CONNOR KENTS TASK 1:

Camp

On the 8th of Febuary all of year 7 went on a camp in Wollongong. We stayed 3 days and 2 nights. If you have never been on a Reddam Camp before, you would think it is just an ordinary camp, but in reality, it is in a fact, freedom. Freedom to do all things you aren’t allowed to do at home. Oh and don’t let the teacher fool your parents or deceive you; early to bed, early to rise, well controlled groups, doing safely organised activities. All the things you don’t or can’t do at home, you can do at camp.

Just like any camp we had the usual tearful goodbyes as our mothers departed from school, leaving us with our travel bags and smiling faces. Once being released from their mother’s grips and tears, the boys clambered onto the 3 buses between all of Year 7. We all waved goodbye to our tearful mothers before settling into the serious matter of working out who was going to be in my cabin. The bus trip was approximately 2 hours and we arrived at camp by 11am. We had recess and lunch and set out for our first activity which was my personal favourite, caving.

We all had torches and a guide and we were lead through all the caving systems, some of which we had to crawl through on our stomach. A lot of the girls got scared in the caves and sadly some boys. Myself and three other guys got lost in the caves while we were by ourselves, but eventually we found our way out. We had seven other activities over the three days.

Night time consisted of snacks and staying up way past midnight and playing truth or dear. The meals were absolutely delicious and consisted of pancakes, cereal, chicken, potatoes, spaghetti bolognaise, toast and many other delicious foods; the list is endless.

On the last day of camp we had challenge valley and the giant swing. Challenge Valley was designed to stretch us to the limit. A physical and mental challenge not meant for the faint hearted. We had a leader who lead us through these dangerous tasks. If we were too slow we were left behind so we had to keep up a running pace.
The challenges included swimming through lakes, doing monkeys bars over crocodile infested waters,(in the girls heads) climbing over treacherous ropes, swimming through tunnels full of water were our lungs bursting for air. Fortunately this was followed by the luxuriant pleasure of having a shower.

Our last activity was giant swing which was the final and hardest challenge of them all, as it was all inside your head. Someone was strapped into a harness and the rest of the people were made to pull the rope until it could be pulled no more. The unlucky person would find themselves 20 metres up in the air and discover that the only way down was to pull the rope and come plummeting down to the ground.(Would your mother let you do that!) Just before we would hit the ground we would swing straight back up into the sky and down again until we stopped just as swings do.

The camp concluded with a teary ending as we departed on a bus back to Sydney however as one last thing, in spite of all the things the instructors had done for us, they came to see us off and one of them even did a back flip. With all the things we did we all left camp our life’s changed forever.