Central Queensland is a unique slice of Australia encompassing the beautiful Capricorn Coast,
extending inland through the rural centre of Rockhampton and stretching as far West
into the Central Highlands of Emerald.
Central Queensland has a subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and cool, dry winters.
Rainfall is highly seasonal with most rain occurring during the summer months.
Temperatures will rarely fall below five degrees in winter and 37 degrees in summer.
Roughly a two-hour drive from Rockhampton is the town of Woorabinda.
Woorabinda is generally accessible all year round by sealed roads.
Woorabinda, meaning ‘kangaroo sit down’ is a discrete Aboriginal community that sits
on the traditional lands of the Wudja and Gungaloo people.
The township is bordered by the seasonal Mimosa Creek, a tributary of the mighty Dawson River.
In 1926 the Queensland Government closed down the Taroom Aboriginal Reserve, a neighbouring
town of the now Woorabinda.
The people of Taroom were soon relocated tothe Woorabinda District over a gruelling 12-month
expedition.
In 1927 the Woorabinda Aboriginal Reserve was officially established.
The new reserve was a highly regulated and tightly controlled environment.
The people of Woorabinda and Taroom Reserves were originally removed from their homelands
across Queensland, New South Wales and as far west as the Northern Territory.
Today Woorabinda is a proud Aboriginal community, with a population of around 1,000 people.
There are over 52 clans represented within the community.
The township has a strong cultural presence with an enduring connection to the traditional
languages, art and dance, with these cultural practices ever present throughout the community.
Woorabinda has great facilities, with most services within walking distance.
The town has a Police Station, post office, service station, swimming pool and a local
sports hall.
The town has a freshly stocked independent grocery store selling a variety of grocery
items.
There is also a fast food café for those who need an early morning caffeine fix.
Woorabinda is renowned for their enthusiastic support of rugby league and the town boasts
an impressive football grounds and is home to the indomitable Woorabinda Warriors.
The Woorabinda Multipurpose Health Centre provides a full range of healthcare services,
including an emergency department, acute inpatient, general outpatient, aged care, community health
and also visiting specialists.
Positioned at the southern end of the community is Woorabinda State School.
The school has roughly 150 students from kindergarten to Year 6.
The school’s motto is ‘proud and deadly’.
At Woorabinda we’re looking for teachers who have a very strong sense of social justice.
Our kids have a history and they come from families with a strong colonial history in
Queensland.
So we need people who are willing to go in for the good fight.
They’re going to go in to bat for the student.
So even when the student is having the worst day possible, you will never, ever give up
on that student.
You will always believe in that student and you will always fight for that student to
have the best and highest level of education that you can provide.
Our kids, because they come to school with what we call locally ‘Woori talk’, it’s
actually an English-based creole.
So our kids don’t actually come with the language of the curriculum.
So that means that when our kids are learning, not only do they have a cognitive load in
terms of the curriculum, they’ve also got a language load that they’ve got to constantly
process because it’s not their first language.
It can be tough teaching at Woorabinda.
You come in each day.
There are things that happen in the community.
It does have a ripple effect.
We try to stop things at the gate, but of course kids don’t just drop their home life
at the gate and then come in for school life.
We’ve realised at Woorabinda that having a child come to school is step one.
Having a child ready for learning is step two and they are not necessarily the same
thing.
This is not like any other town.
This is a discrete community and they do things in different ways here.
We are isolated from family.
You have come to a completely new environment.
So when our teachers come out here, they often think they’re the only one going through
that experience.
If you’re feeling vulnerable or you're feeling overwhelmed, you just have to come and ask.
Sometimes a debrief session, just with us or with a colleague.
If you come to Woorabinda to teach, if you can find success and you can navigate your
way in a classroom and you can get those children progressing in their learning and manage the
behaviours, and some of the more challenging behaviours, teaching anywhere else will be
a walk in the park.
My first year up here as a teacher at Woorabinda, it was fun.
It was exciting.
It was challenging.
There were things that were difficult of course but every day was different.
Your first weekend will be the greatest weekend of your life.
So being a teacher here I’ve learnt an incredible amount as well and I feel like I’m the better
teacher for it.
The cross-cultural awareness program that I was involved in really helped inform my
teaching pedagogy through awareness of where Woorabinda has come from and where the students
have come from as well.
I’ve learnt amazing behaviour management strategies, resilience and having that positive
attitude as well.
So I think any teacher would benefit from coming out here.
So living in Woorabinda’s definitely a lot different to living in a larger city.
It is a very small community.
Just walking to and from school for instance, you bump into people you know, the kids you
teach.
But that’s also really exciting because they get to see you as a person as well, and
not just the teacher.
So when I first came out here it was funny because I always thought that driving an hour
and a half was a really long drive.
I actually think I prefer driving an hour out here with no traffic, no traffic lights
than I do driving 10 minutes in the city.
So when I came here to get involved in the community there’s a lot of local staff that
work at the school.
So obviously I was very involved in chatting to them and socialising with them as well.
They’re all very welcoming.
I would also go down and watch the local football games, go along on the weekend and watch them
play, support the local teams.
Yeah, there’s definitely incentives to teaching in a rural place like Woorabinda as well.
There’s subsidised housing, so you can save a lot of money on rent which is fantastic.
You’re also given five raise days which is a rural area incentive scheme.
So you can use those days for travel purposes or if you have a specialist appointment maybe
in the city, and there’s also financial benefits as well to coming out to a rural
school.
So a great way to end the week here as well, a lot of teachers will socialise by going
into Baralaba on a Friday night and you can have a good pub feed.
You can have a beer.
There’s a juke box there, a pool table, great atmosphere, a great place to unwind
and relax, and talk about our week.
If you like fishing there’s a nice creek there and some camping.
You can go there and catch yourself a Barra or a Saratoga.
So before coming out here definitely do your research and make sure that this is somewhere
that you want to be and embrace the community as well.
I really came here because I had an interest in Indigenous culture and I wanted to find
out more about it because I knew wherever I go I’m going to have Indigenous kids in
my class.
I know how to best cater for them, to include them.
So it’s been amazing to find out more.
I’ve loved my teaching position here.
It’s been the best thing.
Yes, it’s been challenging at times but you get the support from everyone.
Everyone’s very helpful and I didn’t want to do mainstream.
I wanted to come here, do something different, but yeah, you’ve got to make sure that you
have the drive to do it.
You need to have the passion for it.
I recommend coming up to see the school before you actually start.
Talk to staff that already work here, find out the ins and outs to see if it’s really
for you.
The accommodation is really good.
It’s fully furnished.
You just need to bring your own bed.
If you want your own TV we’ve got the set-top box, you just need a TV and cooking equipment.
When I first came to Woorabinda working with the kids, my first initial reaction was probably
trying to understand their speech.
It’s a little bit different to standard Australian English.
The life saver was having the teacher aids in the classroom to help us understand what
the kids are trying to communicate to us as well as having their knowledge of the kids
in the community.
It did become easier to understand the kids.
You just adapt to it.
I don’t know how, but you just get this connection with them that you’re able to
listen carefully and you really take it in.
The other kids will repeat.
If you can’t understand one kid, I’ll say to the others ‘What did he say?’ or
‘What did she say?’ and that helps a lot.
So you work together.
They don’t understand me sometimes as well because I speak differently and fast.
So it’s really about helping each other.
I found here you really need to help them with their self-confidence.
Some have it, some don’t.
So you need to be able to cater for that so that they actually can and want to be in the
classroom, and because they're so hands-on and outdoorsy, you need to be able to in the
classroom when they’ve got to come in four walls, make that learning applicable to them
because if it’s not applicable to them, they just can’t sit still.
They won't be engaged and they’ll just get down on themselves.
With any situation or any workplace you have your positives, but also you have your negatives
and in a place like Woorabinda you have to focus on the positives because they will get
you through, and if you focus on the negatives then you start to become undone.
We need teachers who are willing to give it a go and who are willing to step outside their
comfort zone, and are willing to understand the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
way of living through our own kinship systems that we have here in community.
Teachers who are damn passionate, teachers who go beyond the call of duty, teachers who
step outside the classroom into the community and are not afraid, and are not fearful.
Our Woorabinda children deserve the same education as any other child or young person here in
Queensland.
So when you come to Woorabinda there is protocols to follow.
If you want to go out on country go and let the Council know.
If need, they’ll point you in the right direction to a traditional owner of this land.
When we were kids and we were going to Woorabinda School, the teachers knew my mum.
My mum knew the teachers, so the teachers respected my mum, my mum respected them and
it filtered through the children.
So we knew not to misbehave at school because the teachers would say ‘Right, I’m going
to tell your mum,’ and that’s what happened, and mum would give us a good revving, ‘Don’t
you dare disrespect those people.
They’re my friends,’ and that’s how it was.
To all the people out there, don’t be afraid to come to Woorabinda.
Come out.
Experience it for yourself.
Get to know the people.
Get to know the children.
Get to know the Council.
Get to know everybody – elders.
Everybody’s got different stories but I guarantee that we will all make you feel welcome.
Woorabinda is a rural community surrounded by rich, fertile soils, gorgeous landscapes
and a wide array of Australia’s iconic wildlife.
The town’s colonial past will always play a role in Woorabinda’s story, but today
a proud Woorabinda community has embraced both education and culture in their own Woori
way.
If you’re considering an exciting rural posting and have never experienced Central
Queensland and have a genuine passion to be involved in Indigenous education, Woorabinda
might just be for you.
Come to Woorabinda.
Come to Woorabinda please.