WE GOT up nice and early on Thursday morning and walked across the road from our hotel to the Chartair hangar at Darwin Airport ready for our community visits.
Darryl White, Warren Benjamin and I all jumped on the scales to make sure we weren’t too heavy and then walked out towards what was a pretty small plane.
We all got a bit nervous when we first saw the size of it. You could only fit eight people inside, but we got away okay and departed Darwin at 9:30am.
The flight was pretty good. We were a bit worried when we heard a beep and a couple of lights in the cockpit dashboard lit up, but we made it to Katherine in about an hour.
That's where we picked up Matt, who works for the AFL up there, and he drove us for an hour out to the Beswick community. We visited the local school and ran a coaching clinic for the students.
The kids were all really good. It was great to see the smiles on their faces and how excited they were to have us there. Apart from the great big thunderstorm that came across while we were out there, everything went really well.
We went undercover to have a chat to the kids and sign some autographs. We also got together for a group photo and it was like being at the Big Day Out. The kids were climbing all over Warren and I and trying to take speccies on us.
After we finished in Beswick, we got back in the car and drove for half-an-hour or so to the Barunga community. They were all there waiting for us because we’d been held up at the first stop.
We had a bit more rain in Barunga and it was nice and cool for a while there, but it got a bit muggy when it stopped. Darryl and I knew a few of the boys from the community, who work in sport and recreation.
We ran some more drills with the kids and it was good to see them all running around barefoot. It just reminded me of what it was like growing up and how I felt when my heroes came out to visit my school.
I was a bit surprised at how many of the young girls could kick and handball the footy. They were very good and a couple of them were actually better than most of the boys.
We had some lunch at Beswick and then headed back towards Katherine to visit the Clontarf Academy boys at the high school. We spoke to them about our own experiences growing up and how important it was for them to stay in school and to be healthy.
Darryl told the boys about his journey and his time at Brisbane and they all listened to what he was saying. When you’ve been in the game as long as Darryl has, you want to help guys succeed.
Darryl’s seen a lot of guys come and go in the AFL system; a lot who could have stayed in the game and done well.
When he was talking to the boys, you could see how passionate he is about improving football and life opportunities for young Territorians.
We took some questions from the kids and then hopped back in the car to go to Katherine Airport. When we got to the airport it was pretty clear there was a storm coming, but we were too tired to be nervous about the flight.
So we relaxed, knowing that it's not every day you get to fly around the Territory in a plane.
The views in this story are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
