Pincally Station

From Bourke via Cobar, Wilcannia (overnight) and White Cliffs we arrived late in the evening at Pincally Station and were welcomed warmly by Matt Gale the owner of this 65 893 hectare property. We were camping at 'the swamp' which was another 6km from the homestead. It was a fabulously isolated spot where we had huge campfires, cooked for the first time on our new 'dutch oven' and soaked up the space and quiet. Here at Pincally, Sol perfected his damper making skills:

Pincally Station is home to Matt and Zanna and their three delightful girls. It is 70km off the Silver City Highway (to the west) which links Broken Hill and Tibooburra. The primary products grown at Pincally are wool, lamb and beef. We were lucky enough to arrive in the middle of a frenzy of sheep shearing (early, but wool and sheep prices good at the moment.....) and the next morning was largely taken up around the shearers shed where we saw the whole process from shearing, to classing, then baling and labelling. Each bale was roughly $1500 worth and let me tell you there was a lot of bales. Then there was the drafting which was dividing the sheep into those to be sold and those not. We were welcomed into the Gales home and also had the fabulous opportunity to sit in on Lucy and Millie's School of the Air lessons. This is run from Broken Hill with formal lessons, class teachers and even a school uniform for when they meet up in BH. On site was Amy, the 'Governess' who actually was also a qualified teacher and assisted in passing on the curriculum as an addition to the teacher in Broken Hill.

This is Millie's Year 3 English lesson, you can see the teacher is behind one of the other classmates on screen, the interaction was just about as close as you could get to a standard classroom situation, Millie had about 12 or so in her class:

Then we have Lucy's Year 4 HSIE lesson. As you can see I have made our kids stay and focus on the whole lesson, which initially, with Millies lesson, caused a few shuffles and grumpy faces, but then I hissed the alternative of being put on the train back to Warrawee Public School and missing the rest of the journey, and they then got the message that I was serious. It was a good lesson and in the end it did get their attention, the topic was the Aboriginals and the English settlement which was quite apt as they are missing the Aboriginal week at WPS this term. There are about 10 or so other students in Lucy's class. Lucy's teacher who you can see on screen there is Mrs Owen.

This is Amy assisting in the additional work when the actual 'air lesson' is not on. The girls have one air lesson per day. Otherwise with Amy its normal school hours: 9 - 3ish

And here is the crew outside the classroom, a separate structure set up across the yard from the homestead:

Back at the swamp, this is OUR form of current schooling. We are, at least, doing maths mentals on a regular basis, we (?), at least I, find it an easy low maintenance way to get through maths.

Huge thankyou to the Gales for this excellent experience. We bade our farewells and headed north over many more kms of dirt road. Here are the beautiful Lucy and Millie (older sister Bella - Year 7 - is at Boarding School in Mittagong and will be home again in 2 weeks). Thankyou girls! Thankyou also to Amy.

And this is the typical roads to get to and away from Pincally, for kms and kms.....and with lots of gates.