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• Our Sense-Sational Heroes

Our Sense-Sational Heroes

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They’re hard at work protecting the sight, sound, smell, taste and touch of our environment

Can you imagine taking a walk in bushland that’s missing the chatter of native birds, biting into a strawberry that’s blemish-free but devoid of flavour or swimming in the sea amid a flotilla of old plastic bottles and bags? Our senses are the first point of contact we have with the world around us, but when the environment looks bad, lacks character or sounds wrong, we all lose.

Meet some Australians who are each making a positive difference to their environment. They may have started small but they’re already proving how individual actions make, well, perfect sense.

A taste for the good life

Ten-year-old Riley Pilling, of Eumundi in Queensland, puts his new-found love of zucchini down to one thing: school. Oh, and the fact that it tastes great.

Ever since Eumundi State School, at the edge of the Sunshine Coast’s hinterland, added permaculture classes to its curriculum, the Year 5 student has been giving vegetables a second chance.

With the help of his nine-year-old sister Erin, Riley is even working on starting a vegetable patch at home, and has recently been boosting his pocket money by selling the eggs he gets from his eight Rhode Island Red chickens – another permaculture installation.

It’s thanks to teacher and father-of-four Jon Gemmell that Riley, Erin and their schoolmates are learning just how delicious good food can taste.

"About two years ago, a couple of us at school wanted to get kids away from the fast-food scene, and teach them that fruit and vegetables actually taste good," explains Gemmell. "We also wanted to teach the kids some life skills, and permaculture teaches about care for the earth, care for people and working together as a community."

Fruit and vegetables grown the permaculture way are organic, and they haven’t had the down time of going to the shop, says Gemmell. "You don’t have to worry about what has been sprayed on them; it is a pure and clean process. The vegetables are definitely richer in flavour because all the inputs have been good."

At Eumundi State School, a series of hands-on lessons covering everything from growing your own fruit and vegetables to breeding chickens, composting, water conservation and even building mud-brick houses enlightens students from Year 2 to Year 7.

At home, Gemmell delights in the fact that he now often finds his own children in the vegetable patch crunching away on snow peas that they’ve taken straight off the vine.

"The other day, I spotted a head of broccoli from which one of them had taken a great bite," he laughs.

The teacher’s latest aim is for his Year 5 students to supply the school’s tuckshop with all the organic fruit and vegetables it needs.

"It’s just fantastic," says Riley’s mother, Beth. "The kids are being given the knowledge that allows them to make better decisions, whether that’s in their own backyard or out in the world."