Indigenous plant use: food, medicine & tools (Years 3–6)

Follow the Aboriginal Plant Use Trail to learn about the importance of Country and Culture to Indigenous Australians.

This eye-opening activity explores how Indigenous people use resources from the bush around them to survive.

You’ll also examine the importance of looking after the land, plants, animals and traditional practice to maintain a living Culture and Country for future generations.

Australian Curriculum connections 

Year 4

• AC9S4U01: Explain the roles and interactions of consumers, producers and decomposers within a habitat and how food chains represent feeding relationships.
• AC9S4U02: Identify sources of water and describe key processes in the water cycle, including movement of water through the sky, landscape and ocean; precipitation; evaporation; and condensation.

Year 5

• AC9S5U01: Examine how particular structural features and behaviours of living things enable their survival in specific habitats.

Year 6

• AC9S6U01: Investigate the physical conditions of a habitat and analyse how the growth and survival of living things is affected by changing physical conditions.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures (Cross Curriculum Priority)

• A_TSICP1: First Nations communities of Australia maintain a deep connection to, and responsibility for, Country/Place and have holistic values and belief systems that are connected to the land, sea, sky and waterways.
• A_TSIC1: First Nations Australian societies are diverse and have distinct cultural expressions such as language, customs and beliefs. As First Nations Peoples of Australia, they have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural expressions, while also maintaining the right to control, protect and develop culture as Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.
• A_TSIC2: First Nations Australians’ ways of life reflect unique ways of being, knowing, thinking and doing.
• A_TSIC3: The First Peoples of Australia (Aboriginal Peoples) belong to the world’s oldest continuous cultures. First Nations Australians demonstrate resilience in the maintenance, practice and revitalisation of culture despite the many historic and enduring impacts of colonisation, and continue to celebrate and share the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures.
• A_TSIP1: Australia has 2 distinct First Nations Peoples; each encompasses a diversity of nations across Australia. Aboriginal Peoples are the first peoples of Australia and have occupied the Australian continent for more than 60,000 years. Torres Strait Islander Peoples are the First Nations Peoples of the Torres Strait and have occupied the region for over 4,000 years.
• A_TSIP3: The significant and ongoing contributions of First Nations Australians and their histories and cultures are acknowledged locally, nationally and globally.