Bourke High students bolster Toorale restoration

Working on the Toorale Homestead restoration - Neil Johnson, John McCullough, Rodney Vincent, Gary Wheeler, Clayton Moriceau, Dylan Wheeler, Andrew Heighway and Karen Vincent. Photo TWH

Over the past month, students from Bourke High School have been getting out of the classroom to help the National Parks and Wildlife Service restore Toorale Homestead by building a verandah at the Baakindji Cultural Camp.

This is part of the school’s effort to engage the students with the community while giving them practical, hands-on experiences that will grow into employment opportunities.

Andrew Heighway from National Parks and Wildlife Service said that the students had done a great job, and he hopes similar programs will carry on into the future.

“The Bourke High students have worked on the verandah it from scratch and have been coming out each week to work on it,” Andrew said.

“This is about getting the kids out of Bourke, on country, working with their hands and enjoying themselves.

“I think it is great to see the kids coming out and contributing to the heritage restoration of these critical projects; they are part of the story at Toorale now, and they can walk away and say, ‘wow, we did that, we built it from scratch, and it will be there for years to come.’

“They have done a great job, and it is something that they should be extremely proud of.”

Clayton Moriceau, the special education teacher at Bourke High School, is the man at the project’s helm and said that programs like this, which get the kids out of the classroom learning practical trades, are critical for their overall education.

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