About Tarkind
Magical Farm Tasmania is excited to announce our annual community art and citizen science project we will be hosting called Tarkind. Living systems education is at the heart of our work at Magical Farm and regenerative farms are not stand alone in terms of their biodiversity - we are all part of an interconnected living system.
We are creating a community who values kindness for living systems: ourselves, one another, all ecologies, past & future generations. We host an annual children's art & citizen science initiatives. Our mission is to connect with takanya / Tarkine as a community with a heart, head and hands approach of teaching. We will host an annual collective art project based in Hobart and a citizen science project based in Corinna in the takanya / Tarkine. Both of these initiatives will connect our participants to the interconnected and cutting edge wisdom and science of living systems.
takanya / Tarkine is based in the North-West of Tasmania. This special place is a vast expanse in a wilderness wonderland of wild rivers, dramatic coastal heathlands, button grass plains, bare mountains, ancient Huon pines, giant eucalypts and myrtles and extraordinary horizontal scrub. It is home to rare and endangered birds - like the orange-bellied parrot and the white goshawk - and countless animals such as the eastern pygmy possum. 40,000 years takanya has been home to the Tasmanian Aboriginal tarkiner people who inhabited the Sandy Cape region of this island’s wild west coast. The name Tarkine means belonging to, or of the tarkiner. The Tarkine is the second largest temperate rainforest in the world and the largest temperate rainforest in Australia, with over 400,000 hectares of virgin wilderness.
— Tarkine by WWF / Discover the Tarkine
“Heart, Art and Science with the takayna / Tarkine forest”.
Tarkind project collaborator and advisor Gemma O’Rourke local artist and Melukerdee woman shares the process of development of this art piece for Tarkind. “it was inspired by a brief that wanted to portray inclusiveness, friendliness, kindness and particular engagement for children…It is hand drawn with chalk and pastels. The chalk/pastel look I feel is very approachable and endearing for kids. They feel a sense of ownership... I took inspiration from the Moss Beetle (Dr Keith Martin-Smith’s Photograph) in terms of colours and form, weaving her into and around the TARKIND name, intermingled, interwoven , interconnected, vibrant matter. The colurs and patterns from her exterior reflecting cosmic shapes to the wildness of down deep Tarkine terrain.