Wellington, NSW

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic, so even though I've been overseas for a few days now I still haven't had time to write an entry on what I was up to before I left. My last week in Australia was spent in Wellington, a small town in the Central West of NSW, where I was working on a project called Walama Muru. The idea of the project was to break down barriers between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and it involved students from UNSW working alongside staff from Nura Gili (the Indigenous programs centre at UNSW where I've been completing my final placement for my social work degree). A group of about 30 of us spent the week working at Nanima, which is an Aboriginal community 8km out of Wellington. We did some basic stuff around town like clearing a new fire break, planting some trees, preparing a foundation for a water tank, painting a fence, and fixing up a bus shelter. It all seems like pretty simple stuff, and it is, but the local council doesn't go out to the community to do it, and the CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) that used to do that sort of stuff got closed down a few years ago. It was a good week, and an important reminder that you don't have to travel to far-off parts of the world to observe high levels of poverty, disadvantage, oppression and exclusion.