‘Essential service’: How MAF brings help to forgotten youth
Organisation relies on regular flights to take social programme to remote communities.
For Troy Barrett, co-founder and Managing Director of Country Connect, MAF’s Regular Passenger Transport service (RPT) is much more than a mere convenience as he criss-crosses the 33,000 square kilometres of the East Arnhem Region of Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.
“It’s an essential service, what MAF is doing,” said Troy. “When we first started out and we didn’t have much funding, we had to use our vehicles, and the damage that costs, when you’re trying to deliver what we consider an essential service – that copped an impact because we just couldn’t get across, especially in the wet seasons.”
Country Connect delivers a range of social services to clients isolated by vast distances, rugged dirt tracks and monsoonal floods.
“We work with programmes in the youth justice system, navigating young people through the justice system, particularly in East Arnhem Land, and trying to move them into some pro-social activities,” Troy said. “That could be hunting, fishing or something that’s important to them, and we want to try to get them ready to get back into education.”
As well as youth tangling with the justice system, participants in Country Connect programs include people living with disability who are at risk of falling through the cracks of support services.
“When someone’s forgotten in the system, or not quite in the justice system, they’re not on anyone’s radar yet,” he said. “But they need our service as well, and simply giving people the ability and opportunity to get back out in their own country is probably healing.”
Pilot Dave Chandler has been flying the RPT for 3 years, and his personal reward is in connecting people to each other and to vital services.
“I really enjoy flying RPT,” Dave said. “I love moving people around and providing these bridges between communities and the needs and services, and I think it’s a real privilege to be able to do that.”
The RPT operates daily from Gove Airport, flying between the larger communities of Lake Evella, Elcho Island, Ramingining, and Milingimbi. To the end of May 2024, 2904 passengers and 9286kg flew for 379.2 hours on the RPT service, in addition to charter flights.
“This is one of the more successful ways of getting these services out to communities, because a lot of people struggle to live remote,” Dave said. “With the RPT, we find that we get a lot more people going out and providing services to these communities.”
