This year, the girls’ birthday coincided with the first day of their school camp.
Rhea:
When we went to camp, we went on a bus for three and a half hours to Sydney. We had to arrive at 7.40 and the bus left at eight. Dad just dropped us off and drove off but all the other parents stayed until the bus left. About halfway through the trip, the bus driver pulled over because Luke was stuck in the toilet. He went in to the toilet and he locked himself in and then he couldn’t get out. The teacher came and turned the handle and the door opened.
I was sitting next to Lara and across from Hilda. About halfway through the bus ride I switched from sitting next to Lara to sitting next to Hilda. Lara wanted to sleep and Hilda wanted to talk. Lara went to sleep and I played Unoflip with Hilda until we stopped about halfway through the bus ride at a petrol station to go to the toilet and sit and eat our morning tea and lunch. At the petrol station I sat next to Hailey and ate morning tea and the teachers gave Lara and I a piece of chocolate cake for our birthday. Just as we were about to get back on the bus, the teachers gave us our bunkroom lists. I was with Hailey, Lara, Nora, Evelyn and Ella.
When we arrived in Sydney, we put our bags along the corridor and we gathered in the dining room and they told us that we would be going out along the beach and playing some games, and they told us to put our bags in our rooms and get changed.
The first game that my class played was like a treasure hunt game. The instructor took pictures of things around the area and we had to find where they were and come back and mark them on a map. Every picture found was ten points and if we went outside the zone that we were supposed to stay in then we got minus ten points.
The second game that we played was a lava monster game. There were square pieces of carpets that we had to put down on the ground and we had to get from one place to another without anyone touching the ground. The lava monster could steal a piece of carpet if no-one was standing on it. There were also pool noodles that you couldn’t move with. If you moved with them then the lava monster could take away the pool noodle and the piece of carpet that you were standing on. Every pool noodle was worth ten points and there were ten pool noodles, and every piece of carpet was worth one point and there were nineteen pieces of carpet.
Our class ended up getting eighteen pieces of carpet and nine pool noodles on the first try, and on the second try, we got eighteen pieces of carpet and nine pool noodles.
The third game was a kind of land ski game. There were long skis with ropes attached to them and you had to hold one piece of rope in each hand and you had to move at the same time as everyone else, otherwise everyone fell off. Each ski had room for eight people on it but there were eighteen people in our group, so one person ended up being a captain of one team and another person being a captain of the other team.
The two teams were the boys’ team and the girls’ team but they just ended up being boys and girls teams, it wasn’t intentional. The girls managed a lap and three quarters and the boys managed one lap.
The last game was a sandcastle building competition. The sandcastle had to be related to the sea. Our class did an octopus with a mohawk and armpit hair and it won.
Then at night, we had a talent show, but because it was so late when the talent show finished, they didn’t choose a winner. I think the best ones were Ned singing, Tasha and Evie’s dance, and Ella’s devil sticks. We ended up going to bed at nearly ten o’clock.
The second day I woke up at the same time as Hailey, at around 6.15 or 6.30. We sat around for five minutes talking until Lara woke up. When Ella woke up, she turned on the light, even though Evelyn and Nora were still sleeping. Then at about 6.50, Evelyn and Nora woke up and the teacher came in, saying that breakfast was in ten minutes and we had to get dressed for the school excursion for which we had to wear school uniform.
For breakfast I had toast with butter and orange juice. Lara had toast with jam and orange juice and Hailey had a bowl of cereal.
Just before we left, we had a quick briefing about what we were going to do and we left at around 9.30. First we went to the art gallery which we had to wear masks for. The masks that they distributed were adult disposable masks but I brought a children’s mask that was pink with pandas on it. We were split into groups of about fifteen children per teacher.
After that we went to the Botanical Garden for about two hours. We walked through the entrance and found a good spot to eat our lunch and then we split into our groups and walked towards the Opera House, near where we found a steep hill which was really fun for rolling down. We stayed there for about half an hour and then the other three groups joined us. We went to the Greenhouse and I played tips with Hailey, Lara, Aaliya, Alexa, Liam and Owen just outside, until we had to walk to the Hyde Park Barracks. They had activities for us to do there, but they recommended us not to take pictures because we didn’t have our backpacks on.
The first activity we did was a brick laying activity. We had to lay them in patterns of the columns and patterns of the rooms. The second activity was lying the hammocks while the tour guide told us a bit about the history, which was fun. The third activity, we went into a room filled with tiny models of people working in the Hyde Park Barracks. The last activity was in three parts: the first one, we walked around a room and looked at remains of things that were hidden under the floorboards like old pieces of convict clothing or a bottle that may have contained some alcohol, or knuckles to play knuckles. The second part was going outside and looking at fingerprints that convicts put in the bricks while making them. Each fingerprint represented a hundred bricks and there were five fingerprints. Normally the bricks would be facing in, but that brick was facing out. The last part of the activity was holding leg irons and we held some that were three kilograms, but they could get up to twenty kilograms.
After that, we went to the lodge where we were staying and had showers and then had dinner, but for the showers, if you weren’t one of the first fifteen people, the showers were freezing cold. After dinner, anyone who wanted to watched a movie. I didn’t watch it. For the people who didn’t want to watch the movie, we had twenty minutes to read and then we had to go to sleep, but we ended up staying up for half an hour because the teacher set a timer but it got interrupted when there were 7 minutes left so the teacher re-set the timer. The people who were watching the movie ended up staying up about one-and-a-half hours after we went to sleep.
On Friday I woke up at about 6.30 and Hailey woke up just before me. Lara got out of bed about five minutes later and thy turned on the lights at around the same time. Frida and Bianca and Ella all woke up then too.
The teacher came in at about 7 to say that you could either pack up your room and have breakfast or have breakfast and then pack up your room, and breakfast would be ready until 7.40, so me, Hailey, Lara and Ella all had breakfast first and then packed our bags after. At about 10 o’çlock, everyone went out to go and see carvings that Aboriginal people made and they were right next to these underground bunkers that were used in the war.
5.1 and 5.3 had to go early because we were having an Aboriginal person come and talk to us. His name was Les and he showed us some weapons and we got to eat some edible leaves. The second activity that we did was walking up to George’s Head, but first we had some small cakes and some fruit, and there was chocolate or banana. I had two chocolates and one banana. They were delicious.
When we got to the top of George’s Head, it was beautiful. You see almost the whole of Sydney and the sky was really blue. There was a hill that everyone rolled down until they went over to anther side and found an even steeper hill to roll down. I played tips with Liam, Owen and Alexa. They gave us salad for lunch and it was two dishes in one: it was a chicken salad and if you ate all of it, there was a pasta dish underneath with corn and peas. While we were eating, me, Liam and Lara dared Millie to propose to our English teacher Mr McEwin (he said no) and then we dared her to propose to our bus driver Geoff (to which he said ‘I’ll have to ask my wife first’).
When the other classes arrived, we had a choice of chocolate, banana or lemon cake, but if you wanted to have two slices, one of them had to be lemon. After that, we went back to our cabins to collect our day packs and our suitcases and we got on the bus. On the way home, Geoff put on a movie called Red Dog.
