danielpierotti's Blog

Week 5 was camp week.  Everyone was looking forward to travelling down to Queenscliff and spending 3 days with each other.  Unfortunately, the week didn’t start off too good for me, as I was sick over the week and didn’t attend the walk-a-thon on the Monday.  Just to add to the confusion as to whether I was coming or not, I was late arriving to school but luckily the bus wasn’t to arrive for another half an hour.  The bus trip was quite epic, I was sitting next to Damian and we aren’t exactly the best combo when it comes to sitting in your seats still.  If Damian wasn’t holding me in a headlock, then we would be playing musical chairs or talking/shouting across the bus.  Towards the end of the trip, people started to calm down a bit, but all that excitement was to return once we reached our destination.  Arriving at Camp Wyuna, we were quickly jostled into the Rec. Room, and while eating lunch, we were introduced to the Camp staff.  There would be no “Camp activities” that afternoon, but we were to visit the Marine Discovery Centre across the road.  While half of the group went into the Marine centre, the other half lounged around on the grass beside the road and played Frisbee, soccer and whatever else was brought along in the Uni High sports bag.  The Marine Discovery Centre was a much smaller version of Melbourne Aquarium except it focused only on the marine life of Swan Bay and Port Phillip Bay.  There also was a feeling pool in the centre where you were able to touch the marine life, dead or alive, of Swan and Port Phillip Bays.  I particularly liked this hands-on experience as it was very interesting in finding out the textures and feel of life under the sea.  By the time we got back, it was early afternoon and we were allowed to bring our luggage to our designated cabins.  I was sharing a cabin with Jack, Martin and Damian, but our designated cabin only had three beds, so we swapped with another group which consisted of only three people.  After settling in, we were called down to the grassed area in front of the Hall, and were led up to the back of the camp and down onto the beach.  People might not know but I am a great lover of the beach; the salty wind off the water, the rhythmical breaking of the waves and the sand in between my toes.  I love being on the beach, but the best thing was that we were not restricted.  We were not consistently called back by the teachers to wait for them to catch up and we were spread out across the beach over about 200 meters.  I think many people were so elated because for once they were not under pressure to do anything, they were free to just walk/stroll/run/skip along the beach, whereas in their usual week, they might always be pressured by parents, teachers, etc to finish tasks, and always have people on their backs.  I think that is one of the great things about Galileo; that we are allowed freedom and I definitely think the positive feedback about Camp was because of this.  Saying that, there were just a couple of lowlights, and one of them was the food.  Going back to camp, and having showers to remove the salt and sand, I was a tad hungry as I always am, and was looking forward to a decent meal, but I only just managed to force down the unusually thick piece of chicken and vegetables from a packet.  Coming from Italian background, I actually consider myself quite spoilt when it comes to food.  Not to say that I eat whatever I can and whenever I can, but I eat very tasty home-made food, with quite a large percentage of it coming fresh from my garden, every meal.  I eat junk food/pre-packaged food/two minute meals only about once every couple of months or so.  Anyway, afterwards we all had free time to muck around, have showers if we hadn’t had one before and then when it was dark, we built a camp fire and roasted marshmallows until about 10pm.  Then we were sent off to bed, but that was when all the fun started.  A massive party was planned for Jack’s cabin but was found out in the first 5 minutes or so and then again when they tried to re-kindle the party feel 30 minutes later.  Jack’s cabin brought heaps of junk which included packets and packets of lollies, chocolate, chips etc etc.  One of the highlights for the night would have been when Tom and Albert from the adjoining cabin walked into the room at about 11:30pm with only their underpants on an then Louis locked the door to the bathroom, which only had a lock on one side, and Chris the teacher was patrolling the corridors.  So Tom and Albert were stuck in our room, more than half naked, with the other way blocked by the embarrassment of facing the teacher.  Finally, after a few minutes of laughing our heads off, we managed to unlock the door using a 5 cent coin which allowed for Tom and Albert to return to their cabin through the bathroom.

Getting only about 6 hours of sleep, it took an unusually long time to wake up.  Knowing that the rest of the camp food wouldn’t be much better, I stacked up at breakfast, you can’t go wrong with a couple of bowls of cereal and two egg and bacon rolls.  Feeling much better, it was time to begin the camp activities.  Our group, which was just Mollies home-group, went mountain biking first.  Our instructor was Jessie and he first told us about safety and how to use the bikes properly.  The bikes themselves were very high class/top of the range mountain bikes, and soon we were riding along the beach walkway.  It was quite a pleasant ride, not strenuous but almost relaxing as we whizzed past the beach and made our way to Point Lonsdale where we stopped for a break.  At the lighthouse, we went down the steps to the beach and looked at the cave which was thought to be where William Buckley stayed for a while.  Soon we went back to the lighthouse and made our way back to the camp, the instructor telling us that it was a total of just over 10km.  After a short break for morning tea, at which really yummy Anzac type biscuits were served, we went canoeing.  The activity was based on teamwork and working together as a group.  The first part was to collect buckets and keys which were attached to the buoys floating in Swan Bay.  Martin and I were in a canoe, and we got the hang of it quite quickly and soon we were gliding across the water.  Unfortunately we were so preoccupied with going as fast as we could, that we whizzed right past the buoy.  As we couldn’t be bothered turning, we just allowed the canoe to glide along as we lay down.  Eventually we glided closer so far that we were actually closer to another buoy so we went to collect a key from there.  Unfortunately because of our relaxing glide, we wasted a lot of time and probably let our team down.  Oh well, it was worth it!   Eventually, after everyone was wet and frozen, we finished the challenge and made our way back to the camp and into the warm showers.  Lunch proved to be an excellent improvement from the previous night’s dinner, consisting of taco’s with a choice of fresh vegetables, something which I am much more accustomed to.  After lunch we went fishing with Paul, which seemed like a great idea but the only things that we caught were seaweed and each other.  Me being me, I cut myself on the hook quite a number of times and soon resorted to building sand castles and kicking around a volleyball.  It wasn’t at all unpleasant as it was a lovely afternoon on the beach, lazing around and relaxing.  We returned to camp to (another) shower and an hour of free time to play cricket, volley and just muck around with my fellow taskies, getting to know them better all the while.  Dinner was similar to the previous night except lasagne replaced the chicken, although I shiver with distaste when I considered that stuff lasagne.  After dinner the talent show was ready to roll and turned out to be the climax of the camp.  Many taskies showed off their known and unknown talents and amazed us all.  The highlights were Taskforce 5 singing a song about the taskies, Liam jazzing away on the keyboard, the teacher’s remake of A New World and Mairead’s wonderful singing of her own composition.  We still are waiting on Ruidong to release the videos which he took of the talent show.  After the amazing display of talent, there was another campfire, but that night there wasn’t as much of a commotion as everyone was tired from going to bed late the previous night.

On the morning of the third day, the realisation that the camp was almost over dawned on many people and the feeling at breakfast was somewhat subdued compared to the other days.  Again I filled up with two bowls of cereal to get me through the day.  After breakfast we had a while to pack our cabins up and bring our luggage down to the hall again.  The rest of the day was spent in the town of Queenscliff, on our trail.  My group was me, Damian, David and someone else (sorry I can’t remember, I’m doing the blog a couple of weeks later) and we first went into St Vincent Op Shop where Damian bought a novel for only $1.50!!!!!!  We then took a late morning tea/early lunch break at the Rolling Pin Bakery where I bought a pie, which was actually quite nice, hence why it had won the award: “Victoria’s best pie” two years running.  We then continued our way to the Queenscliff fort.  We didn’t actually go in, but there were many information boards outside and we observed both lighthouses and the structure of the fort.  After a while, we made our way back down Hesse St and back to the original meeting spot.  At that stage it was quite hot, and as I had already got sunburned the previous days, my skin felt like it was sizzling, well, it probably was!  We went back to the camp on the single line train with carriages similar to those of the Puffin Billy.  Once at camp we ate a quick lunch then began packing the bus and all too soon, we were on the road back to school.  The bus ride was somewhat subdued and many people dozed off to sleep.  Overall the camp was once of the best I have been on.  The group of taskies just work together and get along so well.  A lot of us have similar interests which was why we were able to spend an awesome 3 days together.  I personally had a great time getting to know other taskies better and sharing time with them.  Overall, Camp was the highlight of Galileo so far.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2009 at 5:48 am and is filed under Weekly Blogs . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.