  In this contribution we outline plans for identifying and characterising
numerous young, low-mass stars within 150 pc of the Sun using the new SkyMapper
telescope and Southern Sky Survey. We aim to learn more about the star
formation history of the solar neighbourhood over the past 5-50 Myr, the
dispersal processes involved, as well as testing pre-main sequence evolutionary
models and the universality of the stellar Inital Mass Function. Searching for
the dispersed halo of low-mass objects predicted to surround the Eta
Chamaeleontis cluster will be one of the first goals of the project.
