Nature play zone takes shape, with help

Students and staff at St Brigid’s School in Collie have been hard at work planning and building a new nature playground, including a Noongar culture garden.

School principal Daniel Graves said the project had been in the pipeline for several years and had been completed in stages with students and community members all heavily involved.

“We saw a need to create a fun and engaging learning space for the senior students which had a lot of interest from the parents and students,” he said.

“One of our strategic planning goals for the school is to engage in and learn about Noongar culture and so we started working with a local elder, James Khan.

“He’s been helping us with the design here and given his input as to what would reflect Noongar culture and Noongar learning — like plant lists.”

The most recent development of the project was the establishment of the Noongar Culture Garden, which was planted last week by the school’s Year 4 students.

Still to come in stage two of the project is the planting of bigger native flora including grass trees.

The final stage will include a tree house, which past and present Year 6 students are helping to design.