Raising Horizons lands in Cairns
Over 100 students from more than 29 communities across Cape York and the Torres Strait have spent the past few months inside the aviation industry, meeting the people who work in it, and seeing the possibilities for themselves.
A helicopter recently flew in over AFL Cape York House in Cairns and set down on the oval where the students play football. Not at an airshow. Not at an industry event. At a boarding college, in front of students from communities across Cape York and the Torres Strait.
"Landing a helicopter on the oval is not a stunt," says Daniel Joinbee, Founder and Managing Director of Gunggandji Aerospace. "It is the industry saying: we came to you. You matter to us."
The Nautilus Aviation landing opened Aviation on the Oval, the largest event in the first Cairns delivery of Raising Horizons. Delivered in partnership with AFL Cape York House, the programme connects students with aviation professionals, employers, educators, and training providers across a series of lessons, industry experiences, and site visits. Following the successful 2025 pilot in Townsville, Cairns becomes the second Raising Horizons hub, extending the programme's reach across Far North Queensland.
Already part of life
For many of the students, aviation is already part of everyday life. Across remote communities, it connects people to healthcare, education, work and family. But being surrounded by aviation isn’t the same as being able to see yourself inside the industry.
You can’t be what you can’t see. But young people can’t see what we don’t show them.
Joseph, a student from AFL Cape York Boarding house, grew up in the Torres Strait, watching the aircraft go over. "There's lots of planes flying out that way," he says. "I got inspired by my grandpa, too. He used to be in the army, and when he used to talk to me about planes, he always wanted me to be an aviation engineer."
First Nations peoples remain significantly underrepresented across Australian aviation and aerospace, while the sector continues to face workforce shortages and challenges building a strong regional workforce pipeline. "Those conversations cannot start at recruitment stage," Joinbee says. "If industry is serious about building a more diverse and sustainable workforce, relationships need to begin years earlier, before young people make decisions about what they believe is possible for them."
Seeing aviation from the inside
Long before the helicopter arrived, students had been stepping inside the industry through practical lessons, site visits and hands-on experiences.
They walked the floor at the Cairns Aviation Skills Centre. They mapped training and career pathways with Aviation Australia. They stood inside the Jet Aviation hangar and met the Australian Border Force Detector Dog Unit. They met Gullara McInnes, a Koko-Muluridji woman who flies drones to map and protect cultural heritage sites on Country while studying science and law at James Cook University.
Students learned the phonetic alphabet and why clear, standardised communication matters in aviation. They explored how the same system is used in cockpits, Defence, emergency services and by rangers working on Country, before using it to spell Australian aircraft registrations and their own names.
When industry came to them
For Aviation on the Oval, organisations from across aviation, Defence, education and training created interactive experiences for students to explore. Students were encouraged to move between activities following their own interests, speak directly with industry representatives and spend time exploring the parts of aviation that captured their curiosity.
That freedom to explore is an important part of Raising Horizons, creating a safe place for young people to be curious, ask questions and discover opportunities they may not previously have known existed.
As the afternoon went on, students who had initially hung back began engaging directly, asking questions, and talking with the pilots, engineers and aviation professionals around them. "You've just got to listen to the opportunities out there," Joseph says, "and then finally make a step to take that opportunity."
What came next
The Cairns programme came to a close with dinners at the AFL Cape York House boys’ and girls’ boarding colleges, bringing students and the Gunggandji Aerospace team back together after months of learning, shared experiences, and industry engagement.
For Daniel Joinbee, continuing to come back is as important as creating the initial opportunity. "For us, building trust means being consistent,” he says. “It means being present, building genuine relationships and continuing to show up."
Joseph is already beginning to find his own pathway through the industry. He is studying a Certificate II in Aircraft Line Maintenance with Aviation Australia and came into Raising Horizons with a sense of where he wanted to go. The programme gave him the opportunity to see more of the industry around that pathway: roles he had not known existed, people already working in them, and where a start in aircraft maintenance might lead.
"Hopefully it takes me a long way," he says. "You just never know what will happen next."
Watch 7NEWS Cairns’ coverage of Raising Horizons and Aviation on the Oval.