Grade 5 & 6 Camp

On the last week of Term1 (from Monday 29 March to Thursday 1 April), the Grade 5s and 6s stayed at Camp Coolamatong in Bairnsdale. The purpose of this excursion is to empower students to make positive choices in their lives and to give them the opportunity to develop independence, life skills and social skills away from familiar school and home environments. It gives students the opportunity to discover new things for themselves, through participation in hands-on activities.

Here are some of the highlights of students' recounts:

Heidi Burford 5GC

I woke up with a start, unzipping the zip to my cabin to reveal a beautiful sight. The trees were waving in the wind and I could even hear the waves splashing against the sand. What an amazing day it was going to be…

As soon as we reached the Commando Course, the camp leader explained what to do and all the challenges. My group decided to do the rope climb first. After we did the rope climb, we rushed to the bike ride. I grabbed a bike and rode all the way to the gate. There I saw a yellow bag; I wondered what it was so I opened it. I remembered that the camp leader said that these bags contain 10 points each. I grabbed one and rode all the way back. I don’t remember how many points we got but it was a lot. My time at Camp Coolamatong was definitely an exciting and fun time that I will never forget.

Poppy Richards 5GC

The activities we did were stand-up paddleboarding, raft building, survivor (amazing race), bush cooking and the boat trip. Overall I think my favourite activities were bush cooking (because we got to make lots of really yummy food) and the boat trip (because we got to go to the beach and stand up paddleboarding), even though the water was freezing!

Abigail Lee 5DC

During the camp activities, I had a lot of fun and I’m sure everyone else did too. My first activity was canoeing. One boat could fit two people, so we all got into partners after learning how to paddle with the oars. I was partners with Mrs Chu. After rowing around for a bit, we had to raft up, rafting up is where you need to put all the boats side by side and hold onto the boat of the person next to you to keep together. The camp leader explained that we had to capture the pearls (that were really just table tennis balls) because we were pirates but if we touched the pearls with our hands they would lose their value. We used our paddles to pick up as many pearls as we could and in the end Mrs Chu and I won!