General News
29 July, 2026
Special guests from Indonesia
COBDEN Technical School has opened its doors for the next two weeks to 10 eager exchange students from Indonesia seeking to expand their horizons.
Flying in from Makassar, the capital and largest city in the South Sulawesi province in Indonesia, the students and their supporting staff rolled into Camperdown via train on Saturday to start their journey into south west Australian life.
Their first day of school was on Monday, where the students settled in with their assigned buddies, fellow Cobden Technical School students studying Indonesian, to learn about the average school day for an Australian student.
International coordinator Agustiany Fauziah Amir, who joined the students on their trip, said they’ve been going on exchange to various schools across Australia since 2015, and this is her first time in Cobden.
“We’ve been to the Whitsundays, to St Catherine’s Catholic College, Lilydale, Luther College, Bendigo Senior Secondary College and Bendigo South East College,” she said.
“In 2020, we had everything prepared, but then the borders shut due to COVID.
“We started again in 2022.
“This year, 10 students came to Cobden and 10 students went to Crusoe College because we had 20 students total for the program.”
Mrs Amir said the students were excited to come to Australia and learn about a different culture and way of life.
“There’s a lot of benefits for the students,” she said.
“In terms of their personality, in Indonesia, sometimes you can speak English but you don’t have self-confidence, so by the time they come here, a lot of students have to talk more.
“It increases their self-confidence, and by the time they get home, they decide they want to continue their studies in Australia.
“Cobden is very quiet compared to the previous places we have visited, but it’s beautiful, because it’s farmland, and it’s very cold.”
Cobden Technical School language coordinator and Indonesian teacher Liz Formby said the school was thrilled to host Indonesian exchange students again, which they haven’t had the opportunity to do since 2019.
“I moved to Cobden Technical School in 2015 and started the Indonesian program here so it’s been taught for the past 11 years,” she said.
“There was a history of Indonesian before that so there was no language for about 15 years, but before that we had an Indonesian program at Cobden Tech as well.
“We’ve always had an exchange program, obviously apart from COVID, we’ve had students from other cities in Indonesia and we’ve been on trips to Indonesia as well.”
Ms Formby said Cobden Tech students last year went on their own exchange trip to Indonesia to immerse themselves in the language and culture.
“We had 22 students who went across to Indonesia – we went on a school tour, we went to Flores, which is one of the islands in Indonesia, and Komodo island, where the Komodo dragons are, we visited there as well,” she said.
“We did lots of adventure-type activities on Flores and then we went up to Bali to a place called Ubud which is like the cultural centre of Bali and we had a week there as well doing Balinese cultural bits and pieces and we visited a primary school while we were there.
“The last time we had Indonesian students come to Cobden Technical School was 2019 because of COVID and everything after that and luckily Mrs Amir contacted me and now we’ve got this new contact and we hope to keep going in the future.”
Ms Formby said the exchange program was beneficial to not only the students studying Indonesian in class, but also to the families who hosted the students during their stay.
“We had Year nine and ten students who went through a little rehearsed conversation that was a little bit more relaxed, talking about hobbies, asking how old the other person is, and they actually get to talk to an Indonesian person in Indonesian,” she said.
“It’s real stuff, so instead of it being a setup of ‘pretend you’re a 15-year-old in Indonesia,’ it actually is a person from Indonesia.
“They find out about hobbies from people their age, they find out about the foods they like, how school works, and it’s that real interpersonal connection that they get with their buddy and their counterpart.
“Of course, for host families, it means an experience for the Indonesian students coming over where they can see what Australian life is like, how it’s similar to theirs and how it’s different.
“It’s really important for the host families because they have generously opened their homes to these kids coming from overseas so they can experience something new and our host families are learning as they go as well.”
For this trip, there are four host families housing the students.
One student is living on a farm, another on a small property outside of Cobden and some families living in town as well.
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