This is a story involving our son Andrew, who has been a guitarist with the ARIA award-winning rock group Karnivool for about half his life. Karnivool obviously has been a successful group, not only because of the ARIA but the fact the group has had three gold ‘records’. This story took place in Kununurra, a beautiful place to live and to visit, whether in the ‘wet’ or the ‘dry’.

My family and I shifted to Kununurra at the start of the year I was appointed District Director of Education for the Kimberley. kununurra

It had been quite a move because Kununurra is in the north-east of the Kimberley, about 20 kms from the Northern Territory border.  In the year previous, I’d been principal of Nulsen Primary School in Esperance which is on the southern coast of Western Australia, about 800 kms south-east of Perth, the state capital. The day we left Esperance for Kununurra, the maximum temperature was 15 degrees, while the next day in Kununurra, it reached 45 degrees with very high humidity.

But Kununurra and the East Kimberley are such scenic places, whether in the ‘wet’ with huge downpours for days on end when a cyclone passes off the northern coast causing white lace curtains of rain in the many valleys and gorges around the town, or in the dry when the humidity has gone and been replaced by gentle easterly breeze and temperatures around thirty degrees.54e97bb43781174016365290152eba61 9001204l.1And the surrounding countryside is startling to behold, particularly the Cockburn Range (below) cockburn-range-44752

ATDW_Landscape__WATC_9009899L_1But the story I’m telling is about Andrew’s first day at school at Kununurra District High School.

As parents, his mother and I had a day where we wondered how things were for him in terms of friends and if he was enjoying himself: all the things that concern parents when their children first attend school.

Anyway, that afternoon, I was in the District Office working but Karen, his mum, went to collect him n the car.

“So how was your day, dear?” she immediately asked.

“It was good Mum and we’ve got a lot of those Agoribiginal kids in my class. But Mum, what does puck mean?”