Good Bye to Mount House Station

“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-bye is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties the past to the future.”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

I have now returned home to Perth and it is good bye which applies to my adventures at Mt House. Guess what? "Cooee" was used by parents to summon their children who would be some distance away!

My time at the station was harder than my gig in Bangladesh, which was strange as I was supposedly working within a familiar culture and the Anglo-Australian paradigm. I do not use my blog to bag about a situation and always try and reflect the positive stuff that has happened.

So here are the positives I take back with this experience:

• Another situation of cultural shock but as I had done several units at University on Australian history I was prepared for a little of what I witnessed and lived in.

  

• I made some great friends who ironically are not West Australian or Kimberley folk but are Kiwis who are imported as a source of labour into Australia.

• I was situated in some incredible and spectacular scenery. The sunsets equal those of Africa and the night sky is stunning.

•  I climbed Baobab (boab) trees. I swam in crystal clear fresh water. I jumped into gorges. I fished for my supper. I got an idea of how stations of over 1 000 000 acres are managed.

  

• The food I ate was wholesome and healthy.  I learnt to cook starting from basics.

• I have become a better educator because of the difficulties I encountered.

• The Kimberley School of the Air staff are wonderful and the station children who have this kind of schooling unfortunately do not realise how privileged they are as they not only have top quality teachers but their school is better resourced than the average metropolitan state school here in Perth.

 

 

I agonised for about three weeks  whether I should return to do the fourth term at the station when I picked up a PD James novel and found written in 2002 a most strange inscription on the opening page.

Interestingly it was written by one of the owners of the station pastoral lease who resides most of the year in Sydney. 

Read it for yourself and make what you want of it! LOL!

I will not dwell on the negatives but my final photo might tell its own story! I wonder where my next gig will be?