allowing the golf course to be re-established along the Namoi River adjacent to the club house proper. The greens are sand and oil as opposed to conventional grass. The local college hosts two major football carnivals each year. The Ricky Walford Shield and the Neville Thorne Shield are knockout rugby league competitions held in August by the primary school and the high school respectively. The Walgett Aero Club was established in the town in 1958 with a club house and hangar built at the aerodrome with support from the Walgett Shire Council. The club's first two aircraft purchased in its first years were DH-82 Tiger Moths – registrations VH-BAR and VH-WON carrying the name of the nearby Barwon River. As the club progressed and thrived with the appointment of a chief flying instructor in the early 1960s, it eventually modernised its fleet to include the likes of Cessna 172, Cessna 150 and Piper Comanche 210 aircraft. In 2008 the club celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, and continues to be a prosperous part of the transport and aviation hub of the far north of the state. Education The pre-school, primary school and high school were re-structured in 2003 into the Walgett Community College. The college is a unique educational institution, and gave birth to the successful Yaama Maliyaa group that won several national awards in Young Achievers Australia in 2005. Media Walgett publishes a weekly newspaper called the Walgett Spectator that has been in continuous production since the 1800s, despite a fire razing the business premises in 1903. Outback Radio 2WEB broadcasts around the area on 104.3FM. References in popular culture The fictional character Betty in the sitcom Hey Dad..! was from Walgett. Banjo Paterson wrote two poems featuring Walgett – "A Walgett Episode" and "Been There Before". In Been There Before Paterson relates the story of a visitor to the town who is down on his luck and who makes a wager that he can throw a stone from one bank of the river to another. The locals who know that stones of a reasonable mass are a rarity along the banks think they have fooled the visitor. However while... The yokels laughed at his hopes o'erthrown, And he stood awhile like a man in a dream; Then out of his pocket he fetched a stone, And pelted it over the silent stream— He had been there before: he had wandered