PRIMARY SCHOOL FOCUS
SUGGESTED PRE-VISIT ACTIVITIES [Image thumbnails link with full images and additional information]
Teacher Information | During the Visit | Post-Visit Activities

   
  1


Click the map to go to the exhibition map with place locations

  

As a class, make a large map of Australia on a sheet of card or on a computer. Using history books and atlases as a guide, mark on the map the routes followed by the following European navigators and explorers:
  • James Cook 1768-1771
  • Matthew Flinders 1801-1803
  • John Clements Wickham and John Lort Stokes 1837-1841
  • Ludwig Leichhardt 1844-1845
  • Edmund Besley Court Kennedy 1848
  • Augustus Charles Gregory 1855-1856, 1858
  • John McDouall Stuart 1858-1862
  • Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills 1860-1861
   
  2 Find out about the journeys these early European explorers took. As a class, discuss what you think it would be like to have travelled with them, facing such dangers as shipwrecks on coral reefs, hostile Aborigines, long desert crossings and rivers with crocodiles.
   
  DURING THE VISIT
Teacher Information | Pre-Visit Activities | Post-Visit Activities
   
  1
 

Look at Lt. J. Stokes speared in the lungs while discovering the Victoria River, Australia 1839 by Richard Bridge Beechey, which tells the story of a party of explorers who were attacked by hostile Aborigines. What two clues has the artist painted to tell the story?
1___________________________________
2___________________________________
     
  2

 

Find View of Port Bowen, Queensland, August 1802 by William Westall. The artist makes things smaller in the distance and divides the painting into overlapping parts to help give the illusion of real space. Can you see how the painting is divided into three? — the foreground with trees and Aboriginal people, the middle ground with more trees, and the background with the sea. Write down all the things you can see in the painting:

 

Foreground:____________________________________________

Middle ground:__________________________________________

Background:____________________________________________
     
  3

Find your favourite painting of a flower, plant or marine animal in the exhibition. Write a couple of sentences that explain why you like it.

     
   
  4

Colourful plants attract insects, and patterns and colours are essential to the survival of many animals, disguising them from their enemies or prey.

   

Make a list of the patterns (dots, wavy lines, etc.) and colours in your favourite flower, plant or animal painting:
     

My favourite painting is called:______________________________________________________

The artist is:___________________________________________________________________

Patterns:______________________________________________________________________

Colours:______________________________________________________________________
     
   
  5
 

Look at Harriet Jane Neville-Rolfe's painting, Chinaman's garden, Frankfield. Harriet made the painting when she visited a cattle property, Alpha Station, in central Queensland from 1883-85.

Is it a good place for a garden in a hot climate? Why?

   
  SUGGESTED POST- VISIT ACTIVITIES:
Teacher Information | Pre-Visit Activities | During the Visit
     
  1

Imagine you and your friends are explorers in a beautiful and dangerous land.

  • Describe some of your adventures and the hazards you face.
  • Illustrate your story with a painting or drawing, or make it into a comic book or storybook with pictures.
  2

Using paint, coloured pencils or modelling clay, create your own tropical animal, fish or bird. Choose an animal which has interesting shapes and is very colourful, such as a frog, tropical fish or parrot.
  • You could go outside and look at real creatures, or you might find photographs in books or magazines.
  • Look very closely at the animal and then do your own drawing or painting. Try to find the basic shapes that make up the animal - such as circles, triangles, squares or rectangles. Think about what you like about these shapes and arrange them in your work in a way that pleases you. Make your animal very colourful.
  • If you are making a clay model, begin with the body, then add the head and the legs. Use a spatula to smooth over the joins. Once everything is in place, add a line for a mouth, holes for eyes and other details and textures which will give your work character. If you want to paint the sculpture give it a coat of white paint first before applying other colours.
  3

Using paint, coloured pencil, crayons and collaged materials, make your own sea scene. Start with a simple drawing, perhaps with land and beach in the foreground, boats in the middle ground and sea and sky in the distance. You could also include people swimming and on the beach.

  • Begin by painting the most distant parts of the scene, the sky and sea, first. Use very pale colours to make the sky and distant sea seem far away.
  • Once the background is completed, apply middle-toned colours to the sea, boats and swimmers in the middle ground.
  • The final application of colours to beach and land should be darker in the immediate foreground. Make any people in the foreground larger than people further away.
  • Try to create interesting textures and patterns in some parts of your painting. You could collage fabric, card, shells and other things on to the picture. You could make thick paint by mixing PVA glue into water-based paints. Sand can also be added to thick paint to give it a rough, grainy texture. You could use your fingers or a sponge or an old comb to make marks in the paint, and you could squirt or dribble the paint.
     
   

Teacher Information | Pre-Visit Activities | During the Visit | Post-Visit Activities