3 days ago
Outback children learn as they recreate bilby's comeback story in Corner Country
In the remote community of Tibooburra, nine hours' drive north of Adelaide, about 25 children gather to perform in the local hall for about 100 people.
The children have made the journey from across Corner Country to tell the story of the return of the bilby five years earlier.
Nine-year-old Grace Maxwell is playing the star character of the show, Tilby the bilby, and her sister, Sophie, 12, is playing an ecologist.
The performance tells the story of how the bilby, driven to extinction by cats, foxes and rabbits, was successfully reintroduced to the conservation area, Wild Deserts, in Sturt National Park in 2020.
Across two enclosures at Wild Deserts, the small mammals' numbers have grown to more than 400.
The performance is the result of a 12-month collaboration between the Broken Hill-based literacy charity Big Sky Stories, Wild Deserts and children from outback stations.
Ecologist Rebecca West and her husband, project coordinator Dr Reece Pedler, live and work on the conservation area at the intersection of the New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland borders.
After raising her three children at Wild Deserts, Ms West, a former science teacher, said the project brought together all her passions.
"My motivation for working on the Wild Deserts project has been to make sure that these animals are here for future generations," she said.
"What's really driven me with this collaboration is being able to offer that opportunity to give children the right chance to learn the story and then tell the story through their own words and action."
As part of the experience, children had an opportunity to attend a quoll and bilby day at Wild Deserts.
Bernadette Maxwell, from Mt Shannon station, said Grace and Sophie found the quoll workshops an immersive learning experience.
"They learnt not just literacy but how to move like a quoll," she said.
"We learned maths because quolls don't have symmetrical spots.
"It was really wonderful to put all that learning together and to bring it all together today."
Christy Stafford, from Orientos station in Queensland, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Tibooburra, also brought her children to the quoll day.
"We didn't really know much ourselves, so there wasn't a great deal we could tell them, but Bec and Reece are just so full of information and it's fantastic that they've been able to do what they have for the area and to let the kids all in and know about it too," she said.
At the end of the performance, all the children were given a copy of the picture book, Little Tilby Bilby, written by Ms West and the children.
"This story just started naturally flowing and the kids were coming up with their ideas and feeding into the story and we're like, 'Wow, we should just write this into a book,'" she said.
Big Sky Stories co-director Jane Vaughan said the book was illustrated by Mia Dyson.
"Quite a long time ago [she] was in my year one and year two class and now she's at university," she said.
"She is an artist in her own right and we can't wait to see what else she will produce."
Ms West is also in the process of writing a story on the quoll.
It's been three years since the not-for-profit bookstore Big Sky Stories opened on the main street of Broken Hill.
"We very quickly have become part of the far west community and it's not surprising, because I think when you want to stand up and advocate for children in the far west, the community want that too," Ms Vaughan said.
The recently released 2024 Australian Early Development Census shows that more than 30 per cent of children in the far west are developmentally vulnerable in at least one of the physical, social, emotional, language or communication domains.
"A big part of what Big Sky stories does is create a conversation and engage in a conversation and make books and reading and families gathering around storytelling really important and normal everyday activities," she said.
