Shipton's flat

Ending the week that was.

On Friday afternoon, we were invited to go down to Home Rule, a meeting place for local Indigeous rangers and groups for a look. Paul was busy doing stuff in Wujal still, so Karlina and I set off to find it with the vague instructions of Turn off in Rossville and go to the end of the road. We expected to see the Shipton's Flat rangers down there.

The Wallaby creek is more than spectacular and we could see why the team love the area so much and are working hard to protect it.

This has nothing much to do with the story but I wanted to share the pics. It as nice to see calm rivers actually.

While looking for us, Paul ended up going to Shipton's Flat and found out that satellite phone they had been delivered had not been charged up and since there is no electricity at Shipton's they could not not use their phone. They also did not know how to use it.

So Paul brought the phone to Cooktown and we spent a few hours sorting out how it worked and correcting the instructions. There were a few versions of the phone number on the doco, so it took a bit to unravel. The instructions are generally pretty good by the way but the short version and the manual do have conflicting advice. The manual is generally awful. The short instructions are pretty long but once you get into them they do make sense.

It was hard to find the solar panel for the phone at the bottom of the box and a bit tricky to put all the bits together for antennaes, car chargers etc. The collection of leads, plugs, adapters and the boxers looked overwhelming to the folks who got the phone, so they did not touch what they could not work out.

On saturday afternoon, we met Peter and Marilyn Wallace from Shipton's Flat to give them their phone back at the Lions Den and we demonstrated how to put all the bits together and showed them how to connect the phone to the solar panel to charge it. This will be their main option.

Shipton's Flat were given a handheld satellite phone to use until their fixed phone is installed after the wet. The phone comes with the 6 30 minute phone cards and the team who had not had a phone before were not certain about how to use them. We did not nominate this phone but we wanted to help the guys out so we made some trips out to Shipton. Another love job!

We conclude that the phone should not just be sent out but given to CLOs to deliver so that we can visit the community, show people how to work them and so we can make sure their phone is charged up. Not much point in an uncharged phone. Satellite handhelds are not simple for people the first time round and less simple for people who have limited experience of a mobile phone.

We talked with Peter and Marilyn about

- what the phone number of their phone was - they had no way of ever finding this out unless we had taken it into town and used it to find out the number.
- what combination of numbers they needed to tell friends, family and colleagues
- the per minute cost of the calls and costs of texts
- techniques to make their 300 minutes last longer
- how some fixed phones might be barred and not able to call international numbers ( including satellite phones)
-how to make a call and explain the numbers - dropping the 0 is not easy to understand or get right if you are not used to internationally dialling or using phone cards.

We don't know a few things.

• If we need to initiate the redelivery of phone cards

• If the phone cards must be supplied by Iridiam or if there are other suppliers of cards for this particular phone
• If a local store has been approached to sell the phone cards

It will be good to have our April workshop to streamline processes, become more informed and talk about the need to give CLO's some flexibility to follow up people, even if they have self nominated or been nominated by another group.

It was great though to see some action and to see how grateful folks were for the phone and the help. We promised to call in on them next month to see they are okay about their phone.