A student looks on as Mading completes a circuit.
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Refugee students enrolled in a 12-week agricultural studies course at the Warwick TAFE, an Australian tertiary institute, file onto their bus as they are given a tour of a cattle station in the Darling Downs district of Queensland state. -
The students — new immigrants from such war-torn countries as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia — are trained in the use of tractors, forklifts and four-wheel motorbikes, as well as shearing and horse-riding. -
The students get hands-on experience at a cattle weighing station on the campus of Warwick TAFE. -
Students ferry a bull calf to a castration station at the on-campus farm on Warwick TAFE. -
Magar "Benny" Mading, 21, jokes with fellow students while on a field trip to a cattle station in Australia’s Darling Downs region. -
Selvakathiramalay Muthiah (centre), from Sri Lanka, watches on with fellow students as they are shown the ropes in the cattle yard. -
Sri Lankan Suthakaran Sutha (centre) looks out over the cattle yards of the Warwick TAFE campus. -
Selvakathiramalay Muthiah, from Sri Lanka, mans his post at the cattle weighing station on campus at Warwick TAFE. -
Mohammed Karimi, from Afghanistan, and Suthakaran Sutha of Sri Lanka successfully goad a cow onto the weighing platform. -
Duncan McMaster, 49, a teacher at Warwick TAFE, explains the business of rural Australia to his class while out on a field trip. -
Thanseevan Nadarasa, 18, of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, wipes away weariness in the cattle paddocks behind Warwick TAFE. -
Mading, from Kenya, wrangles a calf at the on-campus farm of Warwick TAFE. -
Mading, 21, wipes down Dolly, one of several horses the students are using for riding lessons at Warwick TAFE. -
Mading saddles Dolly before his riding lesson. “This country is a great country. Yeah, you do go through a lot of bad and good, but that’s what life is like," he said. -
Thanseevan Nadarasa, 18, from Sri Lanka gets a riding lesson in the indoor arena. -
Thanseevan Nadarasa, 18, from Sri Lanka, and the others are plugging a gap of young labor in Australia’s agricultural industry left by the exodus of a generation of young Australian farmhands to the coastal cities or otherwise lured by large wages in the country's booming mining sector. -
Geteye Fantabil (centre), a native of Eritrea, has been in Australia three years after arriving from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. -
Mading gets a riding lesson from Kellie Monckton (in red) at the indoor arena at Warwick TAFE. -
A student looks on as Mading completes a circuit.
