Kids’ bee enterprise as sweet as honey
One group of Eyre Peninsula kids is getting its hands sticky for a good cause – and learning a thing or two along the way.
When you live dozens of kilometres away from your nearest neighbour and even further again from your nearest town, schooling isn’t always easy. Sometimes it’s a long journey each weekday, and sometimes it means you’re learning from home.
For children who live in regional and remote areas, all of the things that are available to those closer to larger centres are not always so easily accessible. This is where Australia-wide organisation, the Isolated Children’s and Parents’ Association (ICPA) steps in.
The organisation works to promote awareness of the barriers facing remote students and advocates to rectify any inequalities that arise when educating rural and remote children. Ian Morris is a former president at ICPA’s Port Augusta branch and he says there’s a constant game of finding ways to fundraise.
This group of enterprising Eyre Peninsula kids harvesting their honey.“Usually, it’s things like woolshed dances and we thought we’d like to find something ongoing that the kids could be involved in,” Ian says.
Then one night, Ian was watching the ABC’s Landline and saw a story about Australian-invented flow hives. The invention makes it possible to harvest the honey straight from the hive via a tube – turn a key and the honey flows directly into your jar. They reached out to the Foundation for Rural & Regional Renewal to get funding for the 12 families that are part of the branch. They received about $20,000 for the hives, protective gear and training information.
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While Ian has now stepped down from the presidency of the branch, his wife has stepped up to fill the position.
It’s harvest time.“Ian thought it would be a great fundraiser as we are always trying to think of ideas to raise money so we are able to attend conferences, state and federal,” Kat says. “This was an ongoing fundraiser where we were able to use the whole branch, the whole family was able to be involved with the added benefits of learning about bees, the environment and doing it together as a family.”
She says the group is currently advocating for a range of things, including home tutor allowance, recruiting school bus drivers, support officers, increasing the State Education Allowance in line with the cost of living, boarding schools to accommodate year seven students and access to CAFHS (SA Health’s Child and Family Health Service) for rural and remote children.
As Ian and Kat explain all of this, we’re standing in Barb and Bert Woolford’s garden in Buckleboo on Eyre Peninsula.
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Barb’s expansive property, named Karawatha – place of pines – sits above Goyder’s Line where the rainfall is low, but it has lovingly been transformed into a green oasis, complete with a studio from which Barb makes candles that she sells online and at Workshop26 in Kimba.
In the studio, there’s also a line of jars and labels, ready to be filled with honey, and here to do just that is a group of local children. They come out looking like junior astronauts in their protective beekeeping suits – walking side-by-side in a line, clad from head to toe in white.
Their mission is to extract as much honey as possible from the flow hive that sits under Barb’s towering trees.
Bonnie and her mum, Kat Morris, who is the current president of the Port Augusta Isolated Children’s and Parents’ Association.Among the kids are George and Lara – Barb and Bert’s grandchildren – who go to Kimba Area School, as well as Elke and Indie, who go to Port Neill Primary School and Kat and Ian’s daughter Bonnie, who does School of the Air from her home on Thurlga Station.
The idea is to get the kids extracting the honey, helping to market it and then selling it at local events. It’s not just a fundraising exercise, but also a lesson in business for the kids.
When SALIFE meets the group, they’re still in the early stages of production, but with the contents of just a few of the hives, they’ve so far made a little more than $1000, all of which will go into the Port Augusta branch of the ICPA.
Barb Woolford in her Buckleboo garden, which plays host to a Bush Kids Honey flow hive.At this stage, this is the only branch undertaking the project, but there are hopes it’ll spread to some of the other 100 member families in South Australia across eight branches – North West, Port Augusta, Eyre Peninsula, Marree Air, Marla-Oodnadatta, North East and Flinders Ranges.
When asked what they love most about helping to harvest the honey, it’s a resounding: “Eating it!”
This article first appeared in the August 2024 issue of SALIFE magazine.
