Design Technology 

In our modern society we think plastic bottles (extrusion and blow moulding), plastic bags (molten resin blown outward), plastic containers (extrusion moulding, compression moulding, blow moulding, injection moulding and rotational moulding), ceramic bowls (press moulding and fired) as being our way of carrying things. Yet our First Nations people always have and still do create carrying objects from natural, biodegradable, sustainable resources. 

Product Design and Technologies students had an adventurous trip to Melbourne Museum, where we viewed Indigenous gardens, including medicinal plants and food items. Inside was the First Nations section with vessels. Here we viewed woven baskets with feathers for adornment, knotted bags to carry food, bark dishes in which to carry and prepare foods, many different shapes and sizes depending on both what nature had to provide and what was needed to be carried or caught.

Consider the sunken ships, with the china wares cracked and broken, the original fine china vase with a chip in it, handed down through the generations, the plates and bowls that we eat off nightly, and as soon as they are broken we throw them away. The glassware, the plastic, the single use items which are cast aside without much thought.

The Product Design and Technologies students will be researching, comparing and considering how to design and make products for the future with these motives in mind.

The first point being Indigenous Australians always have used natural, handmade products that have very little effect on earth and how can we replicate these systems, moving away from waste and landfill and using nonrenewable resources?

Mrs Hard 

amanda.hard@smseymour.catholic.edu.au

Mrs Wood

melissa.wood@smseymour.catholic.edu.au