?

Being locals and tradies with 30 years of experience each made it easier for the community to trust the program, because people already knew Anthony and Brenton through their work and were willing to hand over keys to their properties.

What helped Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx most along the way?

The prisoners on the gang took pride in seeing something they'd built, whether it was a paving job or a pagola, and many used the skills they learned to work on their own homes after release.

What would Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx tell someone going through something similar?

Teaching men with no trade background or work ethic meant Anthony and Brenton had to be patient while holding a high standard, and not everyone on the gang wanted to learn, so they had to work with the ones who did.

What topics does this episode cover?

This conversation includes two tradies and a phone call from dcs, why locals trusted them with the keys, starting with lawn mowers, teaching everything from scratch, the skepticism turns around in six months, no one knew how to build the defense cells and shoveling sand by hand for months.

Anthony Winter & Brenton Jinx

Building Levies, Building People: How Two Tradies Led Prisoner Work Crews Through the River Murray Floods

Two local tradies turned prison coordinators used flood crisis to teach men trades, dignity, and a path out.

Losing a job, or finding one that fits Leading, and giving back Surviving a disaster+2

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Overview

Anthony Winter and Brenton Jinx are local tradies who spent 16 years running a community service program at Cadell Prison, training and supervising prisoners on work crews across the Riverlands. When the 2022 River Murray floods hit, they found themselves at the centre of an emergency response that had never been attempted before: building flood defense cells with crews of men, most of whom had never held a shovel or used basic tools in their lives.

What made the program work was simple but rare. Anthony and Brenton were locals, born and raised in the region, with 30 years of trade experience each. People knew them, trusted them, and were willing to hand over keys to their properties. Within six months of the program starting, community skepticism turned to quiet respect as word spread about the quality of work. When the floods came, that trust mattered. The two men had to problem-solve on the fly with unfamiliar technology, no clear instructions, and most of the sand filling done by hand rather than machines. They learned to read a prisoner's mood, to listen when someone was struggling, to offer a day off when needed. They taught men with no work ethic or background the difference between doing something and doing it well.

One former prisoner called years later just to say thank you. He'd landed a job doing shop fit-outs, work he learned on their crew. That call, rare as it was, carried the weight of what they'd built together. The defense cells still sit packed solid in the ground, a physical reminder of months of hard labour. But the real work was quieter: helping men see themselves as capable of building something that mattered to their community.

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