By Jesse Graham
A CENTRE to teach students about bushfires, including 2009’s Black Saturday fires, is set to open in Marysville on Saturday 8 October.
The Bushfire Education Centre, established by Marysville photographer Barry Thomas, will open at 10am on the Saturday, and will be one of the public’s only chances to see the centre in its early stages.
Mr Thomas said the centre would be open to school groups and would undergo works in the future before being opened to the public regularly.
He said the centre was established after school groups started coming to Marysville in 2011 to study the bushfires.
“It’s just been a progression since then, so it’s been getting busier every year, and the Phoenix Museum is not big enough to hold the amount of school kids that were coming up,” Mr Thomas said.
When preparing the centre, Mr Thomas said he liaised with teachers and the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria to make sure materials fitted with school curricula.
“It’ll develop to be quite large in time – but it’ll be something that’ll always be added to,” he said.
“There’s different studies that children do – recovery, effect on people, it could be the fire itself, and the environment and how the environment’s changed.
“Plus, there’s lots of bushfire safety information – the idea is that kids can then take some of this information and pass it on to their parents.”
He said the difference between the Phoenix Museum and the Bushfire Education Centre was that the former focused on Marysville in 2009, while the scope for the centre was wider, and gave children more hands-on learning opportunities.
“They can handle stuff, which is really from input from the teachers – they said kids need to be able to pick things up,” Mr Thomas said.
The official opening will be held at 12.30pm at the centre, behind the Crossway Historic Country Inn, with entry from Lions Park.
The Pans on Fire steel band will perform at the opening from 11am-2pm, with a guided tour of nearby gardens at 2.30pm.
For more information, visit www.liveandlearn.com.au.
