Strangers in their own country

DAY ONE: We are expecting Charlotte and Margaret to begin a ten week educational marathon. To what extent can they catch up? I met Charlotte’s mother, three years ago, when she was making a rare visit to Sydney from a very remote community –let us call it Wangupeni – that is on a beautiful stretch of the East Arnhem Land coast, but 200 kilometres from the nearest Woolworths supermarket, hospital, police station and high school. Last year Charlotte’s parents sent her to an Indigenous boarding school in Melbourne. She had been attending the Wangupeni school for nine years – whenever it was open –but in Melbourne she was unable to keep up in class. Teased by the other girls she became so miserable that she had to return home.

Now Charlotte’s mother and father were very worried about her future. Photographs showed a smiling, pretty, well developed girl of 16. Could I help? My European cousin’s 15-year-old twins had come to us when they had barely been able to speak a word of English….