Monday 4th June - Around Katherine

Distance Education

John relaxes on the air bed - Katherine

John still had a sore back today so I left him to rest and went to visit the Katherine School of the Air, which is the biggest school of the air in the world in that it covers a vast area.  All of the top end is within their service area and so are offshore islands.  NT children who are overseas with their parents are also covered.  There are currently 25 teachers and 250 pupils.  Some of these children are on remote cattle stations and others are from remote indigenous communities, with everything in between.  Teaching is done by correspondence together with internet links.  Up until 2006 it was radio, not computer.  I saw a teacher interacting with about 6 children who are grouped together on an age rather than a geographical basis.  The teacher can see a small image of each of them and they can see a three quarter screen image of the teacher.  The teacher also spends one on one time with each of the children durng the day.  The school aims to get all the children together in a location around Katherine 3 times a year so they get the social interaction that many of them are missing out on.  The school caters from pre school to year 9 and after that the child's education has to be continued at boarding school. 

In the afternoon we went to Cutta Cutta caves and did a tour.  These caves are inhabited by two rare bats, the ghost bat and the golden  horseshoe bat.  Both are very small bats.  The cave is also inhabited by brown tree snakes who get an easy meal when the bats leave the cave in the evening!  We didn't see any bats as they go into the deepest recesses of the caves to roost, but we did hear them.  The cave totally floods in 'the wet' so the bats and the snakes have to vacate for about 3 months of the year.  No idea where they go.

We finished off the day having a dip in the local hot springs.  The water downstream from the source is about 32 degrees so quite refreshing.