Late last year, a group of six footballers took a trip to the remote town of Yuendumu, located three hours north-west of Alice Springs, to take part in a Red Dust health promotion tour, through the AFL Players Care program. As part of the trip, Trent Dumont, Courtney Cramey, Jarman Impey, Nick Larkey, Alicia Janz and Ally Anderson documented their experiences for aflplayers.com.au.

Here is Jarman’s diary entry. 

JARMAN IMPEY – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16

I wanted to go on the Red Dust trip to give back to the community.

I’m close with former Carlton player Glenn Manton and he has been on some of these trips before so he was keen for me to come along also. I figured it’d be great to combine the two.

I had been to a few rural places before, but not to Yuendumu so it was a new experience.

I didn’t go into it hoping or expecting to achieve anything in particular. I just wanted to learn and give the kids some excitement and happiness for the week we were there, which turned out to be awesome.

We stayed the Tuesday night in the Yuendumu school library, so I got up on Wednesday morning at 7.30am and there were already kids mucking around kicking the footy and hanging out on the playground.

It was great to see kids already excited to come to school. We led some sports programs and I played a bit of soccer with the kids, who were so talented and energetic. It was awesome to see – I felt a lot of pride in being there.

I didn’t expect it to be so rural with so little people around.

Upon reflection, I can’t help but think about how happy the kids were up there – they’re so carefree – and we had such a great bunch of people involved in the trip, too. It was unbelievable to be a part of.

One memorable moment was at the recreation centre on our last night in Yuendumu.

I really enjoyed the excitement and seeing all the kids running around playing cricket, basketball, footy and there were Frisbees flying around as well – the kids were having so much fun and sport is such a strong part of their life. As an athlete, that was great to see.

I would highly recommend anyone getting out of their comfort zones and experiencing a rural part of Australia – we live in such a great country.