Hi from Ingrid in Australia

Ingrid · Post by **Ingrid** » November 19th, 2018, 12:38 am

Well, here I am, Ingrid Kennedy, retired and all, and keen to start reading a book. Double benefit is that I get to read it and then some else gets to hear it

I live in Rockhampton, Queensland Australia on the east coast and right on the Tropic of Capricorn. Weather-wise - perfect. Scenery - great if you like gum trees. Animals - Kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas, wombats, koalas and many more. Ocean (eastwards) - 30-minute drive on a busy day. Off the coast - Great Keppel Island, on the bottom tip of the reef. Outback (westwards) - farming cattle, cotton, some grains, and mining of coal (yuk! Good for jobs, bad for the environment).

What did I do? Teach. Started teaching Senior Primary (Afrikaans predominantly with a bit of Zulu here and there), Junior High (or middle school, languages, mathematics, and anything there wasn't a teacher for or for a teacher who was already teaching something there wasn't a teacher for

), School of the Air (used wireless and antennae in those days. Now it's tele- or video conferencing), Enabling course (mathematics but mostly computing) at the local university. Then I retired.

Where did I originate? South Africa. Yep, grew up there during the Apartheid Era, and every day, we heard my grandparents and my parents say 'Don't ever be like that' so we are not. Respect is very important.
What brought me to Australia? A chap who came to teach at the school I was at, and we met and the rest is textbook romance

Well, onto learning more about Librivox

Piotrek81 · Post by **Piotrek81** » November 19th, 2018, 1:15 pm

Hello and welcome to LibriVox

I read about School of the Air, and it was so alien to me, yet it is so obvious in your conditions with towns hundreds of kms apart. I think there was/is a similar arrangement with medical doctors, right? Also, being a teacher of several subjects on short notice must have been challenging.

Read through the e-mail you've received. There's plenty of important links there. If you don't something, there's the "Need Help" area, so don't hesitate to read the forum and post.

Most importantly, have fun

Ingrid · Post by **Ingrid** » November 22nd, 2018, 4:55 am

Thank you Piotrek, and I am looking forward to it!

Distance Education as it is called now, transmits mainly to children out on the farms, or stations as they are called here in Australia. Some are so big, that the farmers and managers use light planes to fly from one end to the other. The Royal Flying Doctor's Service is the name of the team and their many planes, that fly out to the communities as they are so far away from town or hospitals. A full medical team is on board the plane too. The often have to transport really sick people to the city hospitals. Australia is a Huge country, as big as the USA, but very sparsely populated. Altogether there are about 23 million in Australia - as many as in Mexico City!