01 Sep 2025
Year 12 Earth and Environmental Science students have been exploring the Central Tablelands on their field trip. After an early start and a refuel at Braidwood Bakery the students toured the Veolia-operated Woodlawn Eco Precinct. A disused copper-lead-zinc mine is currently being used as a bioreactor, taking 900,000 tonnes of waste from Sydney each year. As the waste breaks down, the gas is collected and combusted to generate electricity. The waste heat is used in the aquaculture setup, where Barramundi are grown for the Canberra market.
Next stop was Geoscience Australia, where students explored the mineral and fossil displays and touched the moon before trekking the Geological Timescale time walk. The path lays out the key events in Earth's history to scale, supported by rock and fossil displays. Time travels quickly when each metre you travel is equivalent to 4 million years.
The final activity of the day was the National Dinosaur Museum. Students observed interactive displays and fossils for organisms all throughout geological time and learnt how information about past life can be inferred from their study. Our tour guide passionately presented the case for Tyrannosaurus Rex being the greatest dinosaur of all time, and after hearing that they could smell you from 16km away, see you from 6km away and burst your eardrums with their voice, all of us left with a newfound appreciation for the most famous dinosaur.
More to come on the second day. Stay tuned...
