Nadia Wheatley - "Going Bush" Project

"Going Bush" Project

Nadia's book, Going Bush, grew out of a Harmony Day project developed in 2003 by eight inner-Sydney city schools. The initial plan was to break down barriers between the communities but it developed into a larger project which included learning about the environment, Indigenous culture, and living in multicultural communities, and involved sixteen Muslim, Catholic and government schools. In 2005 Nadia Wheatley and Ken Searle were invited by the committee to work with the children on "the theme of freedom". Wheatley and Searle used an educational model they had developed with others in the 1990s at Papunya School in Central Australia which "puts country at the core of the curriculum". The result was the book, Going Bush, which captures what the children learnt through exploring a section of urban bushland along Wolli Creek.