Indigenous Employment Program

Mick Armstrong and Geoff Toombey just completed an epic 3600km journey from Katherine across the Barkly to Soudan Station where they caught up with Kelwyn Aplin and Junior Walden then back through the VRD to Pigeon Hole (too wet to reach Xavier Williams, Korek Weston and Geoffey Barry), they caught up with the manager at Pigeon Hole Rusty who was impressed with their progress so far. Next stop VRD station where head stockmen  Bevan Rogers and stockmen Terry Sambo and Nathan Weston are busy in the stock camp. Then off to Auvergne where Ben Higgens and Liam Birriam were busy loading eight roadtrains full of cattle heading to Wyndham wharfs. Tipperary Station next stop where thet caight up with Alward  and Roderick  at Doughlas Yards and finally honey moon yards to see Tanya Callaghan and back to the station where Cameron Noonan was resting a busted collar bone. All particpants have settled in to their new jobs and lots of great feedback about how they are going from their new bosses. Next roadtrip early June.

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Great outdoors.... Tanya Callanan, one of 24 young Aborigines on a two-week training courseat Tipperary Station, chats with Darren'Junior" Waldren. Photo: Glenn Campbell

STOCKMEN call it the McLeods Daughters syndrome. Every year dozens of young people who have watched the television program travel from southern states to help fill a shortage of jackeroos and jilleroos on cattle stations across Australia’s north.
But Paul Jenkins, strategic projects manager of the Indigenous Land Corporation, says most of them do not last much longer than a gap year in the harsh environment. Most of them only stay one, possibly two, years before they go back to university or another job.” Now government agencies and cattlemen are pushing young indigenous people into full-time jobs on the stations, hoping they will become career stockmen.
Tanya Callanan, 30, says she is proud to be taking up horse work the same as her Aboriginal mother and grandfather, who worked cattle on land that is now Kakadu National Park.
“The work is worth getting out of bed for,” says Ms Callanan, a former ranger at Kakadu.
“It’s the smell of the leather, the smell of the horses, being able to handle horses and read and muster the cattle. And nothing beats sitting down around the campfire at sunset swapping yarns with your mates after a hard day’s work.”
The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association has secured jobs for eight first-year indigenous stockmen who are among 24 young Aborigines undergoing a two-week training course at Tipperary Station, 150 kilometres south of Darwin.
Ms Callanan hopes when the course ends on Thursday that she will secure one of four vacancies at the station, which runs 75,000 head of cattle.
The federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is funding the Indigenous Land Corporation to convert 150 parttime work positions for indigenous people to full-time jobs, 45 of their in the pastoral industry.
The corporation was set up in 2005 to help Aboriginal people with land management.

Queenslander Alward Foster turns his stock horse as part of horsemanship training at Tipperary Station in the Northern Territory. Photo: Glenn Campbell

Luke Bowen, head of the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association, says station owners are keen to employ indigenous stockmen who have undergone courses like the one at Tipperary. “The industry wants to ensure all involved enjoy the training and the job and as a result come back next year,” he says.
Meanwhile, this week in the remote Arnhem Land community of Yirrkala, 200 indigenous children will each receive a specially designed XO laptop as part of a One Laptop Per Child Australia program.
The program, backed by some of Australia’s biggest companies, plans to provide laptops to thousands of children living in outerregional, remote and very remote communities.

Muster pulls in those looking for their station in life
Lindsay Murdoch
IN DARWIN

Sydney Morning Herald
Monday 29/3/2010