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Published: October 29th 2008
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Miss Black
Rachel showing the kids where we intend to go G'day folks!
After a VERY long journey i finally made it to Port Augusta, South Australia.
On my last night in Koh Samui i bumped into two Englsh sisters that had rented the bungalow next to mine. They were from a small village outside Taunton and we hung out for the night and following day playing cards and chatting non stop. The weather had turned by then and it was raining most of the time, so i was therefore glad to be leaving the country!
I flew from Koh Samui to Bangkok where i had a five hour wait (Bangkok airport is awesome for shopping!) then flew over night to Melbourne. A further two hour wait before flying to Adelaide where rachel picked me up and drove us the 3.5 hours back to Port Augusta!
At Koh Samui they kindly checked my baggage straight through to Melbourne, which made life a lot easier, however when it didnt arrive on the baggage carousel in Melourne i started to panic! I was just about to call Rachel to say "first stop the Mall!"!" when it arrived.
I decided that i had been living with the minimum anyway and as long as i
And they're off!
Heading onto the beach had a credit card and passport i would be fine. i had also learnt to always pack spare undies, a tooth brush and some essentials in my hand luggage to deal with such a situation.
When i arrived Rachel burst into tears! It was great to see her again and she was such a suk!
That night we stayed up till 2am drinking and chatting, we had years to catch up on and stories to tell, so we were not at our best at 6.30am the following morning and had a day at School ahead of us! Rachel teaches 5,6 ad 7 year olds at the local Junior School in Port Augusta. 48% of the children here are Aboriginal and many with low living standards. around 90% of Rachels class of 20 are traumatized kids with backgrounds i dont want to go into in detail on this blog. ALL are great loving kids that feel School is their safety zone.
As some of you may know i have taught in schools before and worked with kids in various areas i the UK, however i was not prepared for how relaxed and different the set up here was. Rachel told me
that 50% of her time is spent teaching the children with the other 50% being spent on basic pastoral care. Making sure they have enough to eat, they are having their needs serviced, they are kept happy and calm and they are being listened to.
You will see some pics attached of some of the children. We took them to the beach in the morning, something Rachel is doing every Monday morning with them this term, to learn about the environment and more importantly, to get them out and about!
A few children in particular stood out, one child spent quite a bit of time wandering on the beach on her own and clearly has a long way to go emotionally but when she smiled she was the most beautiful child! The other was Rhianna who you will see in the pictures with my cap on. She clung to me ALL morning.I so wanted to take her home with me. She drew a beautiful picture for me before i left and in return i gave her some Thai money as she had never seen foreign money before. Bless her, she asked me if the man on the 20bht note was
my "mate"! it is in fact the president of Thailand but she didn't know where that was so just settled for the fact that i knew him! Rachel is working hard with her right now but they live in such an insulated world out here that some of them dont know any better. Then there is little Tia.....aged six with no front teeth she spend weekends competing in dirt bike rallies! her motto is "Go Hard or Go Home!"
Being in Rachels class is more than interesting......more time is spent trying to get them to do the same thing at the same time without one running amoc, two having no food and whining that they are hungry, one climbing on the tables and another unable to dress themselves! By the time i left the principal was up on the roof trying to talk one of the kids back down.
Rachel had managed to book a few days off so we went our for dinner monday night and my god.....i have never wanted steak so much in my life! My diet the last month had consisted of rice and fish, this was great and i LOVE Thai food however there is
nothig like a little variety and i almost ate the plate i enjoyed it so much! Yesterday lunch time we set off for a night in the Bush. Rachel had organised a trip to Iga Warta, an Aboriginal reserve about 4 hours north of Port Augusta. We drove through the desert and saw NOTHING BUT desert for 90% of the drive. We did however manage to spot a Kangaroo, and have the obligatory photo taken by the Roo signpost!
50km from the site Rachel became increasingly scared of driving her 4x4 on the gravel roads round the hills.....the solution?? pull over, crack open a bottle of Chardy and calm the nerves! After "re-fueling" we arived at camp and headed off to our "Safari tent" This was luxury compared to a number of places i had resided in recently and after another glass of wine we headed over to the main building for dinner. Dinner consisted of Kangaroo, roasted pumpkin and veges, it was absolutely divine and two helping of Roo later we set off to the campfire to spend the night listening to the tribe tell stories and sing songs about the land and the animals and how things came
to be the way they are today. You may remember me telling you about the starry night sky in Africa a while back? The sky there paled in comparison to what i witnessed last night. It was like someone had thrown a handful of Sugar into the sky........it was littered with thousands upon thousands of stars each (according to the tribe) with their own meanings and symbols.
We made it back to PA this afternoon and will head out for dinner tonight before setting of for Adelaide later on tomorrow. We intend to spend a couple of days there checking out the wildlife and before i fly over to Melbourne for a week.
As for the wildlife here, there is a Redback spider hanging around outside my bedroom window and so far i haven't seen any snakes, thank god! Other than that its just the thousands of flies and the odd lizard!
I hope you enjoy the pictures and just to let you all know, i have also loaded the pictures of the high wire escapade to the last blog. so hit Previous and you should be able to view them all now.
Well i may not be able
to Blog again till Adelaide or even Melbourne so i hope you are all wrapping up warm!
Till next time..xxxx
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Been
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Out and about in the Bush!
Great pictures Lucy, certainly turning out to be a trip of memories to treasure. Been xx