Kathleen McArthur wrote many newspaper articles and letters to the editor to alert others to environmental concerns, as well as to broaden people’s knowledge about the natural environment. She was intensely interested in history and culture as a context for attitudes to the natural world, and this is often evident in her writings. One strong influence was her friendship with one of Australia’s eminent poets and fellow WPSQ founder, Judith Wright. Both women sought to change cultural attitudes so that Australians would better know and love their landscape and wildlife.

The power of education through knowledge was very important to Kathleen. In a Wildlife and Landscape article in 1963 she noted that the good example set by well-informed children on an excursion to look at Christmas Bells caused one adult in the group to remark that ‘seeing all of those children romping through the bush and over the plains without picking any flowers had made her feel ashamed of her plan [to pick a bunch of Christmas Bells]’.

© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc

Caloundra Weekly 29 November 1963

Wildlife and Landscape

EDUCATING THE CHILDREN…

Many people tell me they have never seen Christmas Bells growing in profusion. This is hardly surprising, for wherever they are found, they are picked, and so it is only the first comers who see them. These are amongst our most popular wildflowers and people cannot resist them, whether it means tramping through pademelon swamps to pick them, in defiance of the law, or buying them from vendors. The gratitude of all patriots will go out to the first person in Queensland to cultivate this flower commercially. He will find an eager market.

Some of us know where the Bells grow in profusion, but to give publicity to such areas is to destroy what we are working for—their preservation.

It was to such an area that recently a large, organised party went. It comprised five families, including twelve children and two extra adults, one of which was myself. Before setting out, one woman said to me challengingly, ‘and I am going to pick a bunch of bells’. But at the end of the day, after we had seen thousands of Christmas Bells, in some places making a brilliant display she has not picked one flower. By way of explanation she told me that seeing all those children romping through the bush and over the plains without picking any flowers had made her feel ashamed of her plan. Under the circumstances her bravado collapsed.

The children who set such a good example were very normal kids ranging from five to fifteen years, but they had the advantage of being members of the families of keen conservationists. The eldest, a boy of fifteen, after years of accompanying his father on wildflower outings already knows more south-east Queensland ground orchids than I do.

It has been found that the most enthusiastic students of nature are children between ten and thirteen years. This fact contains, in part, the answer to one of our greatest social problems and it behoves parents to encourage any sign of such interest in their children. The boy or girl who will spend all spare time in bird-watching or wildflowering, collecting butterflies or studying insects is developing a lifetime interest that is both healthy and happy and very likely to keep him or her away from social disaster.

For a parent of such children, or uncle, aunt, godparent or interested friend, there is a way to practical help for our young in giving those Christmas presents such as books on birds and wildflowers, insects, animals, fish, trees or shells, to stimulate their natural curiosity. In such fields of study there are numerous books that can be used effectively, especially during the school holidays when time and circumstances permit of exploration in the field.

In today’s ‘rat race’ we need to educate a percentage of young people to a love of our indigenous flora and fauna, so they in turn will fight to hand on to their ‘tomorrow’s people something that is truly Australian.

List of recommended books: What Bird is That? by Cayley; An Australian Bird Book by Leach; Bird Wonders of Australia by Chisholm; Wildflowers of Australia by Harris; Queensland Wildflowers, a Selection by McArthur; Australian Sea Shores by Dakin; Australian Shells by Allan; Furred Animals of Australia by Troughton; Reptiles of Australia by Worrell; Australian Spiders by McKeown; Jacaranda Press Pocket Guides.

Kathleen McArthur
Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Caloundra Branch

Reproduced with permission of Sunshine Coast Newspapers
© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc

Caloundra Weekly 2 October 1964

Wildlife and Landscape

NATURAL HISTORY COMPETITION

One of the primary aims of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland is education to increase the knowledge of Australian wildlife, especially amongst young people. Because there is no branch of The Gould League in Queensland this factor of our education has been, and still is being, neglected.

This Society publishes the magazine ‘Wildlife in Australia’, all issues of which are given for free to all primary schools in Queensland––a most generous gesture by the Jacaranda Press of Brisbane. Many schools subscribe to ‘Wildlife’ from their own funds because, quite understandably, one copy is not enough for a large school, where interest runs high.

To promote a stronger interest in and study of our wildlife the Caloundra Branch of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland is announcing (see advertisement in this paper) a natural history competition for Queensland school children. It will close on 31 March 1965, thus giving all juniors many months, including the long summer vacation, in which to work on their chosen projects. Experts in each field will be enlisted to judge the work submitted, which may be chosen from any field of natural history. We advise that individual work will gain more merit than secondhand material taken from books. However as reference books are an essential requisite for study, should they not be available locally we suggest application be made to the Country Extension Section of the Public Library, in William Street, Brisbane.

The whole aim of this competition is to increase the knowledge we have of our Australian flora and fauna and the land and sea that support it. We want our young people to go out with their eyes open and observe, then return home and compare their observations with the observations of others that have been collected and published. We hope they will make notes and sketches in the field for this is the best way of remembering what they see.

Any future competitions will depend on the success of this one, so we hope all our readers will tell as many juniors as possible about this interesting competition and its excellent prizes.

Kathleen McArthur,
Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Caloundra Branch

Reproduced with permission of Sunshine Coast Newspapers
© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc

Caloundra Weekly 1 September 1966

Wildlife and Landscape

THE WAY AHEAD

The talks on birds and wildflowers arranged for the August school holidays by the Caloundra Branch of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland proved most popular. The Wildflower Room at Midyim, Kings Beach, where they were given, was filled to capacity on four occasions. Of the 200 who attended, approximately half were children, which was most encouraging to the organisers. Without the interest of the adults, the children could not have been present.

Also in the audiences was a small percentage of school teachers. Next year, an entirely new syllabus on natural science teaching will be introduced in Queensland Primary Schools. It contains a new concept for teaching in Queensland for it is aimed not at the teaching of a lot of facts, but to instill in young children an interest in the world around them; an appreciation of their own local wildlife and landscape. The benefits to be gained from this new syllabus will be quite dependant on the sympathy, understanding and broad knowledge of the teachers. We feel that the teachers who attended these talks would have gained much assistance from them. Because of the neglect of this subject in the past, very few of our teachers are competent to lead their pupils. The sins of our fathers! (Sins of omission.)

Normally, the knowledge we acquire may be found in a reference library, but not only are such libraries inadequate in this district, but works of reference for Queensland natural history are extremely few.

We cannot escape the fact that interest in our State wildlife and landscape has been inexcusably neglected. The introduction of a syllabus for which little teacher preparation has been made will be slow in being effective. This is a time when the individual who has concerned himself with these matters is going to be invaluable to society. Some schools, such as Kenilworth, as a precious model, will get off to a good start because individual teachers, past and present, have used the very methods suggested by the new syllabus.

The primary aim of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland is education. In the study of our local flora and fauna, the Caloundra Branch can provide a lead for both teachers and students. We already have a good collection of colour slides of natural history subjects to which we are adding continually. We have competent lecturers and we offer a free service of inestimable value to the community.

Kathleen McArthur
Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Caloundra Branch

Reproduced with permission of Sunshine Coast Newspapers
© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc

Sunshine Coast Weekly Advertiser 21 February 1967

Wildlife and Conservation

THE POETRY OF OUR LANDSCAPE

When the children of Kenilworth High School learnt that I was a close friend of our Queensland poet Judith Wright, they were eager for news of her. What had impressed them most were the facts that a poet whose works they had to study was (a) alive, (b) living in their own State of Queensland and (c) interested in the same things such as farming and wildlife.

For how many of us is poetry associated with past centuries, when the language was expressed differently, and distant landscapes so ordered and gentle, where brooks ‘trickled’ through ‘fields’ of ‘daffa-down-dilly’, all of which is too hard to envisage after growing-up with ‘gullies’ in the ‘paddocks’ where you watch your step for snakes in the ‘blady grass’?

That most of us cannot find poetry in our daily lives is the fault of our education, which in the past was seldom slanted with Australian sentiment. Our educators were the graduates of a cultural system related to which this was a new, strange land with landscape in different colours and forms and wildflowers and animals for which they had no names, all so vast and varied that one could never get to know it in a lifetime, and so they turned back nostalgically to the study of Latin and Greek and the cultivation of roses.

The sympathetic writers who saw beauty in Queensland wildflowers, such as the explorers Mitchell, Cunningham and Leichhardt, have been neglected. Over and over again we are served up Burke and Wills––the story of men who were so insensitive to this country they preferred to die rather than to try to understand it.

When we do eventually turn to seeing our country through the succession of writers from Captain Cook to Judith Wright we will be laying the foundation of an indigenous culture. And when we do this we will turn to our landscapes to see for the first time a heritage of interest and beauty. Will it be still there?

Out of the brackish sand
see the phaius orchid build
her intricate moonlight tower
that rusts away in flower.

[from Phaius Orchid in Judith Wright A Human Pattern: Selected Poems, 1996, Sydney, ETT Imprint]

Where now can we find the Phaius orchids growing other than in the bush houses of members of orchid societies? With complete disregard for our heritage we have exterminated the great colonies of this, our noblest wildflower.

While acquiring a faster, all-weather road system we have lost the aesthetic pleasures of touring. Where once our tracks wound through avenues of native trees casting cool shade in which we could stop and admire the Wonga Vine:

Look down; be still,
The sunburst day’s on fire,
O twilight bell,
flowers of the wonga vine.

[from Wonga Vine in Judith Wright A Human Pattern: Selected Poems, 1996, Sydney, ETT Imprint]

We now speed in the fire of the sun through road-scarred landscape, only stopping in defined areas, sparsely planted with the monotonously repeated few species of trees from alien lands. Will the time come when the flower of the Wonga vine is as foreign to us as celandine and cuckoo point [sic]?

With ever-increasing speed our wallum flats are disappearing and unless we get our much-hoped-for Cooloola National Park will our students of 50 years hence be able to feel:

From the marble-dazzling beaches
or the tame hills where cattle pasture
the eye that ranges never reaches
the secret depth of that storm-cloud
the bitter and thorny moor
that sets its bar between
hill’s green and sea’s glitter.

[from Sandy Swamp in Judith Wright Collected poems 1942-1970, Angus and Robertson, 1971, reprinted 1975; with permission from HarperCollins as Publisher]

Will we still have such fascinating visiting places as ‘Sandy Swamp’ or will they all be reclaimed and built upon in the name of progress as was done in the U.S.A. where they now acknowledge it to have been a costly mistake?

There is no doubt that we value our uncleared land by the price of the mill timber. Our rain forests are beautiful at hundreds of dollars an acre plus so many super feet of cabinet woods. Who wants Scribbly Gum? Our leaders constantly refer to Scribbly Gum country as ‘rubbish’, ‘ugly’, ‘useless’––to be cleared for improvement.
The student of the future who reads

The gum-tree stands by the spring.
I peeled its splitting bark
and found the written track
of a life I could not read.

[from Scribbly-Gum in Judith Wright A Human Pattern: Selected Poems, 1996, Sydney, ETT Imprint]

may have to look in a botanical garden for a Scribbly Gum if no large National Park is proclaimed to preserve such fascinating flora.

Where the honey flow is strong in winter and the apiarists deposit their bee hives for the cold months; where the flocks of birds from the South find refuge and food and give in return their song, their colour and their insect-eating services; where tourists would love to be shown a landscape where bloom and birds sing in winter––can we find beauty? Is such country rubbish, ugly and useless and progress made only through destroying it?

There are many people who find beauty in a winter landscape full of flowers and bird song. There is a honey industry that can expand on it. Not only farmers, who stand to gain most, but all of us owe much to the birds that control our insect pests. When we have exterminated our wallum vegetation and deprived the birds of their food, shelter and nesting sites and they come to us no more we may begin to realise the benefit to man of other life forms. For students they will be: ‘Birds long vanished with the fallen forest––described in copperplate on unread pages’.

Conservation of our wildlife is not only the concern of the wildflower and birdwatcher; it is a necessary foundation for the building of a national culture.

A new era begins this year with the introduction of the revised syllabus for national history in primary and secondary schools. Many new schools have been built in this district in the past few years in which these subjects will be taught, but along with the erection of these fine buildings, the surrounding land was cleared of native vegetation thus destroying the very material set for study. The time has come to look with fresh vision on unspoilt areas of bushland close to schools whether they be ‘useless’ scribbly gum forests, paperbark swamps or other vegetation types, for their value to academic and scientific education is inestimable. Very few schools, like Kenilworth, have had the farsightedness to plant up their grounds with a wide variety of native trees and shrubs.

Getting something from our landscape is the other half of giving it study and understanding. Giving to our students some unspoilt countryside will allow them to get the knowledge and love they need for their national culture. If we allow it all to go and live surrounded only by crops, weeds and insect pests on to which we continually spray poisons we will be raising our future generations on hatred of other life forms and the daily practice of death and destruction. How much happier would life be could we teach our children to know and love

Blue orchid gentle
as skies seen early;
blown purple iris
so quick to wither;
tea-tree falling
on water-lily;
heath, boronia,
many another…

[from Wildflower Plain in Judith Wright A Human Pattern: Selected Poems, 1996, Sydney, ETT Imprint]

All quotations are from the poetry of Judith Wright with her kind permission.

Kathleen McArthur (Caloundra)

Reproduced with permission of Sunshine Coast Newspapers
© WPSQ, Sunshine Coast & Hinterland Inc