This term the Year 4 students in Room 21 have been learning about Indigenous Australians and what they traded, their art, language and how they cared for the land. Our class has been experimenting with some indigenous artwork. We have used symbols to create prints about the first contact in 1788.

We have also been looking into what it was like in Australia before the first fleet arrived. We found that Indigenous Australians took very good care of the land, and they found their own food from nature, but they only took what they needed. Our class has found that Yolngu people, an Aboriginal tribe, traded with the Makanan people. They traded sea cucumber which was used for medicine and food.

We decided to read a book, Stolen Girl by Trina Saffioti and Norma MacDonald, that inspired us to see what it was like for Aboriginal people from their perspective, and we wrote what the story meant to us. The following piece of writing is from Adelaide Gao.

Blog post written by Year 4 students Heidi, Maximos and Banita.

Stolen Girl

Before she took another step she took a long deep breath, and ran for it. She hadn’t gone far when her lips became dry, and she started to whisper, “ Water water.” She desperately looked around to find water. She imagined herself huddled up in her mum’s arms, and she imagined water.
Wait!
Water was what she was looking for.

“Oi! Do you know where that girl is?”
“Er… no!”
“Well then, hurry up and find her.”
“Ok ok!”

As the guards urgently scurried around to find her she heard all the noise, and started to sprint again…