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Heywire: Living in the outback, coping with boarding school

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Teenage Indigenous boy smiles
Heywire: Living in the outback, coping with boarding school

SUBJECTS:  English

YEARS:  7–8


For Timmy Watson, living in a remote community in the Northern Territory is as good as it gets.

But there's one drawback: the need to go to boarding school during the final years of secondary school. Find out more in Timmy's Heywire audio story.

Could you write or record a similar story about yourself and/or your community?

The ABC's Heywire competition calls for stories from 16-22 year olds in regional Australia. Enter to get your story featured on the ABC and score an all-expenses-paid trip to the Heywire Regional Youth Summit in Canberra. More: https://www.abc.net.au/heywire/


Things to think about

  1. 1.Create a quick mind-map of what the Australian outback means to you, using words and drawings. Do a quick search to find the remote location of Hodgson Downs (Minyerri) in the Northern Territory.
  2. 2.What does Timmy enjoy about living in Hodgson Downs (Minyerri)? What did Timmy learn about at Wallabaroo? Did he enjoy this? How can you tell? Why did Timmy have to go to school in Alice Springs? What made boarding so difficult? What does Timmy want to do in the future? Who else in his family has been involved in this kind of work?
  3. 3.Explain how Timmy feels about living 'out bush'. What clues in his story reveal to you how he feels? What do you think inspired Timmy to become a cattleman? Try to give at least two different reasons.
  4. 4.Use your imagination! Write a short story or create a comic (or a storyboard for a short film) on one of the following topics: — living in the outback — going to boarding school — my future job. Make sure your story has both an appropriate tone and enough clues to make it clear to your readers how you feel about your topic. Share your story with others.



Date of broadcast: 2011


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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