Year 4 Students Explore Historic Sydney

On Thursday 5th September, we travelled to Sydney to learn about Convicts and British Colonisation. We had to be ready for the bus by 5:55 am, and we were all very tired. Some of us even slept on the bus! It was a 2 ½ hour drive with lots of chatter, especially when we saw a skywriting plane writing words in the clouds! Finally, we arrived at Milson’s Point. As we got out of the bus we saw a mix of sights. The beautiful harbour waters, the magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge and unfortunately, rubbish. Plastic water bottles, containers, chip packets and more! We were taken aback because of how much we care about our environment and what we had learnt about sustainability in class.

While we waited for Rosman Cruises, we ate recess on some concrete steps near the entrance of Luna Park. We enjoyed the views of the Harbour’s beautiful waters and a bridge to the ferry wharf.   On the boat we sat down and a lady named Elizabeth spoke to us about the history of the harbour and and how the convicts and Aboriginal Peoples were treated when the English arrived in Australia. We were each given a map of the Harbour to take home with us. We saw Bennelong Point, the place where his hut was that is now the Sydney Opera House, then we saw Barangaroo Point. We also saw Pinchgut Island, an island were some convicts were placed and starved.

When we got off the boat we had lunch in First Fleet Park. We had to defend our lunch from the fearless ibis who did not care about personal space! Lots of us were looking at our ibis-eaten sandwiches as Mrs Tenhave and Mrs Lis shoo-ed the pesky birds away.  After lunch we walked to a takeaway shop and waited for the tour guides. When they arrived they gave us our costumes that we had to wear for the whole walking tour! We quickly got over how embarrassing it looked and got into character. We were assigned a real person from the 18th Century and if we were a convict, we learned what crime they committed, their punishments, their sentences and their story.

After our walking tour we hopped on the bus and got a rest as it was a big day for all of us. We thank the teachers and our school for a wonderful experience.

Jack W, Elizabeth M, Marcella S and Emma H