KNOWING how to fly a drone can open doors. It’s an expensive piece of kit and is now used in fields as vast as agricultural spraying, environmental monitoring and conservation, engineering, architecture and construction and photography.
For three Shepparton Indigenous locals, they now have the skills to fly after completing a seven-day pilot course as part of the Rumbalara Football Club’s employment program.
Bradley Boon, Paul Atkinson and Alice Pettit were the three students to put up their hands for the training, and spent seven days with a trainer from the Institute for Drone Technology learning the controls.
David Barron, partnerships manager at Rumbalara Football Netball Club, said the training would help locals expand their skill sets and potentially open doors for the three pilots.
“The use of drones will only increase as the capability of the technology expands, and it’s likely the demand for qualified drone pilots will only increase,” he said.
Ms Pettit, who works with the Algabonyah Employment Program supporting Indigenous people into the workforce by addressing factors that contribute to long term unemployment, said she was interested to see how drones could be used in the Shepparton region.
“I wanted to do the training to do something new, something I haven’t tried before, learn new skills. I’m really interested in the unknown, of what we use drones for, or what we can use them for, and how we can use this in the Shepparton region,” she said.
“I’m slowly getting used to flying it. It’s been a great week.”
