My call from God to Christian schools (Part 3)
After leaving Benalla Christian School, I taught Yr 6 at Heathdale Christian College (Werribee). At first I received a lot of necessary support from a caring administration after being effectively sacked from the previous school, sacked (along with the other teacher) because I (with the other teacher) wouldn’t let the Benalla school parents control the classroom for their own benefits. The actions of the Benalla Christian School board destroyed their school; they should have kept on the teachers God had called to teach there, instead of getting rid of them. The then Heathdale principal was very understanding of what had happened in Benalla; this was necessary as it took much of that 1997 year to regain my composure after the battles I had faced in Benalla. Then, in the following years (1998-2000) I carried out my duties well, also running a successful orienteering program for primary school students. But after a new principal was appointed (after the previous one resigned probably due to some unstated pressures from the school), the ethos changed and the school leaned very strongly toward a more calvinistic outlook on teaching. And I strongly felt like I was stagnating, not being used properly. I had this feeling that there was more to my calling than this. Then in 2000 I felt a strong desire (a “gut-feeling” as I termed it) to go into the outback to work with aboriginal education; I had learned to pay attention to gut feelings in the past and therefore chose to follow up on this one.

I looked at remote community schools such as Warburton on the Great Central Rd in central Western Australia (WA). I obtained a WA education department remote schools application form, filled it in and sent it. I also sent a similar application for remote community schools in South Australia (SA). I never received a reply to the SA application, and was told by someone that SA had a policy of giving jobs to SA teachers ahead of any interstate ones regardless of qualifications. But I did receive from WA education a request to interview me via phone linkup for a position at Warburton, WA. However, when the interview time came, nothing happened. I was told that somehow it had been cancelled without telling me. (Politics again?)

I then saw a position advertised for principal of a Christian school in Alice Springs. I applied and was interviewed by phone linkup. It seemed that I was favoured to get the position but one question got in the way. What would I do with a problem situation? But with no detail or explanation I could only give generalities. I asked what the problem was and they said they couldn’t tell me but how would I deal with it? They ended up giving the job to a local who taught at Yirara College, a boarding school for aboriginal students from remote communities. (And after a couple of years the Christian school was trying to offload him, it seems, probably due to not being able to deal with the problem that they wouldn’t tell me about in my interview.) I applied to Yirara College in Alice Springs, and ended up taking the position that the one chosen for the Christian school had vacated. It wasn’t exactly what I had anticipated but it turned out to be excellent for our contacts with aboriginal people, some of whom we continue to have contact with today. I resigned from Heathdale College and prepared to head for Alice Springs. I arranged to hire a truck (I have a truck licence) to take our main furniture items to Alice Springs, then planning to return to then drive up to Alice with my wife. I’d tow a trailer behind my Rodeo 4WD while she drove the small VW 1978 Golf.

In January 2001 I collected the rental truck and we stacked as much as we could into it. I would take my Engel freezer with supplies in it (this was mid-January summer) and hopefully would take six days to do the round trip to Alice. The Engel ran on 12V while the truck ran a 24V system; however I had been given a 24V to 12V step-down transformer to run my Engel. The problem was that once I got going, I found the step-down unit would only deliver around 10.5V at best. The Engel wasn’t going to work, and it was too late to get something to replace the step-down unit. My freezer was filled with cold stuff that would have to be eaten quickly or else go off. I headed off in the evening and then ate most of the food the next day. It was a hot day, around 45^OC and driving north into the sun was even hotter. I had rented a truck without aircon because it was cheaper to rent and used less fuel (it was 4600km return trip); I now regretted this decision! I reached Alice the next morning after driving most of the night while it was cooler. The furniture was unloaded into a storage facility and I headed south again. Around Coober Pedy I had to stop for a while with kangaroos clustered on the road so thickly that it was hard to avoid them all. Warm moonlit nights tend to bring them to the roads where grass grows on the verges but little elsewhere.

Arriving home after being on the road for only 4 days there and back, I returned the truck and loaded up the cars and my trailer. My wife had little luggage; the animals took up the back seat and their feed and water took up much of the boot. The VW had roof bars with some bits and pieces but it was only a small car and couldn’t be loaded up with much. My Rodeo and trailer carried a lot including fuel and water.

We left early morning and drove. My wife was not used to long-distance driving so we had frequent breaks, including for the needs of the cat and dog. The first day hit 48^OC as we passed through Renmark on the Murray River at sunset. We stopped briefly there but had to keep moving at night while it was cooler. After a stop near Burra SA we drove on into what would be over 50^OC. It was too hot to stop even in the shade, so we just kept on driving. (The VW overheated most of this day but we couldn’t stop for long so just had to put up with the damage it did to the small engine.) At Pimba Roadhouse we stopped for cold drinks and bags of ice to scatter all around the VW especially with the cat and dog. The next day was just as hot, and we were relieved when it was only 45^OC when we reached Alice the 3^rd morning. We never experienced such heat again even while living in Alice. It could often get into high 40s on the road south from Alice in summer, but not like the 51 or 52 we had when first driving there. When we were about halfway there my wife said we should never have come; it was too hot; but it was too late to turn back by then!

Alice Springs is a fairly green place where our rental required that we keep the lawns watered with water from deep wells just south of the town. We rented a house with an aboriginal family on one side and another 2 houses away on the other side. We were to get to know them very well, and even today we still keep in regular contact with some of them. Their children would come into our yard to play under my wife’s supervision. She would also take our neighbours shopping and to hospital emergency when required (which did happen at times), and to church on many Sundays. I was given a class at Yirara College with teenage students from remote communities around the outback. My class was the lowest level, with very few having attended school before they came into my room. Violence was a daily affair, especially among the males, and my class was probably the most violent. Some teachers called it the feral class! Many were petrol sniffers or on other substance abuse. Every term I’d start off with mostly a new group of students; most never made it past a single term. I’d have maybe 25 to start each term, but by the end of term this would halve with many running away as soon as they became bored with learning. I had a teacher-aide for the mornings but the afternoons (when they were more likely to misbehave) I had them on my own.

I had to take the class to a local dentist in my first term there. I was supposed to have an aide to assist but she wasn’t able to make it this day, so I had to watch 25 wild students on my own in the waiting room. They were impossible! The cold-water dispenser soon ran out as they emptied it onto the floor, and the receptionist was in despair while they messed around the place. I vowed never to take them to the dentist again without extra help! Many of them spoke little or even no English, and I spoke none of their languages (there were around 5 or more local languages in Alice alone). Every term I had a mostly new lot of unschooled teenagers to break in! I lasted almost three years before deciding I had to have a break from this to regain my sanity. Because I was renting a house, it was hard to take a break and keep on paying the rent. So near the end of my 3^rd year I resigned and took up a position as principal at a Christian school in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne. But that’s another part of my story.

The aboriginal families we lived next to mostly came from the Warlpiri tribal people of the Tanami Desert area. We got to know them well, helping them with all sorts of things including medical needs, shopping needs, transport needs, looking after their children, assisting with legal problems (family violence, especially alcohol-fueled violence, was a way of life for many of them), helping them with the social and welfare personnel, in fact, just being alongside them when they needed help. Aboriginal people have some difficulty fitting in with our type of society and what they often need is simply someone alongside them to help them. Aboriginal society is different in some ways. They find it difficult to say no to family (where family can be any one of dozens of relations where relations are defined by their societal code, with “skin names” referring to their position in their society). So anyone who claims to be “family” can come and take what they want from another who isn’t using it at that time. If one has food in the fridge, another can come and take it as their right. The same with a car; your car is only yours if you need it now, otherwise someone else who is “family” can take it and use it. If one gets a job, and therefore gets wages, then others will come and demand it be shared with “family”. If one tries to get off the grog (alcohol), they often get hooked on grog again because “family” comes in and uses their house for drinking. It’s so hard to say no to family. If “family” drink in your house and start a fight, it’s hard to tell them to go away because they are “family”.

Because of our involvement with aboriginal people, we have been accepted into their society; we are family to some of them. Their society says there is no relationship outside kin, so we must be made kin in order to be accepted as helpers. We have been given aboriginal “skin names” to connect us to them as “family”. We have aboriginal people calling us mum and dad, and so on. We have a “daughter” in Adelaide whom we regularly help with advice on legal, dietary and financial issues. She used to be an alcoholic but is now (as far as we know) no longer addicted. She eats well, looks after herself much better than she did in Alice, and her children (who were taken off her a few times in the past due to drunken violence) have mostly returned to her. Unfortunately this still leads to conflict which we do try to sort out.

So what did we gain by going to Alice Springs? It’s a long and difficult process to help the people there but that was our ministry which we are still involved with today. It was more than just education ministry, more of a missionary ministry. What they need is not more money thrown at them, nor land nor possessions; what they need is mostly people to get alongside them to help them better understand our society. Their tribal rules might work in remote areas, but so many in urban situations need help in living away from their remote communities with such different societal roles.
We did do a lot of travelling while living in Central Australia, including down to Victoria and return four times a year. We would travel south to keep in touch with family, doing the return trip in a week, around 35-40 hours each way, travelling day and night. Watching for wildlife at night, especially kangaroos, did slow us down a bit though, and good driving lights on the car were essential.