Field Park Elementary School second graders peppered Australian Consul-General Michael Wood with questions about his country, one giving him pause.
One student at the school in Western Springs asked the representative of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for the Australian government across 11 Midwest states how long the Great Barrier Reef is.
After thinking for a moment, Wood said, “You can Google it and get the exact answer and prove me wrong, but I would say about 1,000 miles.”
According to Google, the world’s largest coral reef actually stretches for 1,400 miles.
The well-prepared students also were able to answer questions Wood asked them about Australian animals, the country’s geography and similarities between the United States and Australia.
“They know more about Australia than the average Australian knows about America,” Wood said after his presentation Friday in the Field Park school library, the first he had done since beginning his tenure at the Australian consulate in April.
The visit by the head of the Australian consulate and two of his staff members was part of the school’s Passages program, an effort in which seven times a year parent volunteers help educate students about a certain country.
“For two days, parents from the community lead the curriculum and the activities,” said Peggy Hasenauer, who volunteered to coordinate the program about Australia, saying she has always been fascinated with the country.
With help from Denise Stetler and Debbie Pawlowski, who has a connection at the consulate and was able to get Wood to visit the school, Hasenauer helped coordinate the activities, which included students decorating boomerangs and learning about Australian football and cricket.
Hasenauer said the Passages program provides a good foundation for students to learn about other countries.
“They continue to explore” the various countries during the school year, she said.
Wood said much of the consulate’s work is helping Australians who are in America. He passed around passports — one that had gone through a washing machine cycle and one that had gone through a dryer cycle — both of which needed to be replaced, as examples of part of the work the consulate does.
He also noted the consulate ensures Australians charged with crimes in America have adequate legal counsel.
Wood told the Field Park students the U.S. and Australia are about the same size, “but there are 10 times the number of people in the United States.”
“That is partially because the middle of Australia is a huge desert,” he said.
The consul-general noted that his country has unique animals, such as kangaroos, emus and frill necked lizards.
“We also have a lot of deadly snakes,” Wood said.
He told the students the U.S. and Australia are longtime allies.
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“We have so much in common. If you are at war, we are right with you,” Wood said. “We have the same views about democracy, human rights and fairness.”
He noted that when the U.S. gained its independence from England, the young country told Great Britain to stop sending its convicts to America. The Brits, in turn, began shipping those prisoners to Australia.
Providing an additional history lesson, the consul-general noted both countries have sad stories of people arriving in the countries in chains in the 1700s and 1800s. For Australia, it was the English convicts being shipped to their county. For America, it was slaves being brought from Africa.
Wood said one difference between the two countries is that Australians eat the animals that are its national symbols, kangaroos and emus, while Americans do not eat bald eagles.
“We eat our national animals because they are very yummy and there are lots of them,” Wood said.
Field Park Principal Brad Promisel told students it would be like if a cow was America’s national symbol.
Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.