Bateman’s bush track is a living lesson

We’ve all been out sampling Western Australia this year, but Bateman Primary School has brought WA’s unique flora and Indigenous story home.

To mark this remarkable little school’s 50th anniversary, it has opened a Bush Tucker Track, winding through native flora on adjacent land which, in September last year, was pretty much a weedy dumping ground.

That was when school supporters Alison Moore and Mike Baldwin had “their conversation”. Not only did they envisage the garden, but they set to work.

As P&C president Glenn Beauchamp says: “We want it to be more than ‘dump and run’. It’s about knowing your neighbour.” These are sentiments shared by school board chair Chris Speijers.

Jenny Hurle has been associated with the school for 48 years — as a teacher, parent and volunteer. At the 50th celebration, she said: “It takes a community of parents and teachers working together to educate a child for life.”

All three of her children went to the school and became teachers — inspired, no doubt, by the environment which had nurtured them, at a school which lives by the motto “seek knowledge and friendship”.

Read the full story here.