ADVANCE

Melbourne Explorer Camp

Recently, the Year 10 Advance class participated in a three-day camp exploring the Melbourne CBD. This camp is an annual key element of the Advance program, allowing the group to celebrate their personal and team achievements over the year, whilst continuing to work on their leadership, communication and community service strengths.

But it’s not all fun and games – there’s some valuable personal learning and development that occurs too! In the lead-up to the camp, the students were instrumental in leading the planning and organisation of the camp from accommodation to navigating and understanding public transport, booking accommodation, personal safety and security protocols, personal budgeting and exploring social enterprise organisations in the Melbourne CBD.

The orientation activity – our own annual, home-grown Amazing Race, saw their students put their navigation and teamwork skills to good use, working against the clock to complete a treasure hunt around the CBD in their CFA crews. They visited many historical and cultural landmarks during the activity, many remarking how much they’d learned about parts of Melbourne they didn’t know existed! Congratulations to the Red crew for taking out this year’s title! (for the third year running…)

The camp finished up with a tour of the CFA Headquarters in East Burwood. This gave the group the opportunity to meet with senior CFA officers and ask questions about their areas of responsibility within the organisation. These included Operations Management, GPS tracking and mapping innovations and radio communications. The group were also given an insightful briefing by the CFA’s chief Fire Scientist, who discussed the climatic and vegetation monitoring undertaken during the year to predict potential bushfire “hot spots” for the coming fire season. Interestingly, we were the first school CFA cadet group to visit the CFA Headquarters, so their staff were keen to impress by laying on morning tea for the students.

Our Advance students were impressive ambassadors for the College and demonstrated how far they have come this year in developing into thoughtful, considerate, empathetic and motivated young adults.

Thank you to our parent assistant Cheryl Sproules and past-Year 12 student Katie Simkin for accompanying the group to Melbourne.

This opportunity is made available in part, thanks to annual funding provided to the Advance Program from the Victorian Government’s Department of Human Services.

Randall Jones – Advance Coordinator