Bookend Trust founder Niall Doran strives to inspire young minds

The man behind the globally acclaimed documentary Sixteen Legs thinks Tasmania undersells itself. “I think we should be going out to the world with the arrogance of Sydneysiders,” he says, bursting into laughter at his audacity.

Dr Niall Doran is investing in future generations. Picture: RICHARD JUPE

NIALL Doran thinks Tasmania undersells itself. “I think we should be going out to the world with the arrogance of Sydneysiders,” he says, bursting into laughter at his audacity.

“It’s very easy to see what we see every day and not realise how special it is globally.”

Niall speaks not just as a proud Tasmanian (he arrived as a two-year-old from the UK) and biologist whose ecology and zoology specialties heighten his appreciation of our unique flora and fauna.

He’s also a ground-breaking outdoor educator who founded the Bookend Trust, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to opening students’ eyes to the possibilities of careers in science and nature.

As well, he is the internationally award-winning documentary maker of Sixteen Legs, a feature-length look at the Tasmanian Cave Spider. The film was conceived as an income generator for the trust, but its creativity and masterful cinematography knocked reviewers’ socks off. It also spawned a “making of” documentary, two books and multiple tours.

That means more money in the coffers for the trust’s core work with school students, which typically involves taking small groups into the field with working scientists

When late patron Bryce Courtenay launched the trust in 2008, the best-selling author said the first four generations of Van Diemen’s Land settlers “cannot be forgiven for what they have done”. But the Bookend Trust, he said, would help future generations change that trajectory “because we are going to train your children to be dreamers”.

While Niall does not speak with the rhetoric of his late Power of One mentor, whose wildly popular first novel was an against-the-odds tale of an illegitimate and illiterate boy, he shares a belief in the power of education.

“It does harken back to Bryce’s novel about a kid striving to develop himself,” he says. “The great thing about the human mind is if it has that inspiration, it can overcome all sorts of challenges and setbacks. We really need to inspire students that they can do whatever they set their minds to. The reason we spend a lot of time talking to communities through things like touring Sixteen Legs [regionally] is that you also need to inspire the community that supports that student.

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“If you don’t have that nurturing environment for them, it becomes that much harder to break out of that [generational cycle of under-education].”

With the backdrop of devastating fires in Tasmania’s wilderness and the dry lightning strikes that ignited them, our conversation turns to the trust’s role in helping turn clever young minds onto the learning that can equip them to help address the greatest environmental challenge of our time.

“It’s crucial work because we need bright young minds to come up with solutions ,” he says. “They have to, to live on this planet.”

There’s no use spreading a gloom and doom message, though. “Learning needs to be fun,” he says. “If we browbeat kids, they will switch off and disengage and not bother to come up with solutions.

“What we try to do is get them thinking in their own right. The start of that for us isn’t talking about the debates around issues. What they get on an expedition with us is an outline of what we are trying to do — for example, surveying this area for Tasmanian devils — and why.

“There are environmental challenges out there and we are not going to blind the children to that, but we also want them to see the fun and joy of some of these jobs and the natural world around them.”

The Bookend Trust’s programs now run around the country and are expanding internationally, including in the UK, where Niall spent six months last year on a Churchill Fellowship.

It was an edifying experience, and not just the two months he spent in the BBC production unit of Doctor Who to learn more about screen producing (Sixteen Legs opened a lot of doors, he notes). He also visited numerous education facilities and came away thinking how lucky Tasmanian children are to have such great access to nature.

“If you start to cottonwool everything to the point where people don’t have the experiences, you start to kill creativity and you start to kill the excitement of these jobs,” he says.

He points to numerous exchange opportunities emerging for Tasmanian students through the trust as it grows. It’s just one of the ways in which he wants Tasmanians to develop global perspectives and connections and take their ideas to the world.

“We have a lot of fantastically creative people here,” he says. “But if we let ourselves get swamped by looking at what people elsewhere are doing and not taking our ideas out of the state, we lose that opportunity.”