Dwellingup Primary School has extended its strong environmental program into the schoolyard, with a new nature playground built and installed by the local community.
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Situated adjacent to natural forest, already students at the school maintain the Karak (red-tailed black cockatoo) community nature trail, care for chickens and guinea pigs, a vegetable garden and participate in a ‘Dirt Matters’ program.
Principal Colleen Sing said the new playground gave the students an opportunity to engage with the natural environment during playtime.
“It was completed at the beginning of this year,” she said.
“We got a lot of volunteer labor to do it all, a lot of people from the Dwellingup community pitched in.”
The local Department of Parks and Wildlife staff donated wood recycled from an old railway bridge at Yarragil formation to help build the playground.
The massive jarrah slabs are historically significant, as they once helped transport logs from where they were felled to timber mills in towns like Nanga Mill.
Ms Sing said that because most of the playground was either donated or built out of materials from the area, the playground only cost the school $3000 to install.
The playground incorporates a teepee, a canoe, climbing ropes and a wooden obstacle course, which the students have already incorporated into their games.
“Sometimes we play this game, ‘don’t touch the ground chasey’, where the it person has to count to five, while everyone else runs away,” student Logan Gavin said.
“But if someone accidentally touches the floor, then they’re it.”
Logan said he liked the new playground because it had a lot of jumping places and things to climb on.
