COVER STORY - "Stewards of Creation at Merewether Beach"
By Tracey Edstein.

Did you know that there’s a littoral rainforest in Merewether? Maybe you thought the only local wetland was at Shortland? In fact, downtown Newcastle boasts a wealth of ‘learnscapes’ thanks to a hive of activity at Merewether Beach’s Holy Family Primary School.

In May four students, accompanied by a teacher and a parent, will travel to Gothenburg, Sweden, to present to the judges of the Volvo Adventure Environmental Award, evidence of their work. On this relatively small suburban site, the pupils, guided by the knowledge and passion of the adults working with them, have taken a number of initiatives which have had wonderful outcomes for their own learning and just as importantly, for the environment.

Holy Family Aircare project is the Australian winner of the Volvo Adventure Environmental Award which operates under the auspices of the United Nations. As Sian Taylor, Year 6, explained, “We entered the Volvo competition over the internet and we won! We’re representing Australia in Sweden in May, for a week.” There the students will compete for the in-ternational prize, but whatever the outcome, as teacher Carolyn Taylor says, “The environment’s the winner.”

The inspiration behind all this energy and enthusiasm is Jenny Robinson, whose son Gerry is a pupil at Holy Family, and who is also the environmental education officer at Trees Are Newcastle, a community nursery and revegetation centre at Hamilton. “I run a programme called “Biodiversity in Schools”, and in Lake Macquarie I do Landcare in schools.”

Under the leadership of Jenny and Carolyn, a number of projects have taken shape, including the acquisition of a shade house to grow the required seedlings for tree planting at Blackbutt, Newcastle University and Kooragang, a Waterwatch programme and the development of an on-site wetland learnscape. All this has originated from the features the pupils wanted in their school environment.

Hannah Smith described the pre-wetland environment, “It used to be just a dirt patch, the grass wouldn’t grow - dirt would blow in your eyes - it just wasn’t a nice place to be.”

The award-winning project, “Aircare” is amazingly simple but has enormous potential to change the world. As the competition submission explained:

In our society we drive a lot of cars, which produce carbon dioxide. Without reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the planet will warm up. Ice will melt, sea levels will rise and there will be more extreme weather conditions. Plants soak up carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, reducing global warming. As a school we wanted to identify how we could reduce global warming. The students wanted to do something practical. By learning about greenhouse gases and car pollution we were able to make practical links between tree planting and cars. We also wanted to explain the value of tree planting to others.

Holy Family principal Mark Twohill is justifiably proud of the students’ achievements. “One of the reasons parents come to our school is because of our environmental programmes. They make a difference - it’s a hands on approach, because this generation will make some of the big decisions that the world needs to make and our children will be well informed and will know the right decisions.”

The ‘worker bees’ of this enterprise rejoice in the name ‘garden grubs’! As Mark said, “There would be 40 or 50 children from K-6 who do the planting of the seeds in the tubes on Wednesdays. They love it!”

A gratifying Aircare spinoff has been the arrival of species which you would not expect to find in the city. As Genevieve De Souza explained, “We’ve had two tawny frogmouths roosting in one of the trees, which is very unusual, we’ve had a blue-tongue lizard outside the Year 1 classroom, and lots of frogs so there’s been quite a bit of croaking”.

Another feature of learning at Holy Family has been the integration of the various projects into the curriculum. Poetry writing, science, religious studies and mathematics have all benefited from the experiences offered by Jenny and Carolyn and supported by the entire school community.

We wish Monica, Hannah, Genevieve, Sian, Carolyn and Jenny bon voyage and look forward to their Swed-ish travellers’ tales!

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