Morning was spent packing up and transferring to the airport for our 2+ hr flight to Alice Springs, arriving around noon. The Outback area is known as the “Red Center” for it’s russet colored soil and its location in the virtual geographic center of the country.
We began with a visit to the Royal Flying Doctor Service which delivers, via its fleet of $6 million each planes, emergency and health care services through the vast country. Very interesting visit with dedicated professionals who service these outlying area.
Next was the ASSOA (Alice Springs School of the Air) started in 1951 using the radio to teach students in the outback. Now they do it by satellite and provide the family out on the ranch with about $10,000 worth of equipment and computers for students from Pre-K through 9th grade I think it is. Then the equipment is returned and the students either go to boarding for high school or have a home private tutor. Each family has to have a designated “govie” or governess/tutor on the ranch or one of the family members has to be trained as the tutor, to work with the student and supervise their studies on that end. Once a year the teacher from Alice Springs and an assistant spends 2 days with each family on the ranch with one to one. And then two or three times a year, all the students spend a week in Alice Springs with the whole class interacting and doing fun stuff together, to develop a community.
We sat in an observation room where we could see the two studios and one of the teachers was on air teaching math. I think there are about 120 students in all, in all the grades. It sounds like a really neat idea and keeps these families from being so isolated. I’m wondering how they adjust when they are finally living in a city later on. Or maybe they love that life and become ranchers or drovers themselves. There is something beautiful about the vastness of it all! I can’t imagine how difficult it was years ago when there was no medical or educational support - just you and your family to survive out there! It’s not easy which is why the majority of Australians live on the east or west coast.
Our next stop was the telegraph station where the spring that they named Alice after somebody Brit official’s wife (who never visited the town named after her!). There is a river running through the town that a month before this was raging and full and was now just a dry sandy bed! The plan was to string a telegraph line from there to Darwin in the north. It took several attempts but it allowed a quick time connection between Australia and the UK back at the end of the 19th century. It took 3.5 months by ship for letters, and people to get there. So this was a big improvement.
We finally arrived at our hotel at the Lasseters Hotel. We all met for dinner at the “Juicy Rump”, a disgusting name for a restaurant, I thought!! But we crammed into a booth (it was crowded as there was a big cricket competition going on among two Aborigine teams - Peter said it was a terrific focus and outlet for these young people). I headed right after to the swimming pool, which was tepid warm, probably from the sun beating down, but refreshing!! In the hot tub I met two 37 year old women from Sydney who were traveling with the Pamela Rugby team who were arriving the next day. They were like organizers and there were a couple of guys in the pool who were the video crew with them. They were taking the rugby players to visit schools there to inspire kids to get an education, play a sport, etc. I was hoping to get a rugby shirt from them for Jackson but we didn’t connect later!
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