this year.

I’m still unsure of where I fit in this spinning and changing world. I feel completely compatible with the hustle and bustle of a city like Toronto — riding the subway to concerts, walking to work, meeting friends for a pint — but I also feel completely at ease in a smaller town where stop lights are an oddity and you actually speak to your neighbours. It is in this duality that I found my self sliding into the lifestyle of Gilgandra and feeling as though I’d been living there for many years.

As previously mentioned Gilgandra is a small farming community of about 3000 people. They have one high school, two primary schools, a pre-school, a pool, an observatory, three pubs, a car track, a horse track and a golf course. Gilgandra is also fortunate enough to be situated over a water table, so the effects of the drought that is gripping most of Australia is felt a little less. it is your typical main drag town surrounded by farming. It was here that I was lucky enough to spend 10 days observing the Australian School system. A complete photo set of this trip can be found on my flickr.

My time in Gilgandra was spent living above the Tatt’s Hotel and walking 8 minutes down the street to the Gilgandra High where I worked with a fantastic group of teachers. They opened their classrooms and homes to me providing an experience I never expected. I didn’t do much ‘teaching’ from the front of the room, but I did help students with their in class lab experiments and spoke to a number of classes about my real life experiences with changes in longitude, the tilt of the earth, globalization and American influences on the World. The students were surprised to hear that Canada is a lot like Australia and that we face the same day to day problems they do. I suppose they don’t have much reason to think about Canada all tucked away up there. It was also interesting to discover how much I really know about my part of the world.

After being in town for only 2 days I was lucky enough to be invited to play the Gilgandra Golf Course — a lovely 9 hole track located in the infield of the horse track. A number of people play in a best-ball style tournament every Thursday night. Sadly the team I joined thought they were getting a ringer from Canada to guarantee victory. In the spirit of making excuses I didn’t have access to my own clubs and I haven’t swung a club since August, 2006. The Course was in impeccable shape with greens running true and the fairways ripe with — umm — dirt and weeds. It was definitely a unique experience. And yes, my team did win.

At the ‘staff meeting’ on Friday evening I got to talking to one of the teachers husbands about the Melbourne Cup — a horse race of epic scale that takes place in Melbourne. One led to two and the fellow Mike could not let me go to the Melbourne Cup without first seeing a ‘real’ race: a country horse race. We departed Saturday morning for the near by town of Binnaway where the annual Binnaway Cup just happened to be running. What luck! I can honestly say that I have never been to a race such as this. I am used to large tracks like Woodbine Racetrack with automated betting, grand stands and cement. At Binnaway local bookies show up and set up shop taking bets on the race — and I’m told fly’s racing up a wall if you really have the urge. In the first race I backed the horse ‘Valley of Sauvage’ who finished first, brining me the first — and sadly last — pay day of he day. After the first race the rains rolled in and washed out the rest of the races. Aside from the unfortunate turn of events my day at the races was exciting and memorable.

For my last weekend in Gilgandra I was lucky enough to get to visit the Warrambungles National Park about an hour from town. This is a unique area with large hills and peaks created from volcanic eruptions. One of the secondary goals of this trip was to view in the wild any native wildlife we could — namely Kangaroos. It was an unbridled success. Not only did we stop at an Emu farm and take in some spectacular scenery, we were able to spot: a Wallaby, numerous Kangaroos, a fancy lizard as well as a Koala. There’s something about seeing animals in the wild instead of simulated habitats at zoos. We had a wonderful view of the sleep animal, as well as some movement as it made a change of trees.

What can I say about Gilgandra? They made me feel welcome and part of the community after 10 minutes in town. They have a fantastic sense of community, enough outdoor activities to keep most busy, a wonderful school with good kids and involved teachers and a golf course. Could one ask for much more?

PS – It hailed one afternoon. It was around 40C, a storm rolled in, and it hailed. I assumed I’d be blamed for bringing said hail with me from Canada, but it seems it ‘happens all the time’.