In this article we will consider one Aboriginal child’s literacy learning in her first year of formal schooling. The data were collected in 1985. Sharon was then a student in an Aboriginal Transition class in an urban school in the Northern Territory. The children in Sharon’s class consisted of Kriol, Warlpiri and Aboriginal English speakers. The program they were placed in was an English-only one. This report considers one case study and discusses Sharon’s learning in the classroom context (for a full report see Walton, 1986).

James Cook University of North Queensland currently offers an affirmative action program enabling Aboriginal and Islander people to enter teacher education programs. This program - the Aboriginal and Islander Teacher Education Program (AITEP) - began in 1977 at Townsville College of Advanced Education, now amalgamated with the university. In July 1987, there were about 130 undergraduate students enrolled in teacher education programs, having entered the university through AITEP. A similar program in community welfare now operates with over 20 students enrolled. Currently there are possibly around seven Aboriginal or Islander undergraduates who gained direct entry to university and four graduate students, including three who began their undergraduate studies through AITEP.

When the fleet of British warships and transports led by H.M.S. Supply entered Botany Bay on the 18th of January 1788, the white invasion of Aboriginal Australia had begun. Captain Arthur Phillip in Supply was followed over the next two days by H.M.S. Sirius, six transports and three store ships. On the 26th January the Frenchman, La Perouse, with the ships La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, arrived at Botany Bay and remained there until the 10th of March, 1788. Because of the open nature of the bay, its shallow water and the lack of plentiful fresh water, Phillip decided to move the settlement, and on the 25th January sailed to Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in Supply, with the transports following on the 26th of January. The white invasion and occupancy of Australia started in reality when the whole of Phillip’s fleet and colonists were anchored at the east of Sydney Cove. On board Phillip’s eleven ships came 736 male and female convicts, 17 convict children, 211 marines accompanied by their wives and children.