Uniform Girls

Life in the Boarding School.

Uniform Girls !

On days when there are visiting Football teams, we have all to be in our school uniforms.

It is hard on the feet wearing black leather shoes!

I said football, but it is not Tiwi football, it is rugby. They take it pretty seriously!

There are kids here from all over Queensland. There are kids from Africa as well.

MSC started Downlands thirty years after they came to the Tiwi Islands. That is why we have been made so welcome. They have made the place work for aborigine kids and they wanted to have Tiwi kids here as well.

Toowoomba gets pretty cold, but mostly it warms up by 10.00 am. But it is always colder than Brisbane and very cold compared with home.

The TV Lounge in Baker House is warm and comfortable. Ellie and her friend Lily are showing off their McDonald's toys.

Father Joe Kelly lives here. He was PP of Nightcliff twenty years ago and sends his regards to Noel.

The food here is good and there is plenty of it. Kids are pretty friendly but it is always hard being away from home.

We want other Tiwi kids with us next term. There is room in our section of the Boarding House.

We enjoy the Pool Room and expect it will be better when we get into teams.

The Boarding House

Jan Cooke is in charge of the boarding house. Jan's husband was at Monivae and was a friend of Phil 40 years ago.

Jan has had seven children and has come to Downlands to give them a hand. She is good for us

The Boarding House is modern, warm and comfortable.

We share a room. You can see what the bedrooms look like. There are four beds to a room. There are two spare beds in our room. We have the window beds and our feet point at one another.

We each have our own desk and wardrobe space.

The boarding house has an exercise machines, a the big TV room and a pool table.

More on Arrival

There are twenty other aborigine kids here - all from Queensland Communities. In the photo we have two ladies from special education along with Ellie (Wendy and Phil's kid, adopted in USA).

That is us with Fr Mulrooney plus Ellie - again.

The whole staff has been wonderful to us. The reminded us that MSC started working with Tiwi long before Downlands was opened.

They feel real good having Tiwi attending school at Downlands.

Arrival In Brisbane

The plane left Darwin an hour late, so we did not arrive in Brisbane until 6.30am. We went back to Wendy's for a time and were on the road to Toowoomba by 9.00am. Ellie came with us as did Dennis Tarte, the St Vincent de Paul man from Kenmore - the St Vincent de Paul Society paid our fares and outfitted us for the cold of Toowoomba.


There is a photo of us arriving in Brisbane and a photo of Dennis and his family. Dennis is the one on the right, his wife is over the other side and the photo shows his grown up and married children.