My Rural Story

What have you experienced in remote Australia that has changed your world view? The experience that really changed my world view when we went out to Kununurra was when we set up this scavenger hunt and I set up what was called the ‘Education Station’. The kids would come around in groups and I had a little blackboard set up and I would ask them some general knowledge questions that someone in their age range would be able to answer for me. So, I’d ask the 15 year old kids something like ‘what’s 7 x 7’ or ‘name two pieces of fruit’ and it was astounding, they couldn’t

answer these basic questions for me. The first thing I asked them was ‘how old are you?’ so that I knewwhat sort of general questions to ask them. But the question I really should have asked them is ‘how many days a week do you go to school?’. It was a real ‘aha’moment for me because I didn’t realise that they didn’t go to school, these kids, or they went to school once a year or once a term. So that reallymademe wake up and realise how lucky we are here to have such a big emphasis on education and how good our education is here. They don’t have those facilities available to them out there and there’s not people telling them to go to school and telling them how important education is.

@ElsevierAUS