Indigenous Community Volunteers

Robinson River is north-west of Melbourne; as the crow flies the distance is around 4,000km; as the plane flies and the troop carrier drives it is three separate flights from Melbourne to McArthur River mine (via Alice Springs and Darwin), a 45 minute dash to Borroloola and a two or three hour (depending on whether the grader’s been through), dusty and dry drive through the savannah country of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Robinson River community is the central community on the vast 1.5 million acre Garawa Aboriginal Land Trust. In addition to this central community there are 12 ‘outstations’ scattered throughout the paperbark, grass and red rock escarpments. Each outstation supports one or two families.

In the wet the community and outstations are often cut off from the outside world for up to a month at a time, the only way in or out being by helicopter. It is remote.

The community has an indigenous population of around 300 and a non-indigenous population of 8. It is situated on the banks of a paperbark and pandanus lined waterhole, along the course of the Robinson River, which winds its way through the Garawa Aboriginal Land Trust before joining up with the Foelsch River and emptying into the Gulf of Carpentaria. There is a primary school, a store, a health clinic and an administration office.

In May 2004 my partner and I were informed that our application to ICV had been accepted and a position was available for us to use our accounting and office management skills to provide training in the administration office of the Mungoorbada Aboriginal Corporation, located in the Robinson River community.

Having already resigned from our jobs with an accounting firm on Collins Street, Melbourne, we quickly packed, attended the cultural awareness program in Canberra, left the city behind and found ourselves driving down the ‘main’ street of Robinson River community towards the ‘donga’ that was to be our home for the next 5 months.

The original scope of the project included training the three indigenous office staff in basic office administration and the use of MYOB accounting program. After the first week in the community we soon realised that, in reality, our work would extend far beyond the original scope.

The next three months were spent training office staff in a full range of office administration tasks from filing to computer skills, and improving the general efficiency of the office.

The final two months were focussed on the processing of fortnightly pays for the entire CDEP program.

In addition to working with the office staff we worked with other community members in a range of activities which included assistance in the preparation of tax returns, assistance with setting up personal electronic banking and help in learning to use the internet.

When we left the community in November 2004 the office staff had taken responsibility for processing the fortnightly pays of 150 CDEP participants, a complex task which was previously outsourced to qualified Accountants at substantial expense to the community.

During our time we had worked together to establish a list of office tasks and responsibilities and to develop a system of ensuring that each task was performed on a timely basis, even if the person primarily responsible was to be absent from the office.

In the end we all felt that we had achieved something remarkable by working together to determine a list of objectives and co-operating daily for 5 months to achieve those gaols. It was with great sadness that we said farewell to the community and our friends at the end of our project.

Eleven months later we found ourselves making the dusty and dry drive out to Robinson River community to see our friends again and to lend a hand in the office for a month or so.

We were happy to find that the training we provided has had a lasting effect with the payroll and other functions having been performed with only minor hiccups for the last eleven months.

Not only is it obvious that this has saved the community money but the real benefit of this training has been the office staff achieving something that less than twelve months ago seemed to be beyond their reach.

We are very proud of Roberta, Lynette and Jasmine and we hope that many more ICV volunteers get the opportunity to be involved in communities and have the same positive experiences that we have had.

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