Years 5 & 6 came out this week to see the scars and various bush tucker trees that live around them. I decided Telinebone would be the best paddock as it is close by with good dirt tracks for the school bus. More importantly though the scartrees there are spectacular, varied and are clustered together in easily accessible groups. There were about 16 kids all up + 2 Elders, 2 teachers & the bus driver Winston. Allan Tighe dropped in for awhile & told the kids some dreamtime stories & Luke Farr from the community college Ag plot came out as well. Luke proved to be an expert on bushtucker as well as sausage in damper lunchtucker. Safer then the Bunning sausage sizzle as he wrapped lumps of dough around long sticks for the kids to cook on the campfire. As the dough cooked it expanded and the kids removed the stick & inserted a BBQ snag… brilliant.
I had some misgivings about how interested this age group would be & worried that their attention spans would be too short to listen to Me or Allan or their teachers. I couldn’t have been more wrong, the kids were great – engaged, curious, and absorbed in the environment. It made me very happy to watch the kids explore their heritage & touch the scars & stone artefacts with wonder. After all its highly likely some of these kids’ ancestors made these scars and used the grinding stones & axes. Congratulations to Chris Hunt & Kayleen as well as the behaviour of the kids reflected very well on the school & the staff. Also the Elders, Pattie Walford & Clem Dodd who probably knew more than the rest of us put together. Hopefully they will all come out again another day & we will explore some other intensely scarred sites…
