Hello, all. Sorry for the delay- procrastination, camp and homework. But I’m back, ready to write a new column…and, given that I’m in year 9, what better subject than year 9 camp? Admittedly, I could write about the captaincy elections, but I think I’ll leave that to another writer, such as one who particularly cares.


Now, to begin…

Firstly, just to put it out there and as a disclaimer for everything I’m about to say, camp was great fun. Better than years 7 or 8, good leaders, fun activities, edible food and all the other pleasant surprises that usually aren’t present at school camps.

But- and this is a big but- there were one or two things that went wrong. Firstly, the beginning of the camp. I know for a fact the teachers wanted us to be enthusiastic and chirpy on our first day of camp; I’m also sure that Sydney traffic does mean an early start means a quicker journey, and I’m sure there is quite sound logic behind it. However, the fact remains that a group of teenagers dragged out of bed at 4 in the morning and made to stand in the cold for a quarter of an hour while the role is marked is not, generally speaking, an enthusiastic and chirpy group of teenagers. In fact, it quite often falls into the category of ‘grumpy and sluggish’. They got away with it this time, due to a slightly warmer morning that managed to thaw our cold-blooded bodies before we arrived, but a large part of that was luck.

So, after loading on our bags, some of which seemed to be more suited to a month in Siberia than three days in a cabin1, and headed off on a surprisingly eventless bus trip. Upon arriving and unloading aforementioned excessive baggage, we were sorted into colour-coded groups, told our cabins, instilled us with a healthy dose of terror of the kind commonly found at camps2, and marched off to our first activities.

Now, about the activities. They were in the same category as working televisions and nice food- things you would expect to find at high-end resorts instead of a recreational camp for teenaged kids, but there nevertheless; a kind of mirage, shimmering on the horizon after several hours of bad singing on a cramped bus. Unlike mirages, however, these were actually solid; a blessing in the case of the multi-metre-high flying fox. Now, let me list through the activities:



1) Canoeing/Kayaking- Depending on the weather, this was quite fun. The rainy second and third days weren’t the best time for it, although it was still quite good, but the sun on the first day made really awesome-looking reflections…disturbed only by the ripples of capsizers.



2) Rock climbing- Climbing up a Hangdog-style outdoor climbing wall. Fun for those who aren’t scared of heights and easy for those of us with longer limbs, nerve-wracking and difficult for those who are and aren’t, in that order.

Abseiling- Climbing down the other side of said climbing wall. Woe to those who are scared of heights, especially if you did it in the rain. Otherwise fun, almost boring if you’ve done the same at other camps.



3) Archery- Fun, albeit with a high miss rate, which meant we spent almost s much te finding arrows as shooting. Also, the sense of awe at being able to handle a potentially lethal weapon is somewhat diminished when they show you the brand-new, twice as large, five times cooler-looking bows that ‘you could have used if you were here a week later’. Think someone handing you the keys to a bombed-out car, letting you drive it for half an hour, then said that their Ferrari3 was being refuelled so you couldn’t use it.



4) Initiative Games- Fun, but difficult. Also quite odd. From trying to disassemble wooden blocks and a milkcrate and reassemble them on the other side of a wooden board (record: 7 seconds) to trying to see how many people can pass under four people making a bridge (a lot), these were out-there and hopelessly impractical, yet addictive.



5) Raft-building- trying to make a floating raft out of bottles, wood and rope. An optimistic idea, but it usually ended up as six soaking wet kids trying to carry a loosely held together bundle of logs through freezing-cold water.



6) High ropes- Remember what I said before about being scared of heights? If you are, than this could be difficult.4 I’m going to assume that I wasn’t the only one who found it scary, judging by the hand-shaped indents on the ropes from where former students had gripped onto it for dear life. Short of putting a pit full of giant, mutated, aggressive spiders below it and shaking the pylons back and forth, then cutting your rope, there’s not many ways for it to get scarier. However, all of it was negated by the sheer, pure, unadulterated brilliance that was their flying fox. It was one of those fifty-metre-long ones where you skimmed about two metres off the ground at the lowest and high speeds, close enough to the other activities for them to hear your screams of joy and occasional pain as you got whipped by a passing pine tree.5



7) Night Games- a series of activities that were kind-of-fun, of the same calibre as those PE activities you do in an effort to Make Exercise Fun. Luckily for them, they had the foresight to split us into teams ourselves (read: friends), so we got to both spend much of the time talking AND have satisfaction of beating the other people.



That’s about it for the activities. But then, as I have mentioned several times before, there was the food. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say it was good. Really good. Apart from those of you who didn’t like pumpkin. The one flaw, however, is that was served by students. Sure, it was encouraging initiative and responsibility, but it was also encouraging long queues, disproportionate amounts of food and mild cases of salmonella.



After all that, of course, came the disco. Oh, the disco. Firstly, who decided to make a ‘masquerade’ theme?6 Masks do not make bad dancing to bad music good. All masks do is make bad dancing to bad music look faintly ridiculous as well. Also, while I’m on this theme, I would like to point out that this was a camp disco. Not a masquerade with royalty and heads of state. Apparently there is some slight confusion between the two. You see, at a camp disco, you don’t dress like you’re at a royal masquerade. You dress like you’re at a camp disco, i.e. in normal clothes, or close enough to normal to make no difference. Still, kudos to the organisers for trying, although I can’t particularly say I like their choice in music.7



Lastly, the cabins. Oh, the cabins. They had- and I am no joking- working televisions. Perhaps not the best idea, given the already sleep-deprived students, but a fun one, especially given the choice of channels. However, to negate all of that, there was a thief. You see, despite the televisions, someone had decided not to put any locks on the doors, even the ones between cabins. Hence you can- and some people did- walk between all the cabins. Eventually, someone decided to take advantage of this and, in an extremely callous act of thuggery, stole some chocolates.

$20, as well.

I’m pretty sure it all got returned after the teachers gave the year a guilt-trip speed, but even so. Not cool.

After that, the camp was pretty much over. There was a long bus trip, as uneventful as the last, and we got back to the school, ready to go back to learning the next day, keen to soak up some more knowledge.8

So there you go. See you next week,

Eric M.

1I mean that literally. With some of the luggage people were…well…lugging, you had enough fuel for a permanent month-long bonfire, with enough left over to club any roving polar bears.

2The kind that’s enough to stop you from breaking the rules but falls just short of inducing severe anxiety attacks.

3And if you don’t like Ferraris, then you don’t deserve to be reading this column.

4In the same way that having your house burn down is a bit of an annoyance, or Justin Bieber isn’t that great at singing.

5I had the marks for a week. Those things might look nice and innocent from a distance, but at high speed they should be classified as lethal weapons.

6Yes, I know it was the year advisors. I don’t care, it’s for the sake of the article.

7In the same way that I don’t particularly enjoy having major surgery without anaesthetic.

8Heh. Just kidding. We were sleep-deprived, on a sugar low, and suffering from school apathy, a condition usually found after long periods of fun followed by loner periods of boredom. You know the feeling.

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