The Story of Rosy Dock

“Survival” inquiry group.  Philosophy, 19th September.

• I saw her planting two Rosy Docks at the start of the book. She should have only planted one. 
• But that would still make more than one Rosy Dock because it’s got seed pods. 
• So she should have planted zero. 
• I think I know why every single one came (ie why there were so many). She only planted two and maybe the seed pods can plant more, so maybe the seeds dropped into the ground and when it rained they grew. 

Do you think we have the right to introduce or bring plants or animals into another country? Why/why not? 

• Sometimes we bring some animals to kill other animals, like animals from other countries. But sometimes it doesn’t work. It did kind of work with cats and mice. 
• No, because if you bring other plants to Australia and they spread, they might get all the sun and all the other plants get the shade and they might get sick or die. 
• We shouldn’t bring other plants from someone else’s country because then they might feel sad and if lots of people take stuff from other people’s country then their place might not have anything. 
• Sometimes you can, if they’re good when you bring them, like apple trees. 
• I think we should bring animals that don’t eat other animals, just some, because if the other animals don’t have anything to eat they might die. 
• Some people have some things that belong to other countries and they have babies and they might be heaps of them and they’re giving away them, and that’s how some countries share their things, like our elephants –we share our elephants with other countries. And like the Western Wombat and the Hairy Nose wombat. So we can share animals with all countries, but if they’re dangerous, we’ll have to test them out and see if they will eat them or not. The woman in Rosy Dock didn’t test it – she didn’t know if it would spread. 
• But she brought it from a different country and it was already tested because it was somewhere else. It was in her garden in a pot. 
• It was in a pot, so it couldn’t spread. If you have a big clump of sand from the country, you can test to see if it spreads in that clump of sand. 
• Maybe it only spreads if it’s in sand. 
• When you plant the Rosy Dock in a pot it can still spread because the seeds can drop and they’ll be in the sand and they’ll go everywhere. 
• Maybe the Rosy Dock is the only plant that can spread. 

We then watched some videos about rabbits, feral pigs and cane toads in response to the children’s comments about bringing animals to our country.