Ancient Country, new horizons

Learning language, learning culture 

Being a fish out of water is exactly what Kayla was looking for when she applied to the New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program, which is run by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The goal of the program is to strengthen relationships between Australia and the Indo-Pacific region. 

The scholarships support young Australians to travel to one of 40 Indo-Pacific countries, building their knowledge of the region’s cultures and languages through study and internships. Successful applicants receive funding of up to $107,000 to cover their travel and relocation, accommodation and living costs.  

Students emerge from the experience as work-ready, culturally adept professionals whose Indo-Pacific connections can bolster Australia’s economic ties within the region.

Kayla is one of 328 Australian undergraduate students to receive a 2026 NCP scholarship and the first Indigenous scholar to join the program from UTS. Her application was supported by the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, which provides academic, cultural and scholarship programs for all Indigenous students at UTS. 

During her 12 months in Gifu, a small city 2.5 hours outside Osaka, Kayla will complete an intensive Japanese language program and a cultural experience subject that will give her credit towards her UTS degree. 

“They take you to a tea ceremony-type excursion, and you get to try on traditional clothing like the kimono or yukata. You get to make traditional matcha and try traditional dancing; you get to speak to a geisha,” she says of the cultural program. 

“You get the full experience, which I’m very excited about.” 

Combined, these programs will introduce her to the intricacies of life in Japan, laying the foundations for future internship and career opportunities. 

Sharing stories of Indigenous Australia 

In addition to receiving a New Colombo Plan scholarship, Kayla was also named the program’s 2026 First Nations Fellow. It’s a role that will leverage her leadership skills to promote Indigenous participation in the New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program and to share Australian Indigenous culture and history with others. 

In Japan, that work has already begun: Kayla says that many students she’s spoken with are unaware of Australia’s Indigenous peoples and the colonial history that continues to impact them today. 

“A lot of the people I’ve met were expecting the Australian students to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed white people,” she says. 

“There are three UTS students here. One is Korean, the other is Vietnamese, and then there’s me. I’ve had that pleasure of getting to explain my history and my culture to them, which I think is really valuable.” 

Born in Darwin and schooled in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Kayla has spent her life living between cultures. In Japan, she’s more than comfortable initiating conversations about Indigenous history and culture as part of her commitment to building cross-cultural understanding. 

“My whole life experience has pretty much boiled down to intercultural communication and intersectionality. The New Colombo Plan program touches on that intersectionality and creates opportunities to communicate with people from other backgrounds,” she says.

“I always want to know about other people, about their stories, their culture, their background. I’m always curious about those things, so it just made sense to me that I would take that curiosity with me.”

Leading with opportunity

The university study is just the first step of Kayla’s New Colombo Plan experience. Later in the year, she’ll start making plans to complete a professional internship, which is one of the core requirements of the program. 

While she’s yet to finalise her placement, she’s been putting out her feelers to companies like Qantas and Jetstar. Working for a travel or transport business would make perfect sense, both in terms of the digital and social medial marketing skills she wants to build and as an opportunity to leverage her growing fluency in Japanese language and culture.  

“If I were to do an internship in a travel or transport marketing team, I would be marketing Japan to the rest of the world or Australia to Japan,” she says. 

“That’s a really nice connection. I’d be tapping into both my skillsets, using my experience from both UTS and Gifu to connect people to different destinations.”

She also wants to inspire other Indigenous students at UTS to experience the world beyond the place where they belong. This work is central to her role as a First Nations Fellow, and it also builds on her experience as an Indigenous ambassador at Jumbunna where she encourages her peers to engage with academic, cultural and international opportunities at UTS.  

The New Colombo Plan Scholarship Program is one experience she doesn’t want them to miss.

“The doors that it's opened for me already are beyond what I ever believed I would have for myself,” she says. 

“Being a young Indigenous person in Australia, there are a lot of opportunities in the world, and we should always grab them with both hands.”