Kingsley's Camp Report

Kingsley arrived back from camp tired but elated. Here is her partial recount of camp in her own words. All names have been altered to protect the children's privacy.

Just wanted to tell you a little bit about camp. We left our bags in the science room before the bus arrived on Thursday morning. Miss L and Mrs C gave us a list last week of everything we had to take. Even though we were only going for two days we had to take 3 changes of clothes in case we got wet doing activities.

The bus trip took about an hour and a quarter to get there. I read and talked on the bus and other people chatted , read or played stuff. When we got to camp we were introduced to Maggie ( the dog) and went to our bunk rooms. Miss L decided who was sleeping in each room. Z, S, M, C, L, Sh and I were in room 11 which was the biggest room. You can see a map of the rooms on the Gundiwindi website at http://www.gundiwindi.com.au/index.htm. We met the owners, Tracey and Danny . We had a piece of fruit, a muesli bar and a fruit drink for morning tea after we put our bags in the room.

We got to play in the playground then fed the donkey, horse, the alpaca and cow. Lunch was sandwiches with a variety of 2 different slices of cheese, vegemite ,salami and ham. In the afternoon after lunch we did some activities. The three activities were the flying fox, the rope course and hut building. I thought the flying fox was the best because Danny , one of the owners of Gundiwindi Lodge, said to let go of the rope and I had to just lie backwards. It wasn't scary at all.

We had Spaghetti bolognaise for dinner on Thursday night. After that we had a chocolate birthday cake because it was A's birthday . We all sang happy birthday. After dinner we went to a bush dance and we learnt three bush dances. Boys and girls had to hold hands. Miss G danced with Max and then Miss L danced with Max because Max didn't have a partner as there weren't enough girls for each boy. After the bush dance we had hot Milo . Then we all brushed our teeth and went to bed in our sleeping bags.

On Friday morning Sh and I had to wake up especially early because we had breakfast duty. At breakfast poor H wasn't feeling very well and had to leave the dining room. Breakfast was corn flakes, rice bubbles and toast with a selection of strawberry jam, raspberry jam , vegemite, butter and honey. Mr P came up for breakfast.

After breakfast we went back to the cabins, then had another play in the playground. We then had morning tea. I did archery today and managed to hit the bullseye which had a balloon in the middle of the target. We did a team work course where you do lots of activities with everyone else in the group. The easiest one was when everyone had to fit on a plank and everyone just walked on and fitted on straight away. We also did damper making and we had to make a sausage of dough then Ms C would wrap it around a stick. We would then toast it over an open fire. We had a choice of having jam or butter or both or nothing in it. I chose jam. G and J's damper caught on fire and had a flame coming out of it. Once we finished making damper we got to toast marshmallows. Some boys were saying that the white marshmallows were evil but I don't think so.

I played with Lucy and Jessa ( the puppies) . There were trampolines there as well. Lunch on Friday was burgers. There was cheese tomato and lettuce as well. On the way back to school L and I told each other spooky stories on the bus. The bus trip back seemed a lot quicker than the trip up there.