Today was more of an educational day, as we learned more about the Australian Aborigines some of their cultures, and how they lived. We also visited the “School of Air”, the Outback version on the University of Phoenix, only for young children.
The first stop of the day was a small aborigine community just a few miles outside Alice Springs. We were met by a gentleman from an organization that works with the aborigine people and listened while he explained many interesting facts: currently there are about 400,000 Aboriginies remaining in Australia, most of which live in the warmer northern part of the country. They have only 8 male and 8 female names, and we were told it is the way they say the name distinguishes who they are calling, and he said even though they understand it is difficult for outsiders to catch the difference. The mother picks the husband for her daughters, typically at age 14, and she picks because she understands bloodlines and this keeps cross breeding to a minimum. After daughter is married the mother is no longer allowed to look at or speak to the son-in-law.
We visited several Aborigine people in the camp, one Johnny Possum (in 1967 when Australia finally made these native people citizens they assigned them English names), who braided hair into various things they needed such as belts to hold there spears. Then we had an opportunity to meet several women who painted scenes in much the same way they have from the beginning. Although they do not like their pictures taken, they did allow us to photograph them with a painting if you bought one (they learned fast). Picture below
Then we got to hear about the foods they ate and actually got to taste a few, including Kangaroo tail, and several spices and desert fruits. One guy on the tour actually got to try a live grub that was found in the tree bark of a tree we sat under. Lastly we got an overview of there tools and weapons, and got to throw a boomerang.
After this we headed to the School of Air, where we learned a little about the challenges of trying to educate children spread out over 750,000 square miles! This school was started in 1953 by a doctor who also started the flying doctors. As you can imagine trying to teach children and take care of the sick or injured has a great many challenges when dealing with the distances here in the Northern Territory as well as other states here in Australia.
Currently the school teaches 140 children from the cattle stations (ranches), and remote areas. The furthest children are almost 1000 miles apart, and happen to be in the same class. Children and the parents make about 4 trips per year and spend 1 week in Alice Springs so as to allow interaction between the children. The Australian government gives the school roughly $21,000 per student which is what it costs to teach children in the public schools. To set up the children’s home school the school provides each child with satellite dish, computer, and all necessary books and supplies. Teachers actually visit each child in their home school once a year but the rest of the time teaching is done on the Internet using cameras. We actually got to see a class being taught while we were there, very interesting.
The rest if the day we had free, so we walked around the downtown area, had lunch then back to hotel to read for awhile, clean up and head to dinner. Tonight dinner was on our own so we went with two other couples to the local casino where we had dinner at an outdoor restaurant. It was Halloween so the casino put on a little party for the children of Alice Springs, and they were all there in costume.
Tomorrow we head off to Melbourne, a 3 hour flight south of Alice Springs, and do to timing and a time change (1 1/2 hours ) the day will be spent traveling.
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