NT 2004

By James Dimmock, Sports Challenge Australia Mentor/Coach
It was always going to be an interesting trip to the Northern Territory. A tropical cyclone was hovering off the northern tip of Australia prior to departure. Moreover, I’d received a warning from my Darwinian friend that crocodiles had been seen strolling down the streets of a town we were visiting. Admittedly, these shop-browsing crocodiles hadn’t reappeared since the town’s freakish floods numerous years ago. However, the tropical cyclone was bound to bring heavy rainfall and floods into the area…..or at least that’s what I thought.
Thanks to our generous sponsors, Alcohol Education Rehabilitation Foundation, we boarded the plane in Perth and enjoyed an uneventful flight to Darwin. The heat and humidity of the tropical north hit us immediately as we set foot in Darwin. It was an intense heat – and we began sweating immediately. I vowed never to whinge about winter again. NT experiences two seasons a year – hot/wet and moderate/dry. The association of hot and wet was novel to me; I’d never experienced a climate in which you were dying for a swim when it was pouring with rain.
We began driving towards our base for the first week, Katherine in our Budget 4 wheel drive. The four-hour drive was uneventful thankfully and allowed the four Sports Challenge mentors to ‘bond’. We did have a few hair-raising moments when we navigated our way through flooded and broken patches of road (being soft city people).
The Sports Challenge program ran for a week at Clyde Fenton Primary School in Katherine. Both students and staff were very welcoming – and were willing participants in all activities. I was particularly impressed with the integration of the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children, who worked very well together. Our experience at Clyde Fenton was so positive that the exasperating heat did not overshadow the positive feelings that we enjoyed from our program there. Highlights of the Clyde Fenton program included our association with a group of boys and girls from the English as a Second Language (ESL) group. Some of the Aboriginal pupils arrived at the school from remote areas and did not speak English fluently. These children were grouped together and we ran a specialised program for them. I feel they really enjoyed the program, I certainly learned a lot from them.
After leaving Katherine, we ran a program in a tiny school in the remote township of Timber Creek three days. The vast majority of the children at the school were of Aboriginal descent. It’s difficult to write about the warmth and sincerity of the staff and students of the school. Suffice to say that they were among the most compassionate and friendly people that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting through Sports Challenge. Many of the pupils were ‘natural’ athletes with a keen interest in sport, so our program was welcomed and accepted by the majority of the students. The agility of these kids is amazing.
I strongly believe that the program was effective in Timber Creek and was sad to leave; I look forward to seeing the pre and post-test data when it is completed.