Brunette Downs Picnic Races

Back in January 2008 I carried a story, In Praise of Picnic Races. It will be clear from the story just how much I loved going to the Picnic Races.

Now Bob Gosford has posted a rather wonderful story, Hats off at the Brunette Downs races and rodeo. I quote the start of the post.

Brunette Downs is a huge cattle station – at 1,221 million hectares there can be no doubt of that – in the heart of the Northern Territory’s Barkly Tableland and this past weekend I’ve been at the 100th annual ABC Amateur Race Club meeting.

You can’t get much more remote than Brunette Downs – it is 850 km from my home in Alice Springs, 1000 or so km from Darwin and 450 km from Mt Isa in western Queensland. By comparison Tennant Creek – the nearest town of any size – is a short stroll away at 350km.

I won't quote the whole post, but it's worth a read.

Charles Darwin University offer $2.3 million in scholarships boost elite engineering course

Scholarships valued at more than $100,000 each are on offer to build the infrastructure of the Northern Territory.

A new Bachelor of Engineering Co-operative degree program has been created by Charles Darwin University (CDU) to link with local and national industry, combining paid work with study. The Northern Territory Government Department of Planning and Infrastructure (DPI) is providing $2.3 million to fund up to 20 scholarship places on the new course. The scholarships are valued at up to $117,156 each, with recipients receiving a stipend of $15,000 for each full year of the four and a half year degree course. The remainder of the scholarship award – almost $50,000 for each student – is in the form of paid work placements with the DPI.

Chief Executive Officer of the DPI, Richard Hancock said students would gain practical knowledge and work experience on a range of infrastructure projects to build the Territory.

“These work experience placements will provide students with on-the-job skills and experience, and opportunities to develop close working relationships with professional engineers,” Mr Hancock said.

The scholarship program also will allow students to participate in relevant work placements in both the private and public sectors. CDU’s Head of School of Engineering and Information Technology, Professor Friso De Boer said the quality and structure of the Co-op degree would provide benefits to the NT by supplying more job-ready engineers to the workforce, while the scholarship program would attract and retain the best and the brightest in the Territory.

No application is required. Eligibility for the Co-op degree and DPI scholarships will be assessed on academic merit, with a minimum TER score of 85 for high-school leavers. Eligible candidates will be contacted directly.

Visit the CDU Scholarships website for further information.

Higher Education in Regional Australia - Charles Darwin University

Photo: Palmerston Campus, Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory

One of the interesting features of recent decades has been the rapid spread of tertiary education throughout Regional Australia. It used to be the case that metro students had more options for university study. As recently argued in a story on my personal blog, this is no longer necessarily the case.

One of the things that I do find interesting about Australia's regional universities is the way in which varying regional conditions leads to variations between the universities themselves.

While Australia's Northern Territory has an area of 1.346 million square km, 17 per cent of Australia, its population is only 197,590 of whom 24 per cent identify as Aboriginal. The remaining non-Aboriginal population have one of the most varied ethnic mixes in Australia.

In recent years the Territory's economy has grown very rapidly as a consequence of the mining boom, growing tourism and the relocation of major elements of the Australian Defence Forces to the Territory. The resulting building boom has transformed parts of the Territory and Darwin in particular.

The Territory is the closest part of Australia to Asia, with both Indonesia and East Timor a short plane flight away. This closeness has a significant affect on Territory life.

Charles Darwin University reflects this varied mix.

With 19,000 students covering both vocational and higher education subjects and multiple campuses and study centres throughout the Northern Territory, the University is the Territory's largest tertiary institution and also has the highest proportion of indigenous staff and students of any university in Australia. It offers a wide range of undergraduate and post graduate study opportunities.

The University has a strong research focus and is renowned for its research expertise and leadership in tropical and desert knowledge of the Australian and Asia-Pacific region, with particular focus on indigenous knowledge and addressing problems of importance to the peoples of the region.