Google Earth - load it up and you are presented with a familiar globe, home planet. Here we have a gateway to the world, particularly our world over the past few years. As COVID and lockdowns curtailed any thoughts of travel, inter-city, inter-state or inter-continental, Google Earth, this amazing application, provided a way to taste a little of what it might mean to travel It might also be an excellent way to procrastinate, but no matter. It’s amazing. 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, whom I met while teaching at another EREA school some years ago.
To begin with, 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, age of student, local primary school etc. - all reasonably consistent and familiar. Imagine our surprise when a request arrived to enrol a student who so deviated from the “normal’ enrolment profile. We did 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 go and 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 programs were highlighted on a show and this lit in him, a fire of hope and curiosity. With the help of his teacher (who impressively is now a member of the NT Legislative Assembly and a minister for just about everything) Elroy downloaded, printed and completed the enrolment form (not many online forms in those days) and dutifully snail mailed it off into the great unknown.
Needless to say, you have to be brave to take such a massive step, to move to Brisbane from Numbulwar. 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 bush fire 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 the 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 and made a difference. I never found out if he did become a Ranger. After graduation Eroy 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.
This week here on the hill, we celebrated Reconciliation Week. Our young men have been challenged to work for reconciliation, acknowledging the truth of past wrongs and making steps to create a hope filled and inclusive future - to “Be Brave and Make Change”. In doing so we acknowledge a history and culture that spans tens of thousands of years. The history and culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
As a school in the Edmund Rice Tradition and a community of justice and solidarity we strive for inclusion. We look to be a place where all are respected and where we freely acknowledge their contribution. We learn so much from the diverse cultures that have made a difference in our country. Forty thousand years of First Peoples’ culture enhances us as a nation and as a community.
Strong, kind and gentle, we strive to provide experiences and opportunities, where our young men take pride in the culture that has shaped our land and where they can sculpture their own culture - a culture of respect and resilience, responsiveness and reflection - place where they, like Elroy, can be brave and make change, where they influence their own hope filled future and with the skills they have learned, make their own difference, for themselves, for others, for everyone.
