Google Earth, load it up and you are presented with a familiar globe, our home planet. With the wave of a mouse, you can be transported almost instantly - inter-city, inter-state or inter-continentally (is that a word?). Google Earth, this amazing application, provides a way to get a taste of what it might mean to travel (it might also be an excellent way to procrastinate, but no matter). It’s incredible. Just focus on a point, somewhere on the globe that grabs your attention, click, then roll the little mouse wheel to zero in.
Want to visit big places, New York, London, Sydney?…Easy. Maybe do a close-up on Turkmenistan and have a quick look at Ashgabat (the capital). Perhaps check out Kananga - eighteen hours by road from Kinshasa and home to about 1.5 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Or…come home and zoom in on the town of Numbulwar, a Northern Territory community on the Gulf of Carpentaria inhabited by some 670 residents.
I came to know of Numbulwar not, strangely enough, through Google Earth (or Google Maps for that matter) but from a young man, let’s call him Elroy, that I met while teaching at another EREA school some years ago.
Schools receive enrolment forms every day. Conscientious, forward-thinking parents research and investigate options for their sons’ education. Eventually, after varying amounts of discussion, they come to a decision, fill in a form, and send it on its way. There’s a similarity to these forms, mentioning parents, the age of student, the local primary school etc. - all reasonably consistent and familiar. Imagine our surprise when a request arrived to enrol a student who deviated so significantly from the “normal’ enrolment profile that we did a double-take.
This was a self-enrolment - a young man of seventeen, from a school in a town so small and so far away that someone had to look it up on Google Earth. This young man, Elroy, had heard about my school at the time through listening to Murri Radio. Some of the College’s programs were highlighted on a show, and this lit a fire of hope and curiosity in him. With the help of his teacher (who, impressively, later became a member of the NT Legislative Assembly and Minister for just about everything), Elroy downloaded and printed the enrolment form (not many online forms in those days), filled it in, and they both dutifully snail mailed it off into the great unknown.
Needless to say, you need to be brave to take such a massive step, to move from Numbulwar to Brisbane.
Elroy’s aim was to become a Ranger. Rangers are employed to support indigenous people to combine traditional knowledge with conservation training to protect their land sea and culture. They engage in bushfire mitigation, protection against invasive species and biosecurity compliance. Elroy wanted to make a difference. Feeling that he wouldn’t be able to get the education he needed in Numbulwar, he took matters into his own hands and made a change. He made his own difference - for himself.
Two years after arriving at my then school as a seventeen-year-old with limited learning and essentially English as his second language, Elroy graduated. His grandma even flew from Numbulwar for graduation. Through determination, resilience and commitment, Elroy changed his own life – he made a difference.
I never found out if he did become a Ranger. After graduation Elroy left and returned home. Given the man he became, however, I imagine he is now enriching the land and the lives of his community in his own special way.
Not every journey will be as challenging as Elroy’s, but there is no doubt that every journey will not be without its challenges. For our Eddies men, we, as a community espouse values, hold standards and create boundaries that allow them to weather their passage through adolescence.
Strong, Kind and Gentle - we strive to provide experiences and opportunities where our young men take pride in themselves and their achievements. Here on the Hill, we want to foster a culture of respect and resilience, responsiveness and reflection. We want our place, our Eddies, to be a place where they, like Elroy, can be brave and make a change, where they can influence their own hope filled future, and with the skills they have learned, make their own difference, for themselves, for others, for everyone.
Academic Awards Assembly
Today, we celebrated and acknowledged the young men of Years 7, 8 and 9 who achieved academically in 2024. Their commitment to improvement and development, as well as their impressive engagement of executive function is admirable. Well done gentlemen.
Middle and Junior School information Evening
Thank you to all our parents who took the opportunity to attend this event. A little different to others, an initial presentation in the Hall was followed by workshops covering topics from Artificial Intelligence and to mental health to Social Media. Special thanks to our Eddies staff who prepared and presented workshops. I trust that it was a productive evening for all.
