WHEN we were told we could come out to an indigenous school, me and 'Nuxy' (Anthony Corrie) jumped at the chance.

Coming out to an indigenous school like Shalom Christian College is a great experience, as I come from a small country town myself.

I remember I had Ryan Turnbull, a player from the Eagles, come out and see me, and while he wasn't a big player back then, just to have him come out to our school really got the fire in my belly to go out there and play AFL.

I'm sure some of these kids come from small communities and they come down here and try and better their lives in the school, and actually stay down here with the school.

For indigenous players like myself and Anthony Corrie to come down and just show them that you can make it when you come from a small community like this … it really gives us a thrill to see these kids smiling and to help them out.

We tried to identify with the kids out here. When we introduced ourselves, we told them what age we left home and how long we'd been away from our families and that sort of thing.

Being an Aboriginal boy myself, family is very close in our culture and these people have to move down from a community at such a young age and live in a school like this … it was just about getting the point across that you can do something like this.

Family is not always everything. They're always going to be there, and I'm sure their family back in the community wants them to do well for themselves for them to be down here.

It can be harder for us to move away. I was speaking to some of the people from footy teams here and they can have problems keeping kids here past the age of 17. They come down here and play footy, and then they want to go back home to their communities.

Some of them love fishing, and that's all they want to do. That's good for them, but just as long as they get an education first and then they go back to their communities and hopefully be a role model to the younger generation coming up.

Also while we're here, we're going to present the kids who did well in their footy with medals, so the smiles are everywhere. That's the good thing about Aboriginal people; they're always smiling and they love sports people, so it's good.