Catherine Shaw

I'd love to start by sharing the acknowledgement of country that students from the Nature School and staff have co-written.

Our school is on beautiful Biripi country in Port Macquarie on the mid-north coast of New South Wales and we share our acknowledgement like this.

We, the future generation, acknowledge and honour the Biripi Nation, the traditional custodians of this land from rainforest to ocean and warm golden sand.

We respect all elders, past, present, emerging, from mountains to lakes and rivers surging.

We respect all creatures, land, sea, sky, all that crawl and swim and fly.

We respect all plants that grow to the sun, from tiny shoot to elder gum.

We, the future generation, acknowledge and honour the Biripi Nation.

I'm really glad that my answer is I became interested in birds as a child because obviously now I'm a school principal and I work a lot with helping children connect with the natural world.

And so for me, it's significant that it started in childhood.

And I think it started just camping with my family.

My mum was an artist and I can remember her setting up paints and watercolour paper by the side of a stream.

And my dad was probably bored, but he had an old set of binoculars and an old copy of What Bird Is That?

And I probably felt more comfortable looking at the birds with my dad than picking up a paintbrush with my mom.

And so I'd start looking through dad's binoculars.

And as a child, I was always looking for the colorful ones.

I remember the front cover of that edition had a buff-breasted paradise kingfisher on the front.

And it was only a year or two ago that I first saw that bird for the first time.

And it took me right back to being a child and dreaming about all the colorful birds that I could possibly see through my dad's binoculars.

It's the most amazing school in Australia.

And I realize I'm entirely biased in saying that because I am the principal.