I have given lots of school workshops before, but never to pre school students. Today I spend the morning at Falls Creek Pre School, it was a lot of fun and a much different type of energy to harness in order to try to achieve something.
Whenever the kids lost focus, they were allowed to draw on post it notes and stick them to my laptop, a laptop post it note exhibition.
We worked together talking about the animals that are near extinction in the area such as the Mountain Pygmy Possum, the only marsupial that is restricted to Alpine Environments, as well as the Powerful Owl and the Spotted Tree Frog. They drew pictures of each of these animals:
Mountain Pygmy Possum
Powerful Owl
Spotted Tree Frog
I then spent the rest of the day sorting through all the material I have made since I arrived.
A couple of hours before night fall, I made my way up the top of Mt McKay, stopping occasionally to take a photograph.
I have been told that there are Bogong Moth Caves on Mt Mackay, and for days I have been thinking that I have to make time to go looking for them. The moth lives in caves around here for 4 months of the year. Occasionally, on warm nights, they will leave the safety of their cave, fly around for a few hours, then fly back into their cave. Hundreds of thousands of them swarming the sky. It isn't known why they do this and apparentely it's quite an experience, the site and the sound of it.
I was hoping that the conditions might be just right so I could experience it, and record it and film it of course.
While I waited for the sun to go down, I walked amongst the large rocks, trying to find moth caves and crevices, with no luck.
After a while, I realised that the moths weren't going to brave the wind and cold, so I tried to coax them out, using my little hand held projector and casting images of Bogong Moths, onto the rocks and other things. Hunting them out with digital nets.
I really enjoyed this type of work, small hand held projections on sites of relevance. They were just quickly done, holding a projector shakily in one hand and a camera in the other, as the wind hustled us about. Definitely something to explore further.
After dark, I travelled to The Nordic Bowl to continue to make some large projections there.
Some moths caught in digital nets, some specimen objects, some kids drawings.
