My world walk blog Australia 66 - The School of the Air

The School of the Air.

So much was happening in Mount Isa that I had so little time to draw my breath, or even write about it!

 I was delighted to be asked to talk to the students and staff of the School of the Air in Mount Isa. It's a school for students who live on remote stations in Queensland. Their catchment area is almost a million square kilometres. They cater for about 160 students from some 110 families. Each family home has a dedicated room for their children to receive their online tuition from a teacher who is based in the Mount Isa School of the Air center. The teachers go through the lessons online. These days this is done by Skype which is much more user-friendly than the old radio method of bygone years. If you know Australia you may be wondering how this is possible with the poor internet service here. I'm told that in many cases they have to use expensive satellite internet, and on occasions even a generator for power. Class sizes are limited to a maximum of ten students and depending on how many children are being educated in each family there could be several remote stations (ranches) hooked up to a single teacher. The school is financed by Education Queensland, with no expense incurred by the families. Each family is issued with a phone and a headset.
The school also has the unenviable task of having to mail out the assignments several weeks in advance and to also make allowances for when mail delivery can't get through to the stations due to flooding. I would have thought it would be easier to have all this done 100% online but for reasons that I failed to understand its not realistic. Many families don't want to download and print out whole text books and other issues like printers running out of ink have to be taken into account. It seems that the schools yearly mail bill is in the region of 40,000 dollars, I'm sure if they could cut that astronomical bill by utilising a total online method, then they would. While I was there I spent over three hours talking to the students and staff and answered all the usual world walk questions. I didn't have to wait long for the usual children's all time favourite question: "How do you get across the ocean!'

Before I left I had a nice chat with the principal, Tim Moes and other staff members. Also a man called David Hunter, originally from Scotland who was of enormous help later that day when he took me to and from my Mount Isa Rotary Club speaking engagement.

One woman at the school called Tina, lives in Avon Downs and gave me an invite as I will be walking past her home in a couple of weeks time. She also kindly agreed to take a supplies package on for me as its going to get pretty remote in the next two months. The supermarket here in Mount Isa will be the last decent one until I get to Katerine 1,200 kilometred away. My plan was to do a big shop in Mount Isa and send ahead about five boxes of supplies to roadhouse to hold for me until I arrive. Tina offered to deliver one to her neighbour.

" Tina, how far away from you is your neighbour?"

"Next door, about two hundred kilometres away!"