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Education swirls around central Australia

By Harry Throssell - posted Monday, 5 June 2006


We light a small fire and melt some butter in a tin. We need to get it boiling. We would rather use olive oil but the shop in Areyonga doesn’t always have olive oil.

When the butter or olive oil is boiling, we add the Irmangka-Irmangka powder to it and stir it in. We watch it boil for a few minutes, until the beautiful smells from the Irmangka-Irmangka powder soak into the butter.

We need to strain the solids from the mixture, and we do this through the nice clean paper cloth. Now we can pour the medicine into a jar, ready to use. It smells very strong - like menthol. Anyone with a cold or sore throat can rub some on their chest and soon be better.

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Irmangka-Irmangka is Areyonga’s very special bush medicine.

Lucinda writes about rock art.

My name is Lucinda and I live in Areyonga and I like to make rock art. First, I crush some ochre on a large rock. Then I mix it with water to make it runny. I fill my mouth with the muddy water and place my hand where I want the handprint to be, and spray the muddy water over my hand and the rock. See! I have left a print of my hand on the rock. I showed all the SWIRLers how to make rock art.

Most school students are in primary school, some in secondary, and there are now also programs for pre-school children. Elders and parents perform an important function by contributing their knowledge and experience. The exercises are documented in English and the child’s own language, recorded with computer, digital camera, video, audio recording, artwork and clay animation. Each child thus has his or her own story as a printed, laminated and bound book. This can be shared with family and friends, and with a copy in the school library. In 2005 80 books were produced.

Supporting Indigenous Australians is published by IBM which over the past 10 years has provided over 100 personal computers, ThinkPads and printers to SWIRL communities, the equipment housed at the local school and available for use by the whole community.

“Over the past ten years, 300 education students from Victoria University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, La Trobe University and various European and American educational institutions - including Harvard - have taken part in SWIRL”. More than 30 students have returned later as teachers.

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It was common for teachers in remote communities to stay only seven months or so, but after the SWIRL experience a dozen stayed for three years, and two have become principals in remote schools. Plans are under way for members of the Atitjere community to attend computing courses at the University in Melbourne.

Originally workshops were held in school holidays, but in 2004, with funding from the Northern Territory Government, they were held during term time in the afternoons, SWIRL student teachers cover not only the Alice Springs area but they also visit the Barkly Tableland.

One community involved from the beginning is Areyonga, 240kms west of Alice, where 200 people, mostly from the Pitjantjatajara tribe with a few Arrente and Walpiri, live in an area reserved for Aboriginal people: others need a permit to visit.

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First published in Issue 4 of Journospeak on May 26, 2006.



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About the Author

Harry Throssell originally trained in social work in UK, taught at the University of Queensland for a decade in the 1960s and 70s, and since then has worked as a journalist. His blog Journospeak, can be found here.

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