Australia Glossary

We've been learning about Australia for a while now and have developed our own Australia glossary. We've got email buddies at Rochedale State School and we hope you are reading this! Please have a look and add a comment. Leave your name as part of your comment please.

Glossary

View more presentations from Ben Winter.

Unfortunately, the hyperlinks from the contents page don't seem to work in this file.

The First Fleet - the first convicts taken to Australia

We've been learning about timelines and have started to create timelines of Australian events.

Here is a link to a site which contains details of the convicts who were transported onboard the first fleet of ships to Australia which carried prisoners or convicts.

These facts have been put into a database so that we can easily search them.  They are not primary records - records which were made at the time, but are based on secondary sources - these were made after reading primary sources.

Primary sources are sometimes very difficult to read - see this one scanned here.  Handwriting was sometimes very different to our handwriting now.

The youngest convict was John Hudson.  How old was he when he was transported?

What age was he when he was charged with his crimes?

What was his occupation when he was arrested?

How many 14 year old convicts were there in the First Fleet?

If you are interested in finding out why convicts were sent all the way to Australia, then look here.

As always, please leave comments with your name.

Rochedale State School

Here is a link to our brand new link school!

 Rochedale State School

Here's a page from the school site with animal information.  Do you have any questions about the animals which aren't answered on their website?

Please leave as a comment.

The First Fleet

The First Fleet of 11 British sailing ships dropped off 772 convicts on the shore of what is now Sydney on January 26, 1788.


Here is a list of the equipment they took with them:

Which European first landed on Australia?

Find out about James Cook here.

Have a go at a webquest...find out about life as a cabin boy

Why did he go?  Look here...there were two reasons...can you find them?
Who went on the trip with Cook?
How did they navigate?  Look here.
Want to find out more about hemispheres and latitude and longitude?  Go here
What was life like on board ship?
Here are some dates from Australia's history.
Here's a very detailed timeline of events.
Here is a brief description of where Cook went on his different expeditions.
On Cook's first expedition, he travelled with a man called Joseph Banks.  Look here for one of the letters he sent to his sister.  It's quite difficult to read.  Can you understand any of the words?
Here is a site which has links to typed up versions of many of the journals which were kept by Joseph Banks on his journeys as a scientist.
Why was the trip so important for science?
Here is a summary of Cook's journeys.
Look at the map below for the journey taken by Cook on his way around the world.
 c
Below is an image of the ship he used to travel to Australia:

Look here for some facts and figures about the Endeavour...what was her top speed?
Here is a painting of the HMS Endeavour just before the long journey to Australia.  What was the name of the ship before being used for the expedition?

What do you want to know about Australia?

Here are some of the things I want to find out about Australia:

How quickly did the population of Australia grow?  When did it reach 100,000?
What is the highest mountain?
How often is there snow?
What is school like compared to in Britain?

See if you can find the answers to these questions.

Try to think of some things you want to find out about Australia.

Australian Animals

I'm sure you know about the kangaroo, wallabee and the emu, but do you know many more Australian animals? Do you know the type of place they live...their habitat?

Follow this link. Read the questions and then see if you can find the answers by researching using the links.

If you find any amazing facts then add them as comments. Good luck.

Stories from other cultures - Porpoise and the Kangaroo

Happy New Year!


I hope you all had a great break and Christmas and I look forward to a fantastic 2012...hope you do too!


We will be finding out about Aboriginal stories as part of our topic on Australia.  Follow this link for a puppet show and this one for a written version.


 Have a look below at the National Geographic for kids video of Aboriginal Rock art.






See you on Thursday for the first day of school.


If you have any information about Australia or Aborigine culture, try to bring it to school.