Peter Kent has to avoid the kangaroos as he drives to work each day in the foothills of the Brindabella Ranges.
Some days when the river is high the road at Point Hut Crossing is closed and the drive to Birrigai Outdoor School takes a bit longer, but he doesn't mind.
"It's a very relaxing way to start and end the day," Mr Kent says.
As far as he's concerned, his job as principal of Birrigai is the best job in the ACT public school system. The role perfectly suits his background as a science teacher, his experience in school leadership as well as his love of nature and the outdoors.
"The opportunity came up to become the principal of Birrigai so I grabbed it with both hands, because hiking, kayaking, doing things in the outdoors has always been what I did on the weekends," he says.
"So that sort of stuff is now my full-time job."
When he started at the school three years ago, it seemed like a no-brainer to shift the focus to teaching Indigenous culture, considering the Birrigai Rock Shelter was one of the most significant Aboriginal sites in the area.
The Indigenous education was tokenistic when he arrived in time for the 2019 school year but it's now the main focus of the programs at the outdoor school.
"Our primary belief is that we want students to connect the country in a way that it's an empathetic connection, so that they understand their obligations to the environment," Mr Kent says.
The educator of 28 years recently received a Futurity Investment Group's National Excellence in Teaching Award in recognition of his passion for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture.
He insists it's all part of a team effort of the teachers, teaching assistants and in partnership with the local Indigenous community.
"What I'm most happy about is the way that the local Aboriginal community has been involved. And I think they feel a sense of pride and ownership about Birrigai, too, which is good."
Mr Kent, who is not Indigenous, once heard Professor Marcia Langton tell a conference teachers were experts at finding reasons not to teach Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture.
"People don't want to offend. And, [they think] 'I'm not sure if I should be teaching this' or 'I'm not sure if this is the right way to teach this and I don't want to offend anyone, so I just won't teach it'. And the problem is that not teaching it is the worst of all outcomes.
"We sort of go forward with an open heart and try our best and sometimes we get feedback after the fact that, while they appreciate our effort, they would like us to do it slightly different next time. And we take that on board and do it better next time."
Birrigai mostly hosts day trips for whole year groups in upper primary but has also recently introduced a preschool program about songlines.
"The preschoolers learn a song at at back at school and it's to the tune of 'Let's go walking', the Play School song. Each verse is a location on a walk that we will take them to and each verse has a little bit of information in it," Mr Kent says.
The preschoolers walk the song, draw the song and then dance the song, experiencing the ways Indigenous peoples store knowledge.
Their Deadly Mob program brings together Indigenous students and their parents to do cultural activities once or twice a term.
"The feedback we get from those from the teachers and the parents is they've never seen their students flourish or thrive to that extent and [they're] seeing them being proud about their their culture. So that's the sort of feedback that we're getting that just encourages us to keep on going," Mr Kent says.
Of course the day trips and excursions have been essentially halted since the onset of the COVID pandemic.
The Birrigai team put together online resources to support parents in lockdown and give them ideas of what children could do outside in their local parks or backyards.
For a while, they transitioned to doing incursions where they would bring a trailer of wood and set up fire pits onto school basketball courts to make damper. But when Delta started circulating incursions were not allowed.
In recent months, Mr Kent and the Birrigai staff have been filling in for teachers and school leaders who were forced to quarantine.
"I think what lockdown has taught us all is that everyone derives a lot of benefit from being in the outdoors, whether you're a student or an adult. And one of the things that we do at Birrigai is we support schools to use the nature reserves just near their school," Mr Kent says.
In a principal's debrief after the 2020 lockdown, he noticed other school leaders were a lot more stressed than he felt. He reflected on how he spent his days out in the bush compared to most principals who were in offices and regular school campuses and started to dig further.
Mr Kent and another Birrigai staff member became trained as forest bathing therapy guides with the view of helping stressed-out school executives.
"Most people when you say, 'Would you like to come for us bathing'? It's a bit of giggling. It doesn't mean we get our clothes off and all that sort of stuff. But it's becoming increasingly popular," he says.
"It's like like sunbathing. The point of sunbathing is to be in the sun and enjoy it. The point of forest bathing is to be in the forest and enjoy it. But it's a different way of experiencing the forest. It has a number of health benefits and his research has demonstrated it reduces your stress levels reduces your blood pressure and those sorts of things."
Schools are still too hesitant to book in for camps and day trips for the new year because of the risk of going into quarantine at a moment's notice.
Mr Kent hopes they will be able to return once children have been vaccinated. When the bookings start again, he and the team will be ready to welcome students back.
"I'm not going anywhere," he smiles.
