Year 5

Excursion to the Adelaide Migration Museum

On Monday 4 April, both Year 5 classes went on an excursion to the Migration Museum. We went to the museum so we could find out more about our Unit of Inquiry which is focused on history.

A museum guide took us through five different exhibits which I will tell you about in this paragraph. The first exhibit was a long row of plaques which were about different reasons that people migrated to South Australia. The second exhibit I found very interesting was about how Kuarna people were forced to learn English even though most people hated it. Some Kaurna people tried to run away from school because they hated it that much. I understand why they would try to run away though, imagine you were forced to go to school and do all your work in a language you had never heard before!

The third exhibit was also very interesting; I found it amazing how there used to be 350 Aboriginal tribes in Australia and now there are only about 50. This is because of illnesses; many Aboriginal people died of small things like the common cold.

The fourth exhibit I found actually quite astonishing, because I never knew that the British took over so much land. On a screen our museum guide showed us how much land Britain took over between the 1700s and early 1900s.

The last exhibit is one we all got involved in. Our museum guide showed us some old kinds of kitchen tools, like a butter churner and a meat mincer, that the early settlers used to prepare food with. The students had to try to guess what each tool was used for. We were way off on most of them!

I left the Migration Museum with a lot more knowledge but also a lot of questions like how the British were allowed to take over so much land. I really enjoyed the Migration Museum and I hope to visit again soon.

Elise Mammone (5B)