Yes - we are still in Darwin. I fly to the Tiwi Islands each Tuesday morning and return home to Nicole and the kids in Darwin Friday afternoon.
On Friday Nicole and Amber did a fantastic job moving house from the Free Spirit Resort to the Mirambeena Travel Lodge in the heart of Darwin, where we expect to be until we eventually leave for Melville, which could be as soon as mid April. We had been here only two nights when a storm hit late yesterday afternoon and flooded out our apartment! The staff were great and helped us move to a new and drier place. During the storm I pulled out the fishing rod and tried my luck lure fishing in the loungeroom. I did well; got as many bites as I've had at the Nightcliff Jetty.
That's Darwin. Darwin is the city of storms.
Although things don't go to plan, from our perspective all is going well here. Tiwi College is moving ahead, though I really wouldn't believe it if I weren't living it. It seems nothing can stop the determination of the Tiwi Land Council and Andy and Peter, the college leaders, to build this school. The roads are still blocked on the islands, building materials can't be trucked in and the builders have left - so the Land Council fly in the materials, get the builders back and press on. We can't bus students to and from school each week - so we fly them in. The rising water table has made a section of the airstrip too wet to use - so we cut the strip short and use the dry end. The buildings aren't finished and we can't accomodate 72 students - so we take a small number of students and start school anyway.
In a few short weeks we have also developed professional capacity as a team of teachers. The school has a vision for learning and a school-wide-pedagogy, the curriculum process is dynamic and drawn from the pedagogy, and we are teaching, assessing and reporting - we send home weekly reports with each student together with a college newsletter.
If there is a lesson in any of this, it is that although very little goes to plan, things work out anyway. On Friday we had the fax with the flight details to get students home. I should know better - nothing here goes to plan, but I decided to stick with the details anyway. We were expecting an 11 seater caravan plane at 12:45, and a five seater landed at 1:20. We put four students on the plane to Milikapati and I then get on the phone to Ray who organises the flights 'Ray. What happened?' Every week is different. It seems that this week, 3, 300 planes were grounded across thecountry due to concerns with the fuel injection system. Ray organsied a plan B and couldn't get that faxed through. Plan B then failed because of a storm in Darwin and the planes ended up hours later than expected. We were lucky to actually fly the kids out and get back to Darwin ourselves.
Ever the optimist, I lost a bet with Mark that we'd be back in Darwin by 4 pm. As I sat down last night drinking one of the beers in the six pack I bought him for loosing the bet, I wondered if I had learned my lesson.
No, I don't think so. Not yet.
