Our responsibility to bring children into nature

Peter Marmion:

I used to take children from primary school into this landscape, and it was really wonderful to have it so close to where the schools were. It was their own backyard. 

One of the reasons I wanted to take children out into natural country was for their physical wellbeing, but also their mental wellbeing. 

I don't think it's any accident that we have an epidemic of mental illness amongst our young people. As a society, we can't stand by and just watch that unfold. We've got to do something about it. 

I strongly believe that if you take children into natural settings, and I've seen this hundreds and hundreds of times, their anxiety just falls away. 

They come in touch with something that's bigger than themselves. I think it's particularly important now with mobile phones and such. The technology can be so damaging to young people if it's not controlled. An antidote to that is taking them into natural settings.

I think we have a responsibility to the young generation coming through to interpret their home to them, so they understand it and value it and appreciate it, rather than living their lives through TV screens or TikTok. 

The Dial Range area and the rest of it is so accessible to so many different schools, Burnie, Penguin, Ulverstone, Devonport. It's not a big distance for them to come and spend a really meaningful time in this environment. 

It thrills me as an educator to think that it's so accessible, and that so many children can have that experience, which is what I was trying to do all those years ago and what I continued to do all through my teaching career.