Educational Excursions – Teachers Resources Year 4

Students recognise the significance of events in bringing about change — how and why life changed in the past, and what has stayed the same — and describe the experiences of an individual or group, presenting narrative recounts using historical terms. Points of focus:

• The diversity and longevity of Australia’s first peoples, the ways they are connected to country and place (land, sea, waterways, skies) and their pre-contact ways of life.
• Stories of colonisation — the reasons for the journey, who travelled to Australia and their experiences after arrival (the treatment of convicts, daily lives, social order).
• The nature of contact between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and Europeans, and the impact colonisation had on people and the environment — dispossession, dislocation, and loss of lives, food sources and medicines through conflict and disease.

Students identify the interconnections between components of the environment and between people and the environment, recognise the importance of the environment, and propose individual action in response to a local geographical challenge. Points of focus:

• Aboriginal peoples’ ways of living were adapted to available resources; their connection to country and place shaped the sustainable use of those resources, before and after colonisation.
• The natural resources the environment provides — water, timber, minerals — and the different views on how they can be used sustainably.

Before the excursion, teachers might have students research:

• The life of the original inhabitants — focusing on the Whadjuk Noongar people of the Perth area.
• The arrival of Europeans — from Dutch explorers to the First Fleet and settlement in Western Australia.
• Mapping exercises, such as a map of the Perth region showing the river and the original lakes.

Before the excursion we clarify the focus and the specific outcomes you are seeking. This can include a custom start and finish location, a suggested route and the timing of the day. A worksheet for use during and after the tour is provided in advance.

Follow the excursion with reading, audio, video and activities encouraged by the curriculum:

• Further mapping activities and exploration of the effects of colonisation.
• Influential Indigenous people of the 1800s — Mokare and Yagan.
• Other figures of colonial times — James Stirling, Thomas Peel and George Fletcher-Moore.
• Perth’s streets overlaid on the original wetlands — see how Perth was built on lakes and wetlands.

The story of Yagan — killed and beheaded in 1833 — reflects how the initially good relations between British settlers and local Noongar people, after the Swan River Colony was established in 1829, broke down tragically into conflict over land and resources.