Today we had a visit from Yvonne Giblett who is a home carer for the Darling Range Wildlife Shelter.   This shelter is a not-for-profit, volunteer organisation that treats, cares for and rehabilitates Australian native wildlife. 

As a home carer, Yvonne takes native animals home to care for them. At the moment she has Bucky and Alice who are joeys, 2 big kangaroos and a possum. At the shelter they look after all sorts of sick animals eg: marsupials and bandicoots.

Yvonne and Bucky the joey, visit Clifton Hills Primary

Yvonne was kind enough to bring with her ‘Bucky’, a joey, who is nearly 1 year old. Bucky is a Western grey kangaroo. Some people had rang the shelter for help as Bucky’s mum had been hit by a car and had died which left Bucky an orphan when he was 7mths old.

Bucky will stay with Yvonne until he is out of the pouch then he will go to the wildlife park, where he will be given 3 bottles of milk a day. This milk is special as kangaroos cannot tolerate lactose (makes them sick and gives them diarrhoea) so they cannot have cows milk. This is where he will also be introduced to other kangaroos. After a while he will then be moved into another pen, where he will get 2 bottles of special milk a day and then he will be moved again to another pen where he will get 1 bottle a day.  At 18 months old he goes into another pen with other kangaroos where they form their own mobs. This is the main pen where he will be off milk and learns to look after himself.

After he is 2 years old, Bucky will be released back into the wild with his own mob. If they are not ok, the volunteers (who check on them after 2-3 weeks) will bring them back to the shelter. Sometimes they cannot be released as there is something wrong so they are cared for at the shelter.

Yvonne also told us that in the last few months the vet and food bills at the shelter have each been over a $1000 each month, and that one 25kg bag of milk for a joey costs $358. 

While Yvonne was at our meeting she also told us some interesting facts about joeys.  For example, Did you know: 
• :Joeys when born are the size of a jelly bean.
• :At 6 months old they weigh between 600-700 grams.
• :They stay in mums pouch for 6-7 months, and then at 7-8 months they come out then go back in.
• :Always pick up a joey by its tail because if you pick one up by the chest (their power is in their back    legs) so when they kick it could cause them to break their back.

Just before Yvonne left she gave all our members a brochure on the Darling Range Wildlife shelter and a sticker with the wildlife help line number (9474 9055 for all the people in Perth) which you can call 24hrs a day, 7 days a week.  When you call they will assist you by either collecting the animal or giving you advice on what to do.  What a great meeting, Bucky was so cute and we really enjoyed learning about our national emblem the kangaroo.  

At the end of 2007's school year Noranda Primary School, in conjunction with Animal Club, ran a West Australian art competition focussing on what it takes to create happy farm animals.

The competition was open to all primary students from K to 7. A range of country and inner city schools from across the state participated. The students were very excited about the prizes that were up for grabs for the successful entrants.

Joshua's winning entry

The winning entrant Joshua, a year six student from Bullsbrook Primary school won a state of the art MP3 player with heaps of memory to download music.

In second place were Amelia, a year 4 student at Yuluma Primary, and Sophie, a year 2 student from Noranda Primary School, who both won a fabulous Wildlife Book by Steve Bloom called "Look of the Wild". This book was made even more special because it was autographed by Voiceless's patron and actor, Hugo Weaving, famous for Lord of the Rings and The Matrix.

Third place went to Usama, a year 5 student from Noranda Primary and Thomas, Year six from Bullsbrook Primary School. Both students received a book with a compassionate message towards animals. PAWS President and founder, David Reynolds, also kindly donated one of the publications for which we are very grateful. 

Recently we contacted CIWF and received a copy of their DVD Farm Animals and Us in Australia. We spent time viewing this DVD and discussing and completing worksheets that we downloaded from their website. We found this session very informative and an eye opener to the world of farming and its treatment toward our animals. We are all now reconsidering the purchase of our products when we shop and are keeping in mind what we as individuals can do on a daily basis to help protect our farm animals.

The viewing of this DVD lead to our posters on pigs.  We chose a heading we wished to be the topic of our poster and using the information from the DVD and leaflets from CIWF, along with information sourced from the internet and voiceless we made our posters as brief but concise as possible. We used graphics and colour to draw attention to our posters. This was a great activity as regardless of our age and grade level we were all able to learn, record and inform others of the plight of the pig.

We have thoroughly enjoyed the few months we have spent doing activities through our Animal Club and look forward to the challenge of the activities next year. We encourage other homeschoolers to become members of our club by emailing us at homeschoolingtogether@bigpond.com 

On Friday November 30th Clifton Hills Primary School Animal Club delivered a play to the whole school at assembly.  We wrote the play ourselves and we practiced when we were not painting.  This play aimed to highlight the things we had learnt and educate others in the plight of the pig and how we humans could change our ways to make these things better.  

Courtroom drama at Animal Club

The setting of our play was in a courthouse with a judge, two accused- farmers and his wife, and a lot of pig witnesses. The judge ruled the courtroom and called for 1 group of witness at a time to stand and name their 'mistreatment' and 'preferred treatment' (e.g. one group of pigs talked about the stalls, whilst another group talked about the concrete floors).