VCAL News
Patterson River Secondary College
VCAL Camp 2022
On May 22, 27 Year 12 VCAL students set off to the NRMA Holiday Park in Phillip Island.
Once we had arrived at the Holiday Park, we unloaded our equipment from the buses and set out our tent on our new campsite for the night. We then headed into Cowes where we spent some time looking around and ate some lunch from the local shops.
In the afternoon we went to Cape Woolamai where we walked along the Surf Beach and walked the bush tracks to reach the top of Cape Woolamai, taking photos along the way.
We walked along the trail seeing wallabies along the way and we enjoyed the view of the beach from the lookout.
Back at camp we had a competitive game of beach flags and tug of war. We then organised and cooked up a BBQ for dinner for everyone then sat by the campfire, toasted marshmallows and had some great games of UNO.
Day 2 started with breakfast after a cold night sleep, followed by packing up our campsite, taking down the tents and loading our equipment back onto the buses and setting off to Smith’s Beach for our surf lesson.
Once we had arrived we walked down to Island Surfboards & Surf School where we got our wetsuit and surfboard and then carried the boards down to the beach.
We spent the next 2 hours leaning some new skills and practising how to surf, some students got the hang of surfing, standing up lots of times while others not so much but had fun falling off practicing.
On the way back to school we were all very tired, but enjoyed every moment of the camp that we had been on.
Peter Stones
Tree Surfing
On the 16th of May the Year 12 VCAL students went tree surfing in Belgrave. When we arrived we all got into harnesses and put on helmets and gloves. We then had a 15 minute training and briefing session at the start, teaching us how to use the clips to go along the courses and we also got taught the risks and hazards.
There were many different courses, green, blue, red and black and there were also short and long versions of the same colour coded course. Each course got harder with the different colours and had really challenged us, and more upper body strength was required to get across.
In class we had been learning about hazards and risk taking so this was the perfect environment to test that and pump up our adrenaline.
When we first started to get onto the courses most people were feeling really nervous as it was very high off the ground
Overall, the day was a lot of fun, swinging, climbing and zip lining through the treetops, the nature around was beautiful, the staff were very friendly, and it was a great experience.
Natasha Di Cosmo
