Two Days on Melville Island

Mark and I and the other teachers (six in all) spent Thursday and Friday on the Tiwi Islands. We flew into Tiwi College at Pickertaramoor around 9 am and then spent the day visiting the communities, first Nguiu on Bathurst Island and then up to Milikapati on Melville. How do you sum it up in a blog? It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

Here's the short version:

Thursday 9 am in a small twin engine plane
Landed at Pickertaramoor

Into Tiwi College bus and to the college
Then to Three Ways, where main the roads meet

Where the plaque errected last year by the govenor general reads
'The hopes of Tiwi generations have
Passed along these roads seeking
The vision of Tiwi leaders
Through three ways to the future'.

From Three Ways on the new Tiwi bus service
Packed with children and adults
To the barge landing near Paru
Then to Nguiu for an hour
Walking to the store and back

From Paru to Nine Mile water hole. Unbelievable.

Nine Mile to Milikapati

And to the beach, more beautiful than any you would ever see anywhere
And the water more deadly.
After tempting the six metre croc that has been in these parts now for weeks

We traveled back to the Pickertaramoor
Then to Maxwell Creek Forestry Camp for the night

Friday and back through the forest plantation
To Three Ways then to Pickertaramoor with Tiwi youth
And their parents and leaders of the Tiwi Land Council.
This is actually happening and here are the 6 Family Group houses
Where 12 students will live in each huse five days a week.

The school is being built before our eyes
Even our homes - polystyrene filled with concrete
Apparently cyclone proof.

To the water fall and water hole on the school
A swim in the stream

Then to the airstrip after an afternoon shower and a flight through Hector
To Darwin.

We will be back here teaching in about three weeks.