Outdoor Education Grampians Camp

Last week, the Unit 3/4 VCE Outdoor Education class attended the Grampians Camp. Our area of study this term has been Relationships with the Outdoor Environment, this includes indigenous relationships before and after European settlement. So visiting the Grampians was crucial to the understanding of our key concepts. Gariwerd (Grampians) seemed to make the most sense to visit as it contains 90% of the rock art sites in Victoria. While at the Grampians it was so easy to put what we learnt in class into context. In class we would learn about the sacred sites that the Wathaurong people would interact with and seeing them helped put things into perspective. As seen above, this is a sacred rock art site we visited called Bunjil Shelter.

Whilst on camp we didn’t just learn and do work, we had lots of fun and participated in various recreational activities. For example on Wednesday when we arrived at the Grampians we did a 9km hike of the Pinnacle. On Thursday we got up at the crack of dawn and engaged in rock climbing and abseiling. This was very tricky for a lot of us but we all persevered and gave it our best. On Friday we attended the Halls Gap Zoo and got to interact with the animals and see a lot of exotic fauna from all over Australia and the world. It was amazing to see each and every student on camp employ our school values of pride, respect and responsibility. Every student upheld the amazing reputation our school has.

Camp was fun but it would have never been able to happen without the help of our amazing staff, especially Ms. Douglass, Mr. Sordello and Mr. Baker. Their willingness to put up with 30 grumpy, loud and annoying teenagers shouldn't go without recognition. Although I think we got to Bakes a bit because he almost dropped Sordi while rock climbing!

In conclusion, the camp we attended was overall so much fun! It really brought everyone together and we all built on our relationships with each other and made new friends along the way!

Will Patterson

Year 12 Student