About 250 people attended Mark Christie’s funeral at the Thorak Cemetery near Darwin on Friday 31st January with many more watching live online.

Click here to see the live stream recording via Facebook.

Everyone was encourage to wear a colourful Hawaiian style shirt in honour of what Mark use to wear most days.

Mark’s son Joe wore one of Mark’s shirts and shared many wonderful memories of his Dad. They had such a wonderful bond. It was very clear that they were so proud of each other.

Mark’s wife Hellen was so brave as she also share her grief with us and described how proud she was of Mark as all that he achieved.

Mark’s three brothers (Sean, Grant & Lance) were represented so eloquently by Sean. He shared a number of stories about their life growing up in Darwin together. Each brother dispalyed a number of Mark’s mannerisms and his sense of humour, it was a pleasure to meet them.

Mark’s niece Cecilia Tsan flew in from Korea to help represent Hellen’s side of the family and did such a great job sharing her love for Mark and how she and many of the cousins saw Mark as a father figure.

It was my great pleasure to be asked by Mark’s family to represent his friends and wider education community who he served so well for many years. There were a number of educators and education administrators at the service including the current and past NT Ministers of Education, the CIO of the NT Department of Education and even the past Chief Minister of the Norther Territory Eva Lawler who also spoke and shared some very amusing stories about Mark and his influence.

I was able to share the reflections of a number of educators who knew and loved Mark from around Australia, including the following wonderful poem about Mark written by fellow Adobe Creative Educator Julliette Bentley.

Here is a link to the transcript of my speech.

Mark’s good friend, and fellow member of the Adobe Creative Educator community, Nalin Naidoo flew in from Brisbane to join me in supporting the Christie family. It was a great honour for both of us to be there at this difficult time.

RIP Mark Chistie

Thanks to the HP Reinvent the Classroom project lead by Brett Salakas, Berry Spring Primary School in the Norther Territory was the first school in Australia (and one of the first globally) to put all their teachers through both levels of the Adobe Creative Educator community courses.

During my trip to Darwin in January, they invited me to work with all of their Year 5 & 6 students and teachers where we went through a short design thinking challenge using Adobe Express.

I would like to thank Berry Springs Primary principal Mrs Carlie Mamo and her team for the kind invitation at very short notice.

Video tutorials that cover much of what we covered with the students are available via here.

Have a look at the latest edition of our Australasian newsletter.

It was back in October 2015 when I first visited Nakara Primary School in Darwin. Lots of changes have happened since then, but the spirit for digital creativity is still strong.

This trip to the far north of Australia was at very short notice, prompted by the sudden death and funeral of well-known NT education consultant Mark Christie. When Taniel Mckellar (ICT Coordinator) heard that I was flying up, she grabbed the opportunity for me to work with a group of Year 5 & 6 students, even through it was the second day of their academic school year.

Mark Christie had been working with the school in 2024 so a number of the students had created posters and Gen AI images with Adobe Express. In this session, I introduced them to the video, animation & collaboration features and (in small groups), the students created short animations focused on tips to make the world a better place to live.

Video tutorials based on what I taught can be found here.

Click here to see my 2015 post about my first visit to Nakara.