Learning from the bush

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by Nadia Wheatley

 

Towards the end of the walk, we sat in a little gully and mapped how Aboriginal people might have used its resources. One boy was concerned to discover that the Eora would have lived in the rock shelter. ‘But people would have seen them getting dressed!' he exclaimed. Another child thought the gully would have been a good living place for its traditional owners because it was convenient to Bardwell Park railway station. Others drew a plentiful supply of possums and wallabies into their maps. Meanwhile Nathan identified the feral tobacco plant and taught everyone how to eat the fresh shoots of the Lomandra. After lunch, we broke into three groups and produced journey maps on huge sheets of paper as a way of recording our discoveries and revising our understanding of the topography.

Over our next two sessions together, back in the classroom, these maps became the basis both of the individual books that the children began to make, and of the collective story which we started writing and drawing together. While Ken and I helped the students brainstorm geology, science, botany and history (including Aboriginal history), we were constantly amazed by their thirst for knowledge about the bush.

‘I think I saw a beard heath (Leocopogon),' wrote the ten-year-old girl whose mother had asked me to teach her plant names. The surprising thing was that I had not shown the children this particular plant, having thought it best to stick to the obvious casuarinas, wattles, banksias and paperbarks. Dora had found the beard heath for herself, both in the bush and in one of my reference books, and had worked out the convention of using the Latin species name.

‘Does anyone remember how long ago the sandstone escarpment was formed?' I asked, a fortnight after we had done rubbings of the ripples.

Liam (who was in Grade Four) put up his hand. ‘Was it 230 million years ago?'

Spot on.

Like little haiku-machines, they wrote poems about the creek and the trees and the birds, about harmony and respect for country. Under Ken's instruction, boys as well as girls drew flowers and leaves and seedpods. It didn't occur to anyone that this might be sissy: it was science.

By the end of the fourth week, as the students went on holidays, I knew that what they were producing was so interesting that we could aim for a commercial publication rather than just slapping a book together on a photocopier. Ken and I approached Allen & Unwin (with whom we had previously produced a number of books), and they quickly came on board. The principals agreed that we could have an extra two days with the kids.

Because many of the photos from the first walk had adults in them, we needed to do a quick second bushwalk, as a photo shoot. On the first occasion it had been September, and the bush was bright with the gold of wattle. Six weeks later, the wattle was finished and the white flowers of kunzea and tea-tree dominated the palette.

When we got back to school after our second walk, I asked the students: ‘What did you notice had changed in the bush?'

‘Us!' they shouted with one voice.

I was astonished.

They elaborated: ‘The first time, some of us were scared. We didn't know the bush and we didn't know each other. We walked all spread out. This time, we walked together in a clump.'

They were right. It was evident in the photos. I nearly cried at the time, and I am nearly crying again as I write this.

IT WAS ONE OF THESE clumped-up photographic images that Ken and I used on the cover of Going Bush. You can't see all the faces because the students are so close together, but everyone is there.

In another way as well, everybody is represented on this cover. The drawn landscape of the bush track along which the photographed children walk is a collaborative work, composed by Ken from sixteen pieces of artwork which the students did. This image is framed by photographs of the bark of two trees from the dry sclerophyll forest which flanks this part of the track.

At the end of our time together, the students anonymously wrote their evaluations of the project. One of them declared: ‘On this journey I experienced the bush and I experienced life. I also found a brand new way to learn, and know new things.' As these children go back into their homes and communities, they take their newfound understanding with them. With any luck, they will talk up the experience to their families and neighbours, and will even take them into the bush. As well, the published book helps spread the message into the wider society.

This, of course, was part of the underlying rationale for the whole exercise. While politicians want kids to study civics and newcomers to pass some sort of test before they can officially become Australians, surely it is important to encourage everyone to experience the country itself before we expect them to connect with a political notion of country which was imposed on the continent a bare two hundred and twenty years ago.

Such a hope is not difficult to achieve. As these sixteen children discovered, going bush does not mean trekking to the back of Bourke. It can be as simple as feeling the Aboriginal land that is always under our feet as we walk through our cities. ♦