Begonia State School teacher Michelle Freshwater receives hundreds of postcards from across the world

A rural classroom in South West Queensland is receiving unprecedented volumes of mail, after a callout for postcards as a geography learning aid went viral.

Teacher at Begonia State School, Michelle Freshwater, came up with an innovative way to teach geography in her classroom.

Tucked into the back of the Maranoa region, Begonia State School might only have nine students, but in recent weeks, they’ve been receiving unprecedented volumes of mail from all corners of the world.

The one-class school has two teachers, one of whom is Michelle Freshwater.

In her preparation for term 3 geography lessons, Ms Freshwater posted to Facebook, calling on her contacts to send a postcard to Begonia State school from where they live, or a place they visited.

“We will be looking at Australia and the world, so any postcards from the place you call home or a place you have visited on holiday would be fantastic,” her post read.

“If you could tell us an interesting fact about this place, we would really love it.”

Ms Freshwater said she never expected the post to go “viral” in the way it did.

Her original post to her Facebook page on June 1 was shared 183 times to date, and even ended up on the Ringers From the Top End Facebook group, which boasts upwards of 300,000 members.

Now sat in the classroom of Begonia’s quaint school, is a bag with more than 100 postcards from around the world.

Ms Freshwater has received well over 100 postcards.

Ms Freshwater said in their lessons they’ve barely started to make a dent.

“We have just started putting up some of the postcards from around Australia,” she said.

“I’m actually worried we won’t have enough space on the wall.”

The school has nine students in total, with two in kindergarten and seven from prep to year 5, Ms Freshwater said.

“The little ones are supposed to just be doing natural, managed, and constructed features,” she said.

“So when they’re looking at a place, they look at those features.

“The older students are learning how to read latitude and longitude.”

She said while the younger students were likely learning more than the curriculum required, the older students were able to use their coordinate skills to appreciate a postcard sent from the most northern point of Europe in Norway.

At the moment, there are only a few postcards up, mostly from around Queensland, from places like Cooktown, the Daintree, and Tambo.

But, with each new postcard comes a new geographical fact on the back and sometimes a sweet message, which Ms Freshwater said has been lovely to read.

Manager of the St George local post office, Katrina, said since Ms Freshwater’s initiative began in June, the post office has had anywhere between 20 to 50 postcards addressed to Begonia State School every week.

“Originally we were getting heaps and heaps and heaps (of postcards),” she said.

“They are thinning out though.”

The students still have a lot to learn in the remaining weeks of the term, and there are plenty of postcards yet to pin on the wall.

The class started by learning about Queensland through postcards.

Originally published as Begonia State School teacher Michelle Freshwater receives hundreds of postcards from across the world