Gunbalanya - End of Week 1

The school at Gunbalanya has 3 distinct sections.

This is the Preschool:

This is the Primary Section:

This is the front of the secondary section (where I work):

This is the back of the secondary section:

On Monday I spent the day meeting my teachers and talking to them and the Principal about the changes that we will be making with one of the teachers going on maternity leave, my arriving and an overhaul of the way we teach our homeland centres.

I'm in Darwin for a First Steps literacy course next week so we were planning to wait for the start of the new term to change things. Given that I hadn't expected to have much of a teaching load this week but one of the teachers was off sick on Tuesday so I took her class for the day. They're a really nice group and it felt great to get back to real teaching.

We had some guys from the Trinity Gramar School in Melbourne visiting us for a few days to do some practical science with our students. The students made an elastic band powered balsa wood glider and then measured how far they flew and how long the stayed aloft. Then they used the speed and distance to calculate the speed their planes flew at.

Tuesday night I took a drive back towards the river crossing. About 15km from Gunbalanya there is a lagoon with water lillies around the edge where I stopped to watch the sunset.

Having got my feet wet I decided to keep going so for the rest of the week I took the class anytime the teachers would normally have their planning time. I took the middle years students for PE on Wednesday afternoon and played a game of hockey with them, which was great fun but also persuaded me that the new timetable was not going to have sport at 1pm!

Thursday I took the other class for a session. This is made up of all the young men who are going through ceremony. The local customs don't allow them to be taught by or to mix with women during this time which means they need to be in a separate class and limits who I can use to teach it. The Trinity boys were back with their gliders and the guys had great fun.

Friday was spent planning with the outstations teachers and doing some cleaning and furniture moving in preparation for a third teacher joining the team next term. Then it was time to jump in the car and race back to Darwin for my hockey presentation night.

(I picked up the coaches award which recognises the player who the coach feels has made a particular contribution to the team which was great.)

Settling in to Gunbalanya

I had intended leaving Darwin on Sunday sometime between 12 and 2 but as usual nothing went to plan and it was 3.15 by the time I got away. The drive to Gunbalanya is 275km on the bitumen, followed by a river crossing, and then about 20km of dirt. All up it took a little over 3 hours, meaning I arrived just before sunset - around 6.30pm.

Because most land in remote communities is owned by the local aboriginal people rental accomodation is not available for outsiders. As a result the government leases housing off the local community which they then provide to teachers free of charge. Two years Gunbalanya was hit by a major cyclone and then 12 months ago it was badly flooded. As a result the house they have given me is newly constructed, metal clad, and raised off the ground.


The only down side to that is that it is sitting on a completely bare block of ground, with a thin covering of topsoil and no grass.


The house came fully furnished, in fact over furnished, with a double bed in the main bedroom and two single beds in each of the two other bedrooms. The furnishings are a very curious mix such as an expensive, good quality lounge and recliners sitting next to a bargain basement flat pack plywood bookcase. Still all in all it is much, much better than I was expecting and I am truly grateful.

The teachers seem like a really nice bunch of people and I think I'm really going to enjoy working here. Originally I thought I had the position permanently and was wrapped with that as I fully intended to stay for years. However I have since discovered that the position is still owned by someone who is on extended leave. I was quite put out by that at first, but no one here seems to think there is the slightest chance the person will be coming back, so I'm feeling more confident about making a long term commitment to the place.

New job at Gunbalanya (also called Oenpelli)

I've been offered a new job as the "Senior Teacher Secondary and Outstations" at a remote aboriginal community called Gunbalanya, 300km east of Darwin, just past the East Alligator River and Kakadu National Park.




The road out is bitumen as far as Cahills Crossing on the East Alligator River, but dirt from there. You can drive to Gunbalanya in the dry season, although you may have to wait for low tide to cross the river, but during the wet the river swells and floods the plain, making it impassible.


There are approximately 880 people in Gunbalanya, 800 of them Aboriginal and 80 Balandas. The language spoken is Kunwinjku.