On 24th February 2010, we were excited to hold the first meeting of the newly formed Cadet group at Yirrkala. This community is approximately 20kms from Nhulunbuy with a mainly indigenous population. There are currently 8 young people attending our sessions which are held at the Yirrkala School each Wednesday afternoon.

We are very lucky to have the assistance each week of teacher Cameron Begg. There are a few language difficulties as English is a second language for these Yolngu students, but with the help of some of the older ones, we are able to overcome most problems.

The Cadets love to learn all the hands on stuff and quickly learnt how to apply a sling.

They learnt that the recovery position is an important part of DRABCD.

The boys are great at pretending and had fun demonstrating how to manage an embedded object.

We were able to take over some models to help explain how the body works. The model with removable organs proved a great hit.

Learning all about bites and stings was made fun with a card game and they all practised how to manage a snake bite. They were keen to tell me that they have a lot of Bapi (snakes) in their area and mostly pretended to be bitten by a King Brown.

Article by Mandy Paradise Nhulunbuy & Yirrkala Division