Every two years, outback kids across an area twice the size of Victoria come together to perform a most unlikely musical. Whether they're bull riders, dancers or lawn bowlers, they're all discovering themselves in isolation.
An online musical rehearsal is nothing if not chaotic.
It's a swarm of bright children's voices, none of them in sync.
Between the tinny laptop speakers and dodgy internet connections, it's hard to know if anyone is singing in tune or in time.
But with students scattered across remote Queensland, online rehearsals are the only option for the Longreach School of Distance Education (LSODE).
"Online rehearsals are quite crazy," deputy principal Rachelle Moore says.
"I had one mum, and I'll never forget it, she said to me, 'Good luck tonight, because you're going to need it'.
"And I had known because of the dress rehearsal how brilliant they were.
"I just smiled and said, ‘You just wait and see'."
Rachelle's students have spent most of their lives in drought — whole childhoods without a drop of rain.
They've also grown up in some of the most isolated landscapes imaginable, so they're used to overcoming challenges.
And maybe because of that they're used to being creative.
They're not just dreaming, they're dreaming big.
Dancing in the rain
It's late afternoon and the sun has lost some of its fury, leaving the verandah of the Faggotter house in shadow.
On a mat that covers dry, uneven floorboards, 13-year-old Lucy's body finds its rhythm.
As a swirling melody plays on a small speaker, her limbs flow.
She's improvising, but the graceful momentum she finds within the song seems almost inevitable.
It's as if her choreography has grown naturally out of this moment and this music.
"I'm not thinking. I'm just letting go and I'm not here. I'm somewhere else," Lucy says.
"I can feel myself moving though, but my head is not part of my body. I'm just dancing and just letting go."
Lucy is playing the role of Billy Wigglestick, the narrator, in the school musical Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies.
It's a pun-laden re-imagining of the classic outlaw tale, and she's feeling nervous about all her lines.
Although she's used to performing, she's much more comfortable expressing herself through dance.
The sun starts to dip as she bends her body backwards.
Her studio mirror, which was custom built by her dad Al and brother Dom, reflects the landscape back to her.
"I never dance inside. It's always out here," Lucy says.
"I see everything — sometimes an emu comes up … or I'm doing a class and it just starts raining.
"The sun's in my face sometimes. That never happens for other people."
Lucy and her family live on Mount Victoria, a sheep and cattle property 75 kilometres west of Longreach.
There's no dance school nearby so she studies via Zoom, through a studio four hours away in Julia Creek.
"I learned all the dances and all the techniques and stuff through my teachers there," she says.
"It's kind of like how I learn via distance education."
On the other side of the house, 15-year-old Dom has taken over another verandah.
Piles of tools and wood offcuts balance precariously on trestle tables, while a few of the family's dogs nestle in the sawdust.
Sherwood Forest — a series of trees that will be the most important props for the school musical — is under construction, but there's always a different project on the boil.
As well as playing the lead role of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Dom is the head prop maker for the show.
Distance education suits Dom. He can chuck on a headset and listen to his history teacher in the background while he runs a jigsaw.
"I'll be out here cutting or sawing or filing and they'll say, 'Put a tick up', and I have to quickly run back in and hit the tick button.
"But yeah, I get the work done and I get to have a bit of fun along the way."
The Faggotter's old worker's cottage blurs the boundary between inside and out, and is full of Dom's projects: historical replicas, tiny sculptures and imaginative scenes.
"I paint the landscapes here sometimes, and I sculpt elements and little creatures and things.
"It's just there's so much inspiration out here. You'd never run out."
But however beautiful the property is, it's a landscape that hasn't always been easy to live on.
For about a decade the family struggled through one of the longest dry periods in recent memory.
Dom and Lucy's mum, Rachael Webster, lowers her voice when she talks about the drought.
They were long years for her and husband Al — feeding stock, watching animals struggle, working away from the property to make ends meet.
"You don't realise how stressful and wearing that drought can be over the long term, because it's just kind of happening all the time," she says.
"It's only later on, looking back, when things are good, you can see how much better it is or how much life changed over time."
Through all of it, the family made the decision to try to keep up with Lucy's dance classes and to encourage her and her brothers, Dom and Joe, to do the things they love.
"There was a lot of death and sadness," Rachael says.
"It was an immense joy for us just to see [Lucy] so happy and performing and, you know, living out the dream.
"It was everyone's gift."
Intermittently, the rains came.
"The first day it rained after the drought, we just did not know what to do with ourselves," Dom says.
"We'd never really seen rain in that calibre before.
"We played and we danced and we just had so much fun."
Defying distance
Back in Longreach, Rachelle Moore is doing a stocktake on 87 costumes, bagging up green tights, skunk hats, lutes and supervising construction of a giant prop machine called The Squisher.
As well as being the deputy principal, she's the musical producer, choreographer and costume designer, supported by a dedicated team of teachers and volunteers.
"I also drag my mother into this to make costumes when I can't purchase them online," she says.
Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies will be the school's fifth musical.
When it started these productions, rehearsals were done over the telephone, so the online rehearsals, however challenging, are actually an improvement.
The school has a diverse enrolment base — 80 per cent of the students are geographically isolated, with the remainder being medical learners, students with disabilities or students who are travelling.
The school's motto is "Effort conquers distance", and that's exactly how the musical comes to fruition.
Students send in video auditions, Rachelle and her team do the casting, and the students learn the choreography via video.
Online rehearsals take place every Monday.
But for geographically isolated students, many of whom are the only children on their sheep, cattle or goat stations, there's almost nothing the teachers can do to really prepare them for what it will feel like to take the stage at a sold-out Longreach Civic Centre.
"Six hundred people is more than is in their small town," Rachelle says.
"At our last rehearsal I said to them: Do you know that you're going to have 1,200 eyes looking at you?
"No matter where you're standing on the stage, someone will be looking at you.
"You are going to be a star for someone out there in the audience."
For assistant director Rosie Winterbotham, the benefit is precisely that — it gets the students outside their comfort zone.
"Gosh, the way you see the children grow is unbelievable," she says.
It's how they roll
Fifteen-year-old Chloe* and brother Thomas*, 14, are the youngest people at the Longreach Bowls Club by at least five decades.
Intermittent cracks of bowls break up the murmured banter as players tell jokes, wrangle dogs and admire each other's novelty socks while they sip mid-strength beers at either end of the well-kept green.
"I like lawn bowls," Chloe says.
"It's fun, it's less competitive and everybody's nice."
Patrick Casey, 88, who is one third of the first set of triplets to be born in Longreach and also moonlights as the town crier, jokes that the youngest and oldest members have been paired up together.
"The bowlers are getting older and dropping off the roost so we need to go to the schools to get younger players to come here to join us," he says.
As almost everyone at the bowls club, including Thomas, agrees, Chloe is quite the talent.
As the afternoon wears on, her bowls creep closer to the jack and her team and competition all clap as she racks up points on the scoreboard.
From the ditch, her mum is beaming.
"I'm just so proud of them," she says.
"I never thought this day would come."
Chloe and Thomas live in town, but part of the reason they enrolled in distance education was that mainstream schooling wasn't a good fit.
The siblings both have autism, and Chloe has selective mutism, so learning online means they can communicate with teachers in a range of ways.
They've both blossomed, being able to learn within their home environment.
Chloe's learning viola and Thomas is learning violin.
Thomas has set up a garden in the backyard and his favourite subject is home economics — he cooks the meals at home and sends photos to his teachers.
The whole family makes crafts to sell at weekend markets.
"I just want to provide them with as many opportunities as I can, because it's a big wide world out there when they're older and they need to know what's out there," Catherine says.
One of those opportunities is the school musical.
While Thomas and Chloe have been in the chorus before, this year will be their first speaking parts — Chloe as a villager and Thomas as a skunk scout.
"All the other years I thought I was too young to do it and I didn't really want to," Thomas says.
He's most looking forward to the dress rehearsal.
"This will be the first time we've rehearsed with our costumes on — we've only tried them on, so it's gonna be exciting, I can't wait.
"The best thing about the musical is probably just getting to be able to do it as a whole school.
"It's just one thing that the whole school can do, and getting together to practise together."
* Names changed
Life on the downs
Fourteen-year-old Jacy Morton and sister Tyler, 13, run lines as they sprint their horses around pink barrels in the dwindling afternoon sun.
Jacy has been cast as Robin Hood and needs every chance to learn the lines.
"I love the character because it kind of reminds me of myself — very bubbly, energetic, very dramatic," she says.
Tyler is one of the Sherwood Hoodies, Little John.
As the sun softens, their mum, Meg, calls out a line.
"Then I will call my gang of outlaws!"
This afternoon, she's standing in for Maid Marian.
Jacy responds, in character, from her horse.
"They're very good, aren't they? And they do all their own stunts."
"To be able to stand up in front of people and act and sing and dance, it just does so much for their self esteem and their confidence," Meg says.
"I see a big difference in my girls, that's for sure."
Tyler, who confesses she used to be very shy, says playing Little John has made her bolder.
"I love being that funny character, because you don't have to try and be like cranky or sad all the time, that you can just be yourself and let it out."
Jacy agrees.
"It's a chance to just be dramatic, be extravagant, go crazy, have fun with it. It's awesome."
The girls take that confidence and channel it into their other hobbies.
Tyler's taught herself how to barrel race, with the help of some YouTube videos, and Jacy spends her weekends at rodeos following in her father's footsteps as a bull rider.
They both dream of moving to America to pursue the profession.
"That eight seconds in a rodeo, it feels like a lifetime," she says.
"Usually you'll get on and you'll clear your head. You just remember you post up, stick your feet in and ride him.
"It's just the biggest adrenaline rush, the most exciting thing.
"It's just a lot of freedom."
For Tyler and Jacy, the world of the rodeo and their school musical aren't so far apart.
Out on their property, creativity isn't just something that happens in art, it's in everything.
It's in the problem solving and fixing that comes with managing a station, in the conversations they have with farm hands and truck drivers, in the sculptures of bulls and horses they've welded for the garden.
Meg says there's something about the isolation and the stillness that feeds inventiveness and curiosity.
"There's not as much noise, I think, to block out," she says.
"When you're out here you really do feel like you're the only ones, and if you switch the TV off and switch your phones off, there's literally nothing else disturbing your thoughts.
"You really can find yourself."
There are 87 kids in the musical.
Some of them want to be dancers and writers and actors and makers.
Some of them want to be vets, station managers, bakers and babysitters.
But by the end of the school year, they'll all have stood on a stage in front of the whole town, delivered their lines and heard the audience clap and cheer.
An almost-impossible musical
Two days before opening night, at the civic centre there's a line of parents and children catching up on news, showing off puppies and dashing back to the car for props.
Teachers scramble to log an extensive catalogue of cowboy boots, which are the finishing touches on the kids' elaborate costumes.
Inside, Dom and Lucy use a staple gun to turn a pile of wooden braces and painted corflute into Sherwood Forest, while assistant director Rosie Winterbotham wheels in The Squisher, a prop torture device that's supposed to roll people flat.
Rosie's husband has surrendered his hand trolley for the week and rigged up fairy lights for extra pizzazz.
Kids squeal as Rosie demonstrates what it will look like when a life-size laminated photo of Dom is "squished" on stage.
A few rows from the front, town crier Patrick Casey has traded his bowling whites for a sparkly fedora.
He's taking notes to ensure that when he announces news of the musical to the town on opening night, his script is accurate.
Amid the chaos, Brisbane-based director Sean Dennehey — fresh off directing an Adelaide Royal Show arena spectacular with 160 dancers, acrobats, trucks and a rock band — is in a meeting to select the best emojis to project on screens during the performance.
He's been directing LSODE musicals for 10 years.
"These kids don't have the opportunities that city kids do; that's why I took the job in the first place," he says.
"But that's not why I've kept it. I kept it because I love it, you know. The kids are great."
The tech and dress rehearsals fly by in a flurry of squeaking rubber chickens and jazz hands.
Soon enough it's opening night and there's a line of people in dresses and going-out jeans at the door of the Longreach Civic Centre and the 600 seats fill up.
Backstage it's a haze of hairspray and nervous excitement.
Dom helps one of the Sherwood Hoodies re-string a prop lute, while kids in itchy skunk scout hats run around in groups.
A boy in a green muscle suit is playing Lego.
Guards of every height line up, fake chain-mail helmets occasionally slipping over their eyes.
A teacher corrals an army of Year 1 students in ties and ball gowns.
Lucy sweeps onto stage, dancing as she delivers the opening lines.
"In fair old merry England, 1192, we raise the curtain on a play I've written just for you."
Sherwood Forest comes alive under the stage lights and the first catchy ballad fills the civic centre.
The forest swirls with colourful medieval gowns, cowboy boots and dancing.
In the wings, even the kids off stage follow along, clicking and tapping — the whole cast knows every line and every dance move.
It's hard to say who loves it more, the audience or the children.
"Even though we read the lines with the kids, on the night, when the performance comes together, it's still so exciting," Meg says.
"You still laugh at those lines and you just smile because it's all just so amazing."
Rachelle beams as she continues to choreograph from the front row. There are a few of the performers' younger siblings dancing along in the aisles.
At the end of each scene, Rachelle claps harder than anyone.
"It's creativity. You know, something can be born in a child, it's like a light switching on.
"You know, give them the opportunity to do something different, to show their uniqueness.
"I think it's really important for students to get that opportunity to do the arts."
By the time the curtain closes, and Lucy performs her last elaborate, graceful, ballet bow, everyone is beaming.
"It's just really special, because, you know, we all live kilometres apart from each other," she says.
"And when we come together, it's magical because it shows what people like me … it shows just what we can do."
Watch the full feature below or via Landline on ABC iview.
Credits
- Reporting, photography and video: Caroline Graham and Nathan Morris
- Video editing: Lisa Domrow
- Illustration: Sharon Gordon
- Digital production: Nathan Morris and Daniel Franklin
Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies written and composed by Craig Hawes
