My Kimberley Adventures

Sometimes I walk at the front of the group, sometimes the middle but often at the rear; with the younger tired children. Walking in the rear, I am holding the hands of 2 younger girls; who spend the whole time that we are walking, chattering to me about their day. I feel bad because in the noisy chatter of the other 33 children and with me concentrating on everything I have to; to keep the children safe, I often don't hear their stories. I catch glimmers of how the tooth fairy came that night from Annabel who has lost one tooth and has 3 more really loose teeth that she insists on showing me how much she can wiggle and push with her tongue. I also become aware of the story that Cecelia is telling me about when she had a turn on the biscuit (towed behind a speed boat on Lake Argyle) last weekend with her brother John; and how John caught a giant Barra that was this big (holding out her hands proudly) while still holding my hands while walking. In the heat of the afternoon, my han...

Part of my role as the coordinator of After School Hours Care; and with 2 or 3 other educators is to walk between 20 and 30 children from one school to the other school where the OSHC building is located. The walk is only about 500 metres up the road but we walk to the west, in full sun and this is done at between 2:15 to 2:45PM; essentially the hottest part of the day ranging between 35 - 45 degrees with varying levels of humidity depending on the season. There IS NO option to close school early when it gets higher than 35 degrees; that is life in the Kimberley. The Kimberley Kids are tough; born tough and live tough but these kids are also like any other kid in Australia and this is a narrative that occurs nearly every day when I pick up the children and walk them to OSHC. To look at us from the air, we look like a higgledy piggledy blue snake winding and weaving its way from point A to point B with several stops along the way I have changed the names for privacy r...