Telopea Park School: Canberra, Australia

Hello from Telopea Park School, Canberra, Australia.

Telopea Park School is a French-Australian school in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Around 1100 students go to Telopea Park School. The school goes from kindergarten to grade 10. The school was built in 1923 and is the oldest functioning high school in Canberra. We have 5 science labs, 50 classrooms, 1 home economics room, 1 library, 2 halls and 1 canteen.

We are especially interested in the waterwatch program because our lake, Lake Burley Griffin, is fed by many creeks and storm water drains. Most of these contain considerable runoff from the local suburban and farm areas.

In summer time the lake suffers from blue-green algae. This makes it unsuitable for swimming and rather unpleasant for the people who sail their boats.

We are looking at a storm water drain that runs through Telopea Park and leads into the lake and are undertaking a long term project to monitor the drains water quality.

Other than the waterwatch program Telopea's activities include volleyball, basketball and other sports. The Quantum science classes have to carry out a science project each year. This takes a great deal of time and effort. We also have dance, drama, and two bands. The languages we have are German, Japanese, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish and French.

Canberra is a city of about three hundred thousand people located 3.5 hours by car south-west of Sydney (the site of the 2000 Olympic Games) and about 2 hours by car from the Pacific Ocean coast. It is Australia's largest inland city. It has Australia's federal parliament, the High Court of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia and many other similar institutions.

Its climate is relatively mild by world standards but rather cold in winter for an Australian city. Typical day temperatures in winter range between 8 to 12 degrees Celsius and summer day temperatures range from 25 to 35 degrees Celsius. We very rarely get snow in winter.

Because we have no heavy industry our air is generally very clean. However, in winter because many people use wood burning fires we do have some air pollution problems. Our city has many parks and open spaces. It takes a 10 minute drive for people to be in the farmland that surrounds Canberra.

Our spring flower festival called Floriade is just coming to an end. This is probably the most spectacular floral festival in Australia and is visited by many local, interstate and overseas tourists

Bye for now
Mr Dunlop's 7th grade waterwatchers
rdunlop@ozemail.com.au