Today started with the hope of a
fishing and hunting trip for the boys in the program. Jesse had tried numerous
times last week to organise this trip and today he was successful. The boys
loaded into a troopie with Jesse, Daryl and our friend Trevor. After a quick
stop at the shop to buy bullets, lures and a new billy, they were off to
MacDonald.
Despite Trevor complaining that
his game was off, he still managed to shoot a bush turkey. The turkey went on
the roof and the boys continued their drive to MacDonald. When they got there,
the kids dug a fire pit and helped Daryl make the fire. While the turkey cooked,
the boys spent time fishing. Trevor offered up his expert knowledge to the
kids. Unfortunately they didn’t catch anything.
Meanwhile, the girls had an
action-packed morning at school with Rita, Erin, Eamon and myself.
Erin ran an invisible message
activity where the girls wrote a message with lemon juice on a white piece of
paper and then put it in the oven and watched their message appear. Myself and Rita
taught the girls how to make geckos out of beads. The girls carefully planned
their design and then, slowly but surely, learnt the techniques needed to form
the gecko. Through a lot of trial and error all the girls completed their
geckos and many turned them into necklaces, bracelets and headpieces.
Water tension was the focus in
science with Eamon. The girls got to participate in many activities
demonstrating the fun side of the concept. A favourite was ‘floating water’
where they filled up a plastic cup, placed an index card on top of it and flipped
it over. The water looked like it was floating. They soon learnt it wasn’t
magic, it was science! Realising the delicacy required to maintain water
tension, the girls developed a game whereby they tried to get as far as
possible across the basketball court before their water tension broke and they
spilt all the water.
For the afternoon session we
picked up the girls (along with many of the beaded geckos from the morning) and
headed to Renyin. Renyin is a waterhole surrounded by rocky mountains. The kids
love it because there are lots of rocks to jump off and the water is deep.
During the drive to Renyin the girls taught Eamon and Erin some kriol words. We
spent the afternoon relaxing, swimming, looking at birds’ nests, sharing
stories and eating oranges.
On the way home we finally
got the CD player in the troopie working and danced and sung our way back to
Minyerri.
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