Truganini Retreat

DAY 1:

Arriving at camp Eumeralla was definitely an experience in itself. There was a lot in store for us on our first day of retreat. It was exciting to know that there were many opportunities and activities for us to come together as a cluster community. Starting off our retreat we listened to the beautiful Michelle as she showed us and spoke about her journey through life. Her horrific asthma attack at nineteen years of age was saddening but her motivation to keep pushing through life has inspired me and has changed many perspectives of life. Michelle has lived through difficult times, but it was her family, friends and the help of her community that brought her back up on her feet. Her journey and incredible story definitely started the retreat off with the attitude to work as a team and come together as a Truganini community. After listening to the incredible Michelle, later in the afternoon we walked to the beach to complete the next activities. As half the group split off to go mountain bike riding, the other half learnt how to surf. Surfing was an incredible experience, it was an activity that many of us haven’t tried before and was out of our comfort zone. As our activities came to an end, we all gathered together on the beach and joined in on some beach activities. As we came back to the camp site at the end of the day, we became familiar to the people in our cabins and we spent some free time getting to know other peers in our cluster. In the evening we spent some time in our homegroups and we did some team building activities. The first activity that my homegroup participated in was meditation, this activity gave us the opportunity to relax and release all the stress and worry from our minds. It got us to turn a focus onto our retreat and how to reflect upon the experiences we have already had and the ones that we are looking forward to. The next activity was creating mandalas. This activity gave us the chance to show our creative side and to colour in separate pieces that would come together and form an individual mandala. The last activity was making rosary beads and it was a creative way to show our faith through a religious symbol. We ended our long and eventful day by getting to know people in other homegroups and people in our cabins that we may not have known so well. Overall the first day of retreat was a very adventurous one but it taught me to believe and have resilience throughout life.

Melissa Papazoglou

DAY 2:

On Day 2 of the Truganini Retreat to Anglesea the students went through a variety of activities regarding our Cluster. After breakfast the students were looking through a PowerPoint about our Cluster patron (Truganini) which was led by the student leaders. The knowledge that they developed was then put to them in a quiz in their Home Groups. The winners were T1 and T3. The next activity involved a reflective activity where we continued with decorating on our graduation crosses that focused on our Cluster values. Then the students had to do a reflection on their time at the Retreat. The last activity for the Retreat was a mass lead by Father Gerard Keith. Over the 2 days on retreat the students enjoyed their time in Anglesea. We would like to thank Maria Caroli and the Truganini staff for organising the Retreat.

Luke Fenech