Katrina Barber, aged 12, Australia

I am 12 years of age and I live on at Mt Skinner, a cattle station 200kms north east of Alice Springs. It covers 3036 square kilometres. So I have a pretty big back yard!

A typical day for me is always different. There is always something going on out here in the bush on a big cattle station.

I get up pretty early in the morning and have breakfast with my Mum and Dad and my little sister, Tania.

At 8.30 am we go into the school room at my house to do our school work on Alice Springs School of the Air. We log onto our computer and read our timetables to find out when we have IDL lessons – that’s Interactive Distance Learning. It’s a great way to learn because we receive the live-time image of our teacher on our computer screen. The signal gets sent up to a satellite in outer space and back to our computer in less than three seconds.

The teachers are in a big studio at the School of the Air in Alice Springs. We listen to our teachers who can do any sort of lesson on IDL, from dancing to art to science experiments. We can talk to our teachers by pressing a button and calling on and talking to them. The teacher can’t see us but we see them. But, we have just got webcams which are little cameras on our screens at home that we look into. The teacher can click onto us and see us too. It’s great. I have a governess called Simone who is like my home tutor. She helps me and makes sure I get my work done on time. If I don’t know what to do, I can ring or email my teacher for help.

I have a break for smoko at about 10.30am and have lunch about 1.00 pm. I work really hard at my school work until 3pm. Sometimes I finish early if I have to go and help Dad do a bore run to check that the cattle have enough water. We have windmills to pump up water from underground into water troughs in the paddocks.

I feed my pets in the afternoon. I have four hens, three chicks and one rooster. But I also have 3000 cows. I love helping muster the cattle. My dad has a gyrocopter to muster with. It’s much easier to spot cattle from up high I love getting into the yards and doing cattle work. You have to watch them closely as some of them are pretty wild and could run over you in the yards. I love cattle and I want to do bull riding when I grow up.

After I help my dad, I drive back from the cattle yards in our Suzuki because I learnt to drive when I was seven.

I like helping my parents do jobs around the house too. My mum has a lovely garden at our homestead and we have amazing trees and beautiful hills around our place. After all our cattle work and jobs have been done, our whole family loves playing cricket on the back lawn. My little sister and I love playing games together too and at night sometimes our cousins come over from their station, called Yambah which is quite a long way away.

And that’s a typical day in my life on Mt Skinner station. I love my family and I love living on Mt Skinner station. I want to marry a local bloke and live here when I grow up because I love the bush so much.

I know that the Queen, Queen Elizabeth is the head of the Commonwealth. It’s like a big group of countries. She’s the boss. She is not just the Queen of England but also the whole Commonwealth.

There are lots of countries in the Commonwealth. Some of them are Australia, PNG, Canada, India, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, the UK, Bangladesh and even Tuvalu which is a really tiny island country.

The Queen must be very busy dealing with all these countries. It must be hard work for her.

I’d love to meet her because it’s everybody’s dream to meet the queen. I’d ask her what it’s like to live in a palace. I’d ask her about her husband and if he ever gets to be a king.

And if she ever came to Mt Skinner station, we’d have a clean up and get a bedroom ready for her. I’d ask her how she’d cope with the change of living in a palace and then being in the bush in Australia.