The students were privileged enough to spend three days and two nights at MERC (Sir Peter Blake Marine Education & Recreation Centre).
On day-one, excitement was booming as anticipation built up for camp, eager faces, tired students and huge amounts of luggage filled up the bus as our journey started. We were dropped off at the Long Bay Regional Park and organised into teams of approximately 10 to begin The Amazing Race.
This involved a series of challenges that required us to work collaboratively as a team and for some of us to step out of our comfort zone and work with people we have not met before. The race consisted of five activities, a memory game, building a stretcher, constructing a bivouac, knot tying and the sand investigation; each required us to think outside of the box and have a mindset ready to learn something new.
Day-two consisted of activities that were split into two different categories – water and land activities. We were introduced to the instructors and given safety instructions before we headed off to try these unique challenges.
These activities pushed us to do our absolute best and to push ourselves to the limit. They were all height-based challenges that required us to encourage and cheer on our peers. The crate stacking was on the challenging side as you had to secure crates one by one to create a tower. The water tasks sparked the most interest for me and the rest of the students as the GSUP (giant stand up paddle boarding) and sailing were the crowd favourites.
For GSUP, students paddled their way out to the corals and got to jump off the paddle board and enjoy swimming and snorkelling with their group. For sailing, the ropes got handed to us as the wind pushed us to a new skill. We saw birds, learnt the names of different mountains and the parts of the boat.
After a long day of exciting learning and gaining skills, it was time for dinner. Each group took part in a task assigned to them. The tasks ranged from cleaning, to making dinner and lunch for students and teachers. In the evening, we wrote a letter to our future self and recorded a message to be seen when we graduate college!
The last day of camp was a chance to savour every last bit of the moments we had with friends and the new people that we met along the way. As we finished our last two activities, we separated from our groups to pack and clean our cabin rooms. Buses filled with students and teachers once again, all exhausted from a fun-filled experience.
Camp will be a memory that will last for all my college years to come.
~ Riley Park 09B7