Chris holds qualifications including a Diploma of Teaching, a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Education and he is currently studying for a PhD.

His work experience includes being Education Officer and Manager of Aboriginal Employment and Education programs for the Commonwealth Department of Employment, Education and Training; Administrative Services Officer for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; Career and Guidance Counsellor for the Queensland Department of Education; and lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland.

He has been principal of Cherbourg State School for five years.

I grew up in Bundaberg. That's my grandfather's country and my grandmother's country is just north of there. My parents, my mother especially, told me that this is your country, you be proud of where you're from, and don't let any white people put you down. I started out teaching Phys. Ed, but I left that because I wanted to have more of an impact on Aboriginal kids and the school I was in didn't have any.

Some people expected me to be a role model for Aboriginal kids but after a while I thought I just needed to get out and do things myself. So I worked at Commonwealth level in education for a while but then I saw that was too far away from the kids, the Aboriginal kids, and I wanted to get back to where they were. I liked teaching but I didn't want to go back to it right then, so I trained as a guidance officer and then got a job as a guidance officer in Cairns.

I was there about three years and I spent a lot of time talking to teachers about the way they were teaching Indigenous kids. A lot of the time I was encouraging them to try this or that and I talked to Principals like that too. In the end it was frustrating because a lot of people would say 'we can't get the community involved' or 'we've tried that' but we all knew that the Indigenous kids weren't succeeding at school and I really wanted to do something about it.

So, with my wife, we jumped out of there and did some lecturing about Indigenous education at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba. We were lecturing to undergraduate education students and post-graduate psychology students about educational issues and Indigenous issues in general. That was frustrating too, because here we were, trying to discuss how you could get better outcomes for Indigenous kids, and then lock in those outcomes, but sometimes people don't want to concentrate on that. This might be a bit harsh, but it probably says something about the mindset of some teachers that they just can't see Aboriginal kids fitting in and succeeding in their schools. It's easier for them to just accept that they're at the bottom of the pile. But I'm always saying they can be high flyers as well… it might mean that you have to try different approaches to get them flying but they certainly have the capacity to do that.

And I found it hard to be questioned about the validity of my experience and qualifications as well. I wasn't fitting into the box that they had created for Indigenous people within their own heads. So I was constantly challenging these expectations.

It got to a point where I figured in was better just to get out into a school, do the stuff that I was talking about and test it out for myself. Then if I got results other people would start to listen. And a chance came up out of the blue to come to Cherbourg as Principal, so I grabbed it.