It’s school holidays now – in Australia the longest holiday is over Christmas and New Year, from December to late January – so this week I’ve been filming several teenagers from Cairns as they talk about their own lives and interests, and interview each other. I believe your high school students will find them interesting to listen to. Some of these teens were strangers before we started filming, yet became good friends in a couple of hours.
It’s the rainy season so the weather is changeable, which can make filming outdoors quite tricky: I start filming while it’s cloudy, then there may be a sudden shower, or the sun might come out again so it becomes uncomfortably hot for the teenagers. Another challenge is that the local council want to keep their parks looking nice. When the rain stops we quickly go out to the nearest park – and so do the gardeners, so everywhere we go there is a noise problem because of their lawn-mowers! You may notice some gardeners walking in the background of these videos. You’ll probably hear birds in the background too; that’s something locals tune out but visitors often comment on.
We think we live in a really special part of Australia – Tropical North Queensland – and I hope that you and your students enjoy seeing the backgrounds of the places where we are filming. Is it similar to where you live, or totally different?