Year 6 Canberra Excursion 2025

Canberra 2025

Students from our school  have recently undertaken an educational tour of the national capital. Students were given the opportunity to participate in a variety of educational programs with a focus on Australia’s history, culture, heritage, and democracy. The Australian Government recognises the importance of all young Australians being able to visit the national capital as part of their Civics and Citizenship education. To assist families in meeting the cost of the excursion the Australian Government is contributing funding to our school in the amount of $30.00 per student under the Parliament and Civics Education Rebate program towards those costs. The rebate is paid directly to the school upon completion of the excursion.

Canberra Reflections: 2025.

THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME:

By Lana Bozic

It is 6:00 am Thursday morning and everyone is excited and happy but still a bit sleepy. The 2025 Year 6 grade were going to the one and only Canberra! The 3 classes lined up in their lines and then we got to know what buses we were on, either bus A or bus B. We were off and everyone couldn’t fall asleep because we were way too excited. We drove past the border of NSW meeting the ACT-(Canberra) and cheered because we knew we weren’t in our home town, Sydney NSW. After one million and one people asking  ‘Are we there yet?’ We finally got to our first stop.

 We had our recess. It was freezing and everyone wore their beanies, gloves and big puffer jackets. All of the people that came such as the teachers and students went to the bathroom because we knew that we had one hour and thirty mins left before we got to our first destination, the Mount Ainslie Lookout. We then got to the Mount Ainslie Lookout and it was way too beautiful to explain the view we  saw. 

We saw the War Memorial and the beloved Parliament House. The flashes of everyone's cameras were going off. They were taking so many photos of the wonderful view.

We then went to the War Memorial. First all of us had an Acknowledgement of Country for The Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. After that we got separated into smaller groups of 15 and we then visited the tomb of the Unknown soldier. The Unknown Soldier is an acknowledgement to all the soldiers who died in World Wars and never came back home. So they got a random soldier that represents all those soldiers, male and female. 

Parliament house is an iconic building in Australia.  When we arrived at Parliament House  we walked past all the beautiful architecture of the building and then went to hospitality   and were given  frozen yogurt. I got the Chocolate and Vanilla Bean, it was so yummy and then we got our instructor for our role play. She took us to a smaller version of the chambers and we got to pick if we wanted to be in the Senate Chamber or the House Of Representatives and we picked the Senate Chamber. I was a Cross Bench and I had to pick over the Opposition side or the Government side over a bill. The bill was that the Government wanted to make school days longer starting at 9:00 am and finishing at 5:00pm. WAY TO LONG! For those poor children. Then another instructor took us to the real chambers in the soundproof rooms and we got to see the whole room.

After all that wonderful learning we arrived at my favourite part, the cabins. We stayed at the Sundown Villas. It was really nice. Mrs Maguire then told us the cabins and the rooms we got in and gave us the key. After that we all had to get dressed in our AIS clothes also known as Australian Institute Of Sport. Before we had dinner . After dinner we set off to The Australian Institute Of Sport which was really fun. We got to play a soccer penalty game and  a sliding winter sport called a skelteton bob sled. After that we got back to the cabin and got our pyjamas on and lights went out at 10:30 hmm  we  stayed up a little bit. But mind you the teachers were outside from 10:00 am to 6:00 am in the morning in the freezing cold frost and fog. So shout out to you teachers for staying up all night and not being angry the next day. The next day rolls around and we get out of bed at 6:45am and we then pack all our clothes up before breakfast.  After breakfast we load up the bus and head off to our next destination, which were the Embassies. We looked at all the different Embassies.  They were really cool, but the American one was huge.

Questacon! The place that everyone was waiting for, especially me! On the Friday of our camp we went to Questacon. We got there and straight away we got to go to the shop. It had such cool things like a Newton's Cradle, a lava lamp and very sticky magnets. Our grade then went into all the levels of Question and got to see cool things like a human skeleton head or  lighting strike in a cage. Then 20 of us got to go to an Earthquake room which was a 5.8 Earthquake. It was big alright, it shook the whole room and if it was real it could even knock buildings down. The slide! The best part of the trip. It was a massive slide that was really steep and you had a pole that you hung off when the instructor said go you let go. The people that wanted to go had to put on big jump suits and they looked like prison suits. It was so fun. It was like you had no gravity, you would fly like a bird.

This is the slide and the silver pole at the top. (Random Image from Google)

Afterwards we got back on the bus and headed to AEC, the Australian Electoral Commision and they run all the votes and count them. We learnt about democracy and voting. Then we got to do our own voting and they showed us all the different roles in the voting system. It was really cool because the video they showed us had holograms. Then we went to the Old Parliament also known as ‘The Museum Of Australian Democracy.’ We went there and we had to put on gloves that look like Mickey Mouse's gloves, because our hands have lots of oils and if our hands touch any of the important equipment in the Old Parliament house they can get damaged. 

Then that was it. The trip was finished in Canberra but we still had one stop left. MCDONALDS !  We  got our food that we pre-ordered and we ate it at Sutton Forest Mcdonalds. It was delicious. Everyone was then really full.  When we got on the bus everyone fell asleep and the bus was so quiet. We then arrived back at school. We saw our parents and got our luggage and said our goodbyes. Thank you so much Mrs Maguire, Mrs Moss, Mrs White, Mrs Pieratos, Mr Taylor, Mr Heelis, Mrs Mahoney and lucky last Mrs Miller for this extraordinary camp. No one in Year 6 will ever forget it. And I know that as a fact! Thank you again. It was truly a Trip of a lifetime.