Dry Ditch /

Dry Bone Gully

Directions: Named on a dry year, Dry Ditch is found on the same creek bed where you can find Wet Ditch. Dry Ditch is an open section of the creek, just before it crosses under the powerlines track. It is rocky, and erosion has formed a steep clay wall on the north side and a sloping wall on the south of the Blue Metal Road side of the track. Don’t let the name confuse you, when there has been rain Dry Ditch can become a fast-flowing creek, which is important to consider when visiting the area.  

Life Cycles on the Mountain

Question: Can you find any bones? Or something that had died? Why do you think it died? Was it a natural process or did something kill it? If you found bones, what could they be from? How can you tell?

In visiting the mountain year-round, the Blue Gum community watches seasons shift, witnessing great growth, abundant birth and, through the cycle, the end of things. Leaves changing colour and falling, animals living, dying and decaying into the soil, before life begins anew again. The mountain allows the students to observe and value every part of the life cycle. Here you will see students engaging in the wonder of what they have found; a bone, a skeleton of a kangaroo long since passed. What can be learnt from these things? What of nature? What of time? What of ourselves?

  • Curiosity is as natural as the life cycle, no one needs to entice a child to wonder or ask questions. It is our job as educators to get out of the way of this curiosity, to let it bloom, to be careful not to stifle it while ensuring the safety of our students.

The Potential of Tools

Question: What is around that you could use as a tool? Do you see the sap? What does it feel like? What could you use the sap for? How did First National People create tools? What materials could they have used?

As the students engage with the mountain, they turn their attention to the creation of tools. The best digging stick, a bone with a point that helps you carve, or the bark that holds water… What can you create? What materials have potential in your explorations?

  • Look what I’ve found!

    What can we do with it?

    Oh! I have an idea!

    Ingenuity requires imagination and one thing that students at Blue Gum have in abundance, is imagination. Things of interest are consistently explored, picked up, considered and made into any manner of toy, tool or instrument.

    Creativity blooms with time and collaboration, more than one group through the years have themselves considered the value of the sticky nature of tree sap. Educators have witnessed students collecting, manipulating and applying the sticky substance to all matter of objects to bind them together. This act, intuitively considered and applied, demonstrates the wisdom of students.