There are any number of very beautiful places in the northern rivers and southern Gold Coast regions that I can take my students to, and one of my favourites is to the Coolangatta area. The subject I am teaching at the moment explores sustainability within the context of tourist accommodation and attractions, so this trip took students to Coolangatta RSL, which is doing wonderful things with regard to minimising waste, harvesting rainwater and growing herbs and veges. I took the pic above around 8am last Friday while I was waiting for the day to start.
Here we are out the front of the funky vertical garden at the entry to the club. I have 21 on-campus students who represent eight nationalities: China, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Papua New Guinea and Australia, so each session I have with them is very interesting and rich with their own experiences of their own nations.
After leaving the RSL we drove up to Coolangatta Ecovillage which is a residential estate, which is designed, built and lived based on ecological principles. One of my students is actually a resident and so she organised much of the visit (although I had taken students here twice before so I'm pretty familar with the place now). After a talk and a couple of videos about the philosophy underpinning the ecovillage, and a yummy morning tea, we strolled around looking at various houses before inspecting one of the houses from the inside. Here some of the students are on the deck of the house.
And when it was all over, I stopped and had a late lunch by the beach at Bilinga or Tugun, not sure which, and thought how lucky I am to have such a job.
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