The story so far...

Hello everyone!

I have now been in the small community of Balgo Hills in Western Australia for 14 days but I was just giving you all a chance to miss me before I started this blog.
Firstly, a bit about the place. I am working with the kids at Luurnpa Catholic School where there are about 80 kids from ages 4-15 broken up into 5 classes, Primary A-D and Secondary. The school was once a state school but was taken over by the De La Salle Brothers a few years ago and is now run by the brothers with who we work very closely with.
I am living with the other two volunteers, Steph from Perth and Alejandro from New Plymouth in New Zealand in a small house about 2 minutes walk from the school, 1 minute walk to the church and a 5 minute walk across the footy oval to the local store.

We started our work here moving through each different class, getting a taste of working with the different age groups and classes to see where we best fit in but as of this week, we had to make a semi-perminant decision about where we would like to work each morning and afternoon. I chose to work in the Primary C class (about grade 3-4) in the mornings becuase unlike other classes where there are many volunteers in their rooms and my assistance isn't really needed, Jenny, the teacher really values having me in her class and I even got my name up on the board as a group leader!
The school pool (only about 3x7m) was out of action as of last summer becasue of something to do with a break somewhere and dangerous pH levels and so on. However, as of last week, it had been re-opened as thanks to me being the only one in the community with a Bronze Medalion (thanks Nicky), I have been given the job of Head Lifeguard for the afternoons while each class has their 40minutes in the pool.

So how did I get here? Well after leaving Sydney on the morning of the 28th of Feb, we flew to Perth where we stayed with Steph's family for a night. And I made sure that we got to the beach for the sunset. Call it gay but you dont get that in Sydney! While at Steph's, we all had too much luggage for the mail plane (you try packing 9 months into 15kg!) so we got some Aust. Post bags and send some of our stuff up, which 1stly, we still havn't recieved becasue the plane only comes twice a week and the weather's been too rough for it to leave at all recently. But that 2ndly is the reason I havnt uploaded any pictures since I put my phone chord in the post.. my badd!



Perth Sunset




Huge Tree in Kununurra (With scale for mum)




Halls Creek Airport

 The next morning, we headed off to the airport where we flew from Perth to Broome where we only stayed for about 20minutes (enough time to grab a pie) before we got on another plane headed for Kununurra. We then stayed there the night and got up the next morning at 6:45 to wait for the mail plane. We were stuck in the foyer of Sling Air Airport for a good while as we kept getting updates assuring us that they were sure that the weather would clear up soon and all we had to do was sit tight. Luckily for us, we were in good company! When we entered the room, we saw a lovely couple who immediately introduced themselves and when we found out they too were headed for Balgo, the time passed in no time! They were going up to help out Father John in and around the parish. They were telling us all these stories about their volunteer work throughout the years as they directed us around the massive map of WA pointing out all the best parts and the small communities they had worked in. Eventually, someone came out to tell us that we had been upgraded to a bigger plane because thee mail plane would not have made it in the weather. Unfortunately, the bigger plane meant we flew about the cloud level so we couldn't see much below us but mind you, by 'bigger' I still only mean 12 seats, pilots included. But we still had to make a fuel stop at Halls Creek which is apparently to closest pub. A 3 hour drive which a few of the teachers take some friday afternoons. We eventually landed at Balgo Hills Airport where we were greeted by Robert, a Papua New Guinean man who works mostly in the computer lab, and Anthony, a Share the Mission volunteer from last year who defered a 2nd year from uni in Melbourne to stay another year. We were also greeted by the Balgo Hills boys in blue who were there to make sure we didnt have any alcohol with us, take some photographic evidence of them checking and telling us that if we did get our hands on some, just to make sure we kept it hidden.
That's one thing i love about it out here. Sure all the rules are there but all very loosely applied. Like at the orientation before we left, we had a lot of talks about how you basically shouldn't lay a hand on a student but James, the program orginiser quietly said to us afterwards, "yeah.. most of that stuff doesn't really apply to Balgo" which is nice considering the amout of students I've had to pull off others while fighting, carrying kids off the unfinished playground and swinging the kids around on the oval like I would the little cousins back at home.

My first day, I was sort of thrown right into the deep end considering after a quick 5 minute tour, i was sent into the Secondary classroom with all the older kids with what Adrian, their teacher, said was one of the worst days of the year so far. Within my 1st 30mins in the classroom I was watching as two children were being restrained while throwing out every possible swear word under the sun (in both english and their own language) and reaching for any possible object to throw at the other, whether it be a chair, bin, dust pan, pencils, while I had the rest of the class huddled behind me for protection, whether that was to keep them from the fighting boys or to have a safe spot to watch the action from is another story. My favourite line from that day, however, was when a fight was happening outside the classroom and i made the kid i was helping stay in his chair and for doing so, I copped what I can only assume was an onslaught of Wirrimanu swear words and threats but he did get back to his work. About 5 seconds later, he turns to me and says in the nicest way possible, "Excuse me sir, may i please go to the bathroom?".
Honestly, the kids here are the biggest smart arses I have ever met but i love them! Like I will often get approached while playing footy but kids almost crying saying that i never pass them the ball and then as soon as I get the ball to them, they laugh at me and kick it in the opposite direction!

One of our jobs here is preparing mungari for the kids for before school and then for lunch time. It is the Wirrimanu word for either food or bread because during mass, Father blesses the 'Holy Mungari'. Before school, mungari consists of the choice of wheet-bix or the hot food for that day, either toast, baked beans or spaghetti (or 'baghetti' as the kids say). For lunch, they each get a cut up piece of fruit and a sandwich which Anthony and Brother Rick (Principal) make every night and freeze.

There are 4 brothers oin the community, Br Rick, the school princpal, Br Lou, who works at Boystown where they teach older boys through learning trades, Br Marty who we only see in the library during school time but I assume he does more, and Brother MJ who does secretorial sorta stuff.

Note: If my grammer and punctuation suddenly improves, it's because Steph has just walked in :)

On weekends, we have no responsibilities or duties so we have a lot of free time. So far, the 1st weekend we were taken out by Brother Rick to turn off about 15 minutes out of Balgo from where we walked about 500m through some pretty spectacular rocks (we didn't walk through the rocks but it sounds better than 'we walked past some rocks') before we got to an opening with a small waterhole where there were some Aboriginal rock paintings but the best bit was a tiny hole through (and yes, this time I mean through) a rock which was about 5 meters long and just big enough for me to get through lying flat on my belly and pointing and flexing my feet as a means of moving forward. I only did it becasue Anthony went first so to all you worrying back at home, i'm not doing anything too stupid yet :)  On our way back, Brother Rick asked us if we wanted to take the 'adventure route' back to the car... little did we know that that meant that we would go off the trail and guess our way back. Unfortunately, I didn't have my trusty compass with me at the time so I was no real help besides a sure sence of direction which I, as well as everyone but Ale, still to this day can not believe that we were wrong. I'm sure Ale will still be letting us know that he was right when we found the road and we all said turn right and walked for ages when he said to turn left and we would have been to the car in 5 minutes.




Heading down the rocks.

 



Put that on a postcard!!!

 


Rock Paintings




Going in...




Coming out :)




Quite possibly my favourite picture so far! There's got to be some symbolism in there!



About a week ago, we had some insanely heavy rain and while I was visiting one of the teachers who gave me a phone handset to borrow after mine skitzed out and died, another teacher came around and said "do you guys want to go check out if the waterfall is running?" One thing I've learnt out here is that you don't say 'no' to any offers to go places because anything is better than sitting at home filling in time and so far, we havn't said yes to something and regretted it so until then, the answer's always a yes! When we got out there, it was flowing alright!!! Mary, one of the teachers who has been out here forever said it equaled the biggest she's ever seen it! Unfortunately, I didn"t have my phone so no pictures but i'm sure you'll believe me!




Waterfall at full force.



When i got home and told the others, we decided that we would head over that weekend to see if it was still flowing so we did. We went with Anthony who hadn't been there before either so i was leading the way! After a 40min treck, we made it out there and although the water wasn't falling, we still had an awesome swim in the waterhole which was insane. The water was perfect temperature and surrounded by high rock walls so we claimed it as our own place (even though pretty much all the kids are regulars...) You couldn't see 2cm under the water so i had some fun swimming underwater and scaring Steph by grabbing her leg but we eventually decided to head home.

Some how we came to the decision that we'd take a different road to the road we came on which neither I nor Ale claim to have decided, even though everyone was following us. But long story short, we ended up at the Airport, had to walk about 2km of the 3km runway becasue apparently it's a federal offence to run across a runway according to Steph, and came back into Balgo at the complete opposite end of town 1hr 20mins later just before sunset after doing a bit of guessing when coming to crossroads. Again, no compass... i really should start taking that thing out with us!



Jellybean seeing us off on our trip



My company at the waterhole.



Recently there has been some serious rain around here but apparently, its hit surrounding towns A LOT harder! Warman, a nearby town has almost been completely washed away with a lot of the buildings completely gone and the rest of the place in not much better state. Pretty much the roads to Kunanurra and to Broome are both closed which pretty much leaves us completely stranded and those are the same roads which the food trucks travel on so we've been told that the store may well not re-stock for another 2 weeks. Lucky for us, pretty much everyone we have met has said, "feel free to come around for dinner anytime" so they can't really go back on that so our food reserves should be sweet until then hopefully.

I think thats about it without going into real detail but from now on, updates will be more regular and probably in more detail :)

Oh before i finish up, and congrats if you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back, but two things:
1) We initially had planned to do it alone but now Father John, Vin and Judy are in on our plan to watch Wolf Creek and then acctually go out there camping for a night and we are all looking foreward to it! Well I know I am. Just as soon as the roads re open.
2) Yesterday, the kids for no apparent reason just went absolutely insane with almost every class having big physical fights and just every bad kid deciding to step it up a notch! Then after school, one of the older 'engligh teacher' types brought up something a little freaky... for those of you who know Shakespeare, you'd know the line from Julius Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March"... yesterday was the 'ides of March'... freaky i know!

Goodbye for now!