Our Own Backyard

Several weeks ago, grade 6 and several staff went to Penshurst for an excursion. This is an attempt to upload a podcast on this excursion. I think that Chelsea did a fabulous job for her first attempt. Click below to have a listen!

Download Video: Posted by murch at TeacherTube.com.

Fifteen grade 6 students and several staff journeyed to Penshurst, approx 20 mins drive, today. We spent the most enjoyable day with some of the volunteer staff from the volcano discovery centre. Students were given a short talk by Val, and then Mylee and Jill helped us to fill in some information sheets. These sheets were completed as students walked around the centre.

It is such an amazing centre when you consider that it is opened by volunteer staff from a pool of 30. (Penshurst itself only has 500 residents.) It was opened in 2003 and is still going strong. Students also saw a volcanic bomb which was on loan to the centre. We spent approximately 50 minutes in the centre and then travelled to the water gardens for lunch.  As the day had started off miserably weatherwise, we all had raincoats and wet weather gear, but by lunch the sun was shining and Penshurst was so photogenic. Our family travels through Penshurst many times but we rarely stop, but after today’s session we will certainly return and bask in its countrified beauty. Mt Rouse towers on the edge of the town.  People have replanted trees on the mounain, it is nearly springtime and the countryside is that magical colour of green after the recent, timely rains.  The students soon found the playground after eating their lunch and then we walked to the natural water spring which supplies the township with water. From there a little stream flows through the developed botancial gardens complete with a gazebo.

It was back on the bus again, with Mylee and Jill as our guides. We proceeded to one of the three quarries where we saw where the basalt met the scoria flows. The removal of scoria and stone from the quarry and bared the cliffs that show this rather unusual feature. Geoligists and geography students come to Penshurst and spend time here studying this unusual volcano. Then, it was onto the crater where we saw great numbers of kangaroos jumping away, across the top of the crater. There is still some water in the base of the crater, although grasses and weeds tend to hide its existence. The previous dry years, have ensured that the water has virtually dried up. The bus then took us around the second crater up to the carpark. This allowed us to climb all the way up to the top where we witnessed the most amazing views across to the Grampians in the north, Mt Napier to the east and Mt Shadwell to the south west. The stony rises could be clearly seen and the original flow of lava trail could be discerned on its pathway to Port Fairy’s Pea Soup beach in the south.