Lajamanu is a remote, traditionally oriented Aboriginal community on the Northern edge of the Tanami Desert. The population comprises about 700 Warlpiri people, and 40 white people most of whom are involved in the delivery of public services.

The Brisbane Urban Aboriginal Materials were developed in response to a need - that is the scarcity of teaching materials related to urban Aboriginal lifestyles. They provide classroom materials for teachers which give insights into the lifestyles of Aboriginal people in Brisbane at this time.

The materials provide both teachers and students with an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the culture of urban Aborigines in Brisbane. In doing so, it is hoped the materials will enable teachers to present an accurate and positive view of urban Aboriginal lifestyles.

The English language differs from others both in the patterns and the sociolinguistic conventions of its discourse. This paper uses forms of greeting as a specific reference as to how crosscultural communication can break down when Aboriginal people and English speakers interact.

Since children often rely on the spoken word as a basis for writing, and Aboriginal children rarely learn to write successfully in English, referring to the structure of Aboriginal languages offers a possible explanation of one contributive factor to this inability.

Last year I was a Visiting Lecturer in the Aboriginal Studies Program at Armidale C.A.E. Before lectures began, I was invited by the College to a dinner honoring recently graduated Aboriginal students. At that dinner a number of graduates were introduced and invited to comment about their experiences in tertiary education. As each graduate spoke, it became apparent that many had shared similar experiences. For instance, many confided that they were initially very apprehensive about enrolling in formal schooling. Their apprehension was due to a sense of self-doubt as to whether they were willing to make the necessary sacrifices, as well as to a shared premonition that, as one student commented, “for most Aboriginal people, going through formal schooling is like taking a journey into the unknown.”

Remote Aboriginal culture(s) and Western culture(s) are two of the most diverse culture groups on earth. In the context of these two fundamentally different world views, Aboriginal formal schooling is facing a major dilemma. Simply put this dilemma is that while most Aboriginal parents have a deep desire for their children to ‘grow up Aboriginal’, they also want their children to succeed in Western schooling and to perform successfully in some aspects of white culture, thereby reducing dependency on white expertise in their communities.

The issue of selecting potentially successful students for a course of study is of central concern to course organisers. Nowhere is this issue of more concern than in the area of bridging courses designed to promote access to tertiary courses and professions in which Aboriginal people are grossly under-represented. Organisers of bridging courses are faced with the problem of identifying potentially successful candidates and designing courses to meet their individual learning needs. The problem exists because of the unprecedented nature of innovative courses catering for newly defined clientele such as mature-aged, urban and academically aspiring Aboriginal students.

This paper centres on the theme of adult learning by reporting through specific illustration how a small group of mature students successfully got over the formal learning hurdle of education when faced with pre-tertiary syllabus components. The study also presents a concrete breakdown and examples of the students’ approach to work or, to use Christie's phrase again, of the “product goals” they were aiming at.

Central Schools in New South Wales administratively combine primary and secondary schools on a single site. They are normally located in small, relatively isolated, rural communities. In the Western Region of the NSW Department of Education there are 19 Central Schools varying in size from 88 to 557 students. At the time of this study eight of the Central Schools catered for students from kindergarten to Year 12, the remaining eleven catered for kindergarten to Year 10.

In 1987/88 Mitchell CAE, in collaboration with the Department of Education in the Western Region, undertook a major research study into the perceptions of Central Schools held by those most closely involved (Sinclair 1988). Prior to the study much of the knowledge of how Central Schools were perceived was anecdotal and impressionistic. This study aimed at gathering comparative data from all Western Region Central Schools about how those who taught, studied, or sent their children there perceived the quality of education provided by Central Schools.

Over the years comparisons have been drawn between the impoverished people of Asia, Africa and South America, the socalled Third World, and Aboriginal communities, and it has been claimed by some that Aboriginies live in Third World conditions and share Third World health problems. Those claims have been strongly rebutted by others, who point out that Aborigines are not nearly so badly off - they get welfare and various benefits unheard of in the Third World. These people usually add that some Aborigines even have land rights.