The Weilmoringle Kid

A city-bred teacher must pioneer a school in the Australian outback.

"Outback people are a different society, distinctly frontier in mind and deed. In 1961, a young and inexperienced teacher found himself in a small community facing a challenge few others had met. He endured, going in a boy and coming out a man, forever grateful to the extrodinary Aboriginal boy who gave him an eye for the bush. This is his story, told without fancy but with the flavor of those days". -Barry Broadfoot

Brian Pettit grew up on a small poultry farm near Sydney, Australia. A high school scholarship helped him gain a teaching certificate, which led in turn to his first assignment at the desolate, fly-ridden, outback sheep station known as Weilmoringle. The uniquely pioneering aspect of having to build the school first, as well as those years with the Aboriginals was the subject of his first novel The Weilmoringle Kid. In 1965, Pettit and two friends sailed to Canada to have a look around. There, as their parents lamented, the boys forgot to come home. Pettit worked in northern British Columbia at Topley, then in a logging camp on Vancouver Island before accepting a teaching appointment in Nanaimo. He completed a B.Ed and M.Ed at the University of Victoria, getting involved with the Canada Studies Foundation and writing the thesis: Canadian Nationalism: with what are we to identify ourselves? The proposal developed curriculum to help Canadian students develop an affectionate knowledge of their country. Now retired after 23 years as an elementary school principal, Pettit has been President of the Nanaimo Historical Society as well as an instructor at Elder College and guest speaker for service clubs, mostly profiling those who made the country great.