The drive this morning was to Batchelor, which is about 1.5 hours from Darwin. Batchelor is this beautiful town of about 800 people. There used to be a Meatworks in Batchelor, but that shut down a few years ago. The main industry is now the Batchelor Institute - which is a college that provides learning for largely remote communities.

What was strange about this town was that it seemed - well at least from the people I met in BatchelorArea High - largely non-Indigenous. Batchelor is situated just outside the incredibly beautiful Litchfield National Park. Batchelor Area School has students from the neighbouring towns of Rum Jungle (yes, the coolest name in the world!) and Adelaide River. I chatted with about 60 students from year 7, 8, 9 and 10 from the school.

Of all the places I have gone, Batchelor had the most distinctive feel to it. It wasn’t an altogether happy feel. Most of the young people weren’t backwards in telling how awful the place was for having something to do. Many wouldn’t call Batchelor home, as they grew up elsewhere and only moved to Batchelor. Othes just refused to call it home. The young people said that there are no sporting teams (if you want to play - you have to go to Darwin), no cheap public transport to and from Darwin, no youth centre, and the pool is not used because it’s so “scungy”.

I was told that about a year ago, a local young person presented a petition of 1200 signatures (pretty impressive in a town of only about 800 people) to the local Shire Council asking for a skate park. However, unfortunately the council couldn’t support the proposal as they didn’t have enough funds. So the favourite pastime of young people in Batchelor is hanging outside the local (and only) shop.

I was told that very few people continue schooling beyond year 10 (and the Area school doesn’t offer internal year 11 and 12 schooling). Job oppotunities are sparse.

When asked what would be great to have in Batchelor, the reply was pretty simple - more shops, skate park, a good pool, jobs, buses to Darwin. To me, what was different about Batchelor was that the young people here were very aware of the things that their town didn’t have. They were acutely (and maybe even bitterly) aware that they didn’t have the opportunities in Batchelor that they could have elsewhere.

Then I met the most incredible young man. After I had a chat in the area school, I was invited to go and have a swim in the beautiful rock pools of Litchfield National Park. Before I launch into talking about this young fella - let me just say that I’ve never seen anything quite as beautiful as these rock pools. They are rock pools surrounded by 3 m high termite mounds set in intensely dense trees and shrubs.

Anyhoo, this 19 year old young fella took me out to the National Park and then began telling me about his story. He grew up in the general area and in the last few years, his family had settled on Batchelor as home. Recently he crashed his car when he was pissed and going 14o km/h around a bend. He lost his license, and suddenly realised that without his wheels, there was not a lot to do in his part of the world.

So… he’s decided he wanted to start a youth group. Which is just incredible, because it’s an unheard of concept in Batchelor. The problem is that he has no idea how to do it. No idea where to start - and even less about where to go once he’s started. But he hasn’t let that stop him - he’s just doing it. His words to me was that he was “sick of sitting outside the shop and doing bullshit.”

For the youth group’s first event - he (and his youth committee that he’s formed) fundraised for a horse-riding camp by selling sausages at a community event. This event has now occurred.

The big plans are for there own youth centre filled with pool tables and interesting stuff to do. The youth committee’s even bigger plans are to build a legal drags course in Batchelor.

It was a real privilege to meet this young man and members of his youth committee, who were doing something quite incredible - just because there was a need. They didn’t see it as incredible, they just saw themselves as doing it. They took the attitude of “why the hell not just do it?”. I felt completely inspired.