When British teacher James Giddings arrived in the remote West Australian town of Newman in late January, en route to the remote town of Jigalong, he was hoping the roads would not be closed.
But after a more than 12-hour drive from Perth, his hopes were dashed.
Mr Giddings teaches in the Jigalong community school, three hours’ drive east of Newman in WA’s Pilbara.
After a tropical low passed through the region last month, bringing more than 130 millimetres of rain, roads into Jigalong were closed.
Fellow British teacher Paula McIver, who was excited to start her first term at Jigalong, also found herself stuck in Newman.
With plenty of belongings and four dogs between them, it would be a lot of work getting to their destination.
Luckily, the Newman community leapt into action.
“We’ve had an awful lot of help from everybody,” Mr Giddings said.
“We even had some assistance from the police in Newman and also … the army in trying to get us all sorted.”
Plans were quickly made to fly the pair to Jigalong.
By the next day, the expats had loaded their belongings and their dogs onto a plane at Newman airport.
“Paula had her dog in one crate and I had our three dogs in their own crates as well,” Mr Giddings said.
Inspecting their new home from the air
Soaring thousands of kilometres above the ground, it was an awe-inspiring trip for Ms McIver.
“It was just beautiful, and being able to see how vast the land is,” she said.
“We’re travelling over desert, and then there’s just all these green patches that you can’t imagine unless you see it from the air.”
It’s adventures like these that fuel Mr Giddings’ love for teaching in the outback.
“All of us teachers here … we all say to each other ‘You just never know what to expect next.’ No two days are the same,” he said.
Foreign teachers recruited
For Mr Giddings, working in a mainly Indigenous community means he’s been spending just as much time learning as teaching.
“The students at our school have English as a second language and they just come from a completely different background,” he said.
“I’m learning just as much from them … as I’m able to help them learn as well.”
Ms McIver said the chance to explore Indigenous culture was the main reason she chose to teach in Jigalong.
“I’m never going to get those experiences if I didn’t come here,” she said.
“Just life experiences, memories, things I’ll be able to use and draw upon for the rest of my career.”
Many students in regional and remote WA will be taught by foreign teachers this term.
In January, WA Education Minister Tony Buti announced more than 100 international teachers had been recruited for term 1, 2024, with most heading to the regions.