Nyirripi School

Wendy is the Princpal at the School. It's a small school.
About nineteen children attend the school. They age from 5-12 years.

The school started about 1976.

My name is Magda. I'm teaching maths and English and computers.

About the lecturer

Hi my name is Ren. I'm the Batchelor lecturer at Nyirrpi. Mainly I teach English but I also help other students with their studies.

I started in 1996 at Nyirrpi as a school teacher. I returned to Yuendumu and Nyirrpi in 1999 as the Batchelor lecturer and worked between the 2 places until 2002. I was very sick and was transferred to Alice Springs. Then I worked with lots of other people many places like Docker River, Papunya, Utopia, Tennant Creek and Borroloola. All over the place.

Last year I taught a workshop at Nyirrpi and many people said they wanted to study again. They filled in the forms, and Batchelor asked me if I would like to teach at Nyirrpi in 2007. So here I am! Back for the third time! Its great to be back because the Study Centre and house are all new and beautiful. Before we had to work and live in old, wrecked buildings.

What else about me? Well I like dogs and have 2 Shelties. One of them is in the photo. Living out bush, I've developed an interest in old car parts. Well really that is probably also from growing up on a farm in Ringarooma, Tasmania too. My Dad always had old bombs around. And there was heaps of wrecked machinery like bull dozers and trams in the paddock

opposite my grandmother's place, that my brother and I used to play on. Anyway I make things out car parts like fences and shade shelters. So there you go. But please check out the photostory link below. Its a song that a group of workmates wrote and sang for me. It probably sums me up the best!

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-4678999614052005141&hl=en-AU

Batchelor Institute at Nyirrpi

People from Nyirrpi have been studying at Batchelor for a long time. Back in 1996 there was 1 woman studying teaching. A lecturer used to visit from Yuendumu. In 1996 I (Ren Barnett) was working as a teacher at the school.

At this time a group of about 17 people asked for a lecturer to live at Nyirrpi to teach them English. A lecturer moved to Nyirrpi in 1997 and people started studying English.

I started work with Batchelor at the beginning of 1999. I was living between Yuendumu and Nyirrpi teaching English to adults, and supporting other Batchelor students with their studies. I was the lecturer here until June 2002. At Nyirrpi the student numbers grew from about 5 to around 70. Nearly 20 people were studying English. Others were studying health work, community maintenance, art & craft, children services and teaching.

At that time there wasn’t a Study Centre at Nyirrpi. We studied in a silver bullet (see photo) that was very dilapidated, crowded and the air conditioning and heating didn’t really work. I also stayed in a very run down silver bullet that didn’t have air conditioning. However
the Institute decided to build a Study Centre and staff accommodation because there were so many people studying at Nyirrpi. These buildings were finished in 2002 and 2003. The Insittute held an opening for the new Study Centre in April 2003. The kids danced and everyone was very excited. Unfortunately I was very ill by this time and had to transfer into Alice Springs. Another lecturer was the first person to get to teach and live in the new facilities.

I transferred back to Nyirrpi at the beginning of this year (2007) after student enrolments increased at the end of 2006. At this stage there are about 25 people studying English and 6 studying Own Language Work. Some of these students used to be children in my class at the school in 1996!

During the time I was away the Art & Craft lecturers visited Nyirrpi regularly. They have done many projects improving the environment around Nyirrpi, and have had a number of exhibitions to sell there quirky sculptures.