Broken Hill School of the Air kids shine in sport

This might mean using the dam to swim laps ahead of a swimming carnival if they don't have a pool - as long as it's rained and there's water in it.

Or they use an airstrip and the vast land on their stations for cross country running.

For long jump practice some have sandpits while there's one who runs down the hill into a dirt pit to help them train.

Their list of ingenuity is endless when it comes to utilising farm equipment to help them reach their goals.

And this year's crop of Broken Hill School of the Air (SOTA) students are no different.

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The school leaders George Harvey, Ellsie Palmer, Ruby Harris and Bill Fitzgerald all spoke about how their parents had built makeshift sporting equipment to help them train.

This included their dads welding steel together to build a high jump and using old mattresses to take their falls. Another drives a 340 kilometre round trip to Mildura to train at the pool once a week.

But while they have the same story about how they train, what is different is the landscape in which they call home.

For students like George in the north, who has represented his school for 100m and 200m, it is incredibly dry as no rain has fallen in a month.

While for the rest in the south or east of Broken Hill, they've received plenty of rain.

So much so that their properties have been cut off or they had to travel an extra hour to divert around roads flooded to attend the SOTA week in Broken Hill where they competed in their annual swimming carnival.

"We have spear grass as high as the fence ... we can't ride our motorbikes through it," Billy said.

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SOTA principal Kylie Green said her students were enthusiastic and keen to participate when opportunities arose because they had to be resourceful.

Ms Green said each student's environment was not identical and they utilised that when preparing for a sporting event.

"They take advantage of how they can get engaged in the environment they have to prepare in," Ms Green said.

There are currently 165 students across two campuses for SOTA.