Silver and Bronze Duke of Edinburgh
Congratulations to Annabelle Gow
(Year 9), Lucy Gibson (Year 10) and Ravin Rathnayake (Year 10) who recently completed the Bronze Level together with Viduwantha Suraweera (Year 11) who completed the Silver Level of the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Term 2: Senior School Outdoor Experiences
2022 Whitsundays, Sea kayaking, hiking and snorkelling expedition
Written by Christian Lam (Year 10) and Chelsea Jarrett (Year 10)
During term two holidays, 10 students, Ms Visick and Mr Davis had the opportunity to escape the freezing Melbourne winter to spend nine days in Queensland. During the trip, we learnt valuable life skills including navigation and tidal patterns. We also formed new friendships by bonding over the incredible experiences that we shared.
On Saturday morning, bright and, honestly, way too early, we met at Melbourne Airport, half asleep but eager for what awaited us. We spent the first day organising our gear and buying enough food for the week. Pushing $1,300 worth of food (mainly snacks) in six massive Coles trollies was definitely a highlight!
The next day, we ventured out on ‘Scamper’, the boat, to Whitehaven Beach where we camped for two nights. While staying at Whitehaven, we kayaked in challenging weather conditions, snorkelled among beautiful coral and swam at the whitest beach in Australia. We even saw a turtle!
Aside from being kept up all night by Ava’s valiant efforts to protect her and Viv’s tent from an army of hungry mice and a ‘murderer’—actually just me, Whitehaven was an amazing first campsite where we were trained in kayaking skills, camp cooking and were exposed to incredible scenery and sunsets.
One of our amazing camp leaders, Lachie, taught us all about tidal patterns and we learned how to use them to our advantage while also remembering that the sea is unpredictable.
On Tuesday, we spent the first part of the day prepping for Scamper. While waiting at the beach we made the most of our downtime and went swimming and played team games where the ‘Macca Pacca’ team were absolutely demolished by ‘Team T’.
When Scamper arrived, we were sad to say goodbye to Whitehaven but we were excited to finally set off for Dugong Beach.
We spent two nights at Dugong Beach, which give us an opportunity to spend a full day exploring mangroves in our kayaks and kayaking to a nearby beach. We also had the chance to go hiking.
On our second day at Dugong, we tried fresh oysters that we found on rocks on the beach. Although we couldn’t snorkel at Dugong, we made the most of the opportunities to kayak and learned about our surroundings and the tides. We ran into a few too many giant goannas and played as much of the card game, Liar, as we possibly could.
On Thursday, unfortunately, due to high wind conditions we couldn’t kayak to the next camp site, so Scamper transported us to our final island camp, South Molle Island. Fortunately, the camp site was filled with grass—sandy sleeping bags would be no more!
After collective teamwork and knowledge of navigation from our camp instructors and teachers, the students were left to plan, brief and lead the whole next day!
On Friday, the challenge was on and the students were in charge. The day began with a hike however, we underestimated our walking speed and this allowed us to take in some more interesting viewing points.
Once we arrived at the abandoned South Molle Island resort, we decided to go snorkelling and saw many tropical fish and corals. We then hiked back to camp and decided to collect litter on the exposed side of the island. There are few feelings better than filling up a whole bag of rubbish. Karma rewarded us as we encountered a turtle shortly afterwards.
Our last night on the islands was spent reflecting on our time away and ended with students receiving friendship bracelets.’