In Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) this Term the Year 9 students have been learning about Australia and the Global Economy.
An important aspect of the Australian Economy is gold, being the country’s sixth biggest export and playing a huge role in our country’s history. This provided a perfect segue for a school excursion to the Perth Mint.
The excursion started with a very informative talk from the tour guide who showed the students true-scale models of the largest gold nuggets ever found. The students were amazed to hear that they were sitting above vaults of the Perth Mint which contained over 6 billion dollars’ worth of gold held by over 40,000 investors from 130 different countries.The students were told of the history of the Perth Mint and its importance to the Western Australian economy.
After that we proceeded inside where the students were shown a five minute video, given the opportunity to lift a real-life gold bar, admire a one-tonne gold coin (worth 81 million dollars at today’s gold price), weigh themselves and calculate their weight in dollars if they were made of gold and finally watch the process of a gold bar pour being done in the old Perth Mint refinery.
The students really enjoyed the tour and I have to say their behaviour for the whole day was impeccable. I was really proud of their engagement and respect shown towards all the people we came into contact with. Well done Year 9s!!!
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