Menindee School Enterprise Project - NSW

Retired Head Master Brian Debus was looking for something useful to do and decided to have another go at school, this time at Menindee. The chemistry was right and with the town and community "the firm", working together, results began to happen. Attendance rose, HSC graduations were at last possible, employment began happening. Awards were won, funding became possible, and the kids who would expect to have no hope began to do well and even excel.

Little ideas became bigger and better and more successful. At the height of its success there was a vege garden, a radio station, trade & skills training, & a hospitality training centre with two railway carriages. "Annie" is the dining car, and "Bruce" is the sleeping car. After the ground work prep, two prefab buildings were brought in and joined, roofed and clad, and fitted with a commercial kitchen and a working radio station studio. Most of this work was done by the school students as skills training and pre-apprentice experience, and proved inspirational. "The Firm" of community mums were hard to please but pleased they were.

The opening/presentation day included Mrs Bashir the Governor of NSW, and with the last minute rush washed out by a huge rain storm, the community came and worked together to have it good for the day.
The grounds are decorated with fine art work by the school students.

The school has had a relatively high success rate at the HSC for some years now.

The years always take their toll a bit, but Brian has been back a number of times recently and intends to spend a lot of 2018 in Mendindee. God bless you Brian.

We caught up with Brian in Nov 2017 and he showed us around and included some videos that the media had prepared for TV presentation.