Julie Anderson

Anangu School Assistant Teacher

"My name is Julie Anderson. I come from Victory Downs Station where I grew up. I've lived in Finke since 1983. I am an assistant teacher here at the school.

My sister and my mother and old stepfather were always here for many years. I feel Finke is a home now. When ever I go somewhere else, I get homesick for this place.

I've been working at the school for a long time. It could be twenty years now. First I started working in the community shop for a little while and I was working first as a cleaner in the school. A year later I was working as a janitor, doing gardening as well as cleaning and raking up. Then I went back to being a cleaner for a little while and then I became an assistant teacher.

My job is to talk to the kids. When they're getting silly and not listening to the teachers. I'll come in and talk to those kids then. Every morning when we come in for work, the kids have their breakfast, then they play sports for a while. They come in the classroom and brush their teeth and then we have a prayer and they start work. They do their computer lessons after morning tea.

Sometimes they stay really quiet and do their work, sometimes they get cranky, but they're really good kids you know. They listen to the teachers. If we send them home, they come back the next day.

I like my job because I have been working here for many years. I like the kids, I like talking to the kids. Sometimes I explain things to the kids in language so they can understand. When the kids don't understand English I translate into Yankunytjatjara, our language."

Legend of the Community

Julie is a renal patient who is on home dialysis. It is only through administering her own renal care that she manages to stay home and at work in Finke community. Every night Julie sets the dialysis machine herself and goes on the machine all night until the next day when she gets up, goes to the clinic and checks all her own observations. Blood pressure, weight, and blood sugar level. Then she rings up to the Alice Springs Renal Dialysis Unit and reports the details. After that she goes to work at the school. Everyday.