While Adelaide swelters through its own hot, heady Sunday, portadelaidefc.com.au was enduring a red-eye flight en route to Uluru to be part of the first week of the WillPOWER program rollout in the APY Lands.

YULARA
It’s about 25 degrees, raining, humid, and we’ve been sitting here for two hours. The rest of the WillPOWER team, including Port Adelaide’s Aboriginal program manager Paul Vandenbergh, Norm Smith Medallist and dual AFL premiership player Byron Pickett, ex-Power player Wade Thompson and indigenous national beach volleyballer Taliqua Clancy, are still en route from Alice Springs.

What we can see is that quintessential Australian landscape that is scrubland, red-tinged earth, beautiful; everything a city-dwelling Aussie kid is shown in magazines, newspapers and on television growing up.

It’s everything international tourists are shown about the Australian outback as well, and there are plenty of international tourists – from Europe, Asia and the Americas –here for the ‘authentic’ Australian experience in the red centre.

But it’s not all about tourist hotspots and big rocks here, although we’ll be seeing Uluru shortly when we start our journey, on the contrary, the next three full days are about lots of travel and hard work in classrooms across the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara communities (or APY Lands).

The program that the Power’s Community team will deliver is called WillPOWER - a special program, and one that is Port Adelaide’s way of helping remote Aboriginal communities in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

It works in classrooms once each week throughout the school year. This week will be an in-person introductory session and, from there, will be run remotely via video link at Alberton, directly into each child’s classroom, before a football carnival that brings each semester to a close.

Once the rest of the crew arrives, we jump into the hire cars (four-wheel drives for the dirt roads), stock up on supplies and start the long drive to Umuwa, a town just over 50km south of the SA/NT border as the crow flies.

We, however, are further north of that border and need to travel via long, winding and rugged red dirt roads. It will take a bit over three hours.

ON THE ROAD
Of course, this is beautiful country. There are any number of mysterious and eerie land formations – not just Uluru.



There’s Attila, the expansive plateau mountain – much bigger than Uluru – which looms large about 45 minutes into our journey.

As Pauly says, just as Uluru forms part of the local Anangu dreaming for men, Attila does the same as a significant area for women.

The long drive is a perfect opportunity to absorb the world around us. There are cattle stations scattered around the place, and even more cows, wild horses and donkeys too.

We don’t really even know when we’ve entered South Australia, but we know the APY Lands are a different beast, and you need to play by strict rules when you’re granted a special permit to be here.

Alcohol, for example, is strictly quarantined.

The communities that dot the northernmost region of South Australia are small towns, the first major such we come through is Pukatja (or Ernabella).

This is the last place where your phone works...

UMUWA
Umuwa, or ‘Little Canberra’ as locals call it for the government building based here. Is a tiny town about a further half-hour’s drive south of Pukatja.

Here is where half our party will stay for two days as a sort-of-home-base, the other half will head west to the SA/WA border.

The local radio station is about a torpedo-kick away on the same dirt road, and there is a nearby training centre where local Aboriginal teenagers train in various professions; carpenters; mechanics, you name it.

Unfortunately, as I discover, your typical suburban dog doesn’t necessarily reside out here, and one particularly authoritative, particularly small guard dog chases me back from whence I came on one attempted run. I’m no man.

As night falls, we drive up the road to visit Wade’s aunty, who lives in this community (and to borrow some internet … she’s a great, helpful lady).

When we get back, Pauly gives the whole group the last pep talk before the first day of WillPOWER. His group, which includes Byron and Taliqua, with myself and our videoman Kane tagging along, will take the long drive to Iwantja (Indulkana); Ross and Sasha will go with Wade back to Pukatja.

It’s critical that the team makes this first week work.