Our Camp 2013 - Day 1

Hip! Hip! Snore. 5am is the wake up call for our Year 7’s today, the first day of camp. Today called for an early start because we had to be at the East Perth train station (a 15 min drive but add about 20 minutes for traffic from Wattle Grove) by 6:30 Monday morning. Why? Because our teachers needed to account for us and we also needed to board the train for a 7:00am departure on the Prospector. After about 7 long hours of the interesting scene of … Trees! (with a few salt lakes along the way), we arrived at our destination of, well, Kalgoorlie of course. It was pretty hot, compared to the air-conditioned train we were in. We had 2 large buses and 1 small bus, in which we had to but all of our luggage into to. I must say, 'go room 10" for being the first to have all our luggage in our bus, out of all three classes. Then after having to wait along time in a hot bus for the other 2 classes to be ready, we set off on a short drive to the Goldfields Camp School. When we arrived at the camp school, we had a quick brief about the history of the school and the rules of the school and then we went off to our dorms to unpack. There were 2 dorms for boys and 2 dorms for girls. The dorm names are C.Y O’Connor, Flanagan and Shea, Bailey and Ford and Paddy Hannon. I was in C.Y O’Connor with the rest of the girls for room 10 along with Codi from room 15. At about 3:00 that afternoon, we went back in to our buses to go out to the Superpit look out. We got to the lookout and EVERYONE! was gobsmacked at the size of the Superpit it was GINORMOUS! Infact it is 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and 570m deep. We had some pictures on some of the mines truck tyres and on the bucket of a loader from the mine and both objects were pretty big too. Then we went back to camp to talk, play and run around until some of us had to go set up for the lovely dinners we were being provided with. We all had a delicious dinner, followed by a scrumptious dessert, which was then followed by the hilarious movie “Despicable Me 2”. Finally after one long day, we got to get ready for bed and then go to sleep. By Taylor and Merenia

Our Camp 2013 - Day 2

Today the wake up call was 7am, slightly better than the day before, it was this early because breakfast was at 7:30am, but the lucky people who had to set up breakfast had only 15 minutes to get ready. After Breakfast, we had a quick talk about what we were doing today. When that was over, we loaded onto our buses and off to our days activity. This included, a walk up the hollow and historical Hannon street, with a tour guide giving us plenty of historical notes and facts about the many different bulidings that are over 100 years old. On our way up to the Kalgoorlie WA Museum, we stopped briefly for morning tea (or recess), then we headed into the museum to learn about gold and how the Kalgoorlie pioneers lived in the 20th century. Then we bused back to the camp for lunch and got ready for our next exciting activity that would be taking place that day. This activity is a KCGM (Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines) tour. The tour involves learning about the expenses of running a mine like the costs of the truck, which is around $4 million for a dump truck and $42 000 for just one simple tire for the trucks, and going into a lookout in the mine so we can see what it is like for the miners. The group that wasn’t in the mine went up to the Superpit gift shop and had a look in one of the mines dump trucks and watched a short movie about the blasts that happen in the mines around 3 times a week. Whilst we were at the mine, we found out that there was going to be some blasting taking place later on that day. So, after a short break at camp and a chance to get out of our long pants and jumper that we had to wear in the mine, we went back up to the Superpit for the blasting that was meant to take place that day at 4pm. A lot of us took video’s of the two blasts that took place, others just watched it. Subsequent to that even,t we had dinner and met back in the dining hall for a quiz night, it was all pretty much general knowledge along with a few rounds of knowledge about Kalgoorlie, which we have been studying in class. As well as music rounds, which is obviously all about different music artists and classic/modern songs. Once that was over and the winning team was announced, everyone got ready for bed and eventually went to bed with about an hour free time before that, which a lot of us spent talking, singing, playing and having lots of fun in our dorms. When finally at about 9:45pm the teachers called lights out so we all had to sleep. Although, some people had different ideas and decided to keep on talking which kept us all up for a while longer. Than eventually we all got some sleep. By Taylor and Merenia

Our Camp 2013 - Day 3

Today was probably the busiest day of the week. Today, we got up at the usual time of 7, spent 15 minutes getting dressed and waking ourselves up. Of course, sharing the strange dreams that we might have had the night before. At 7:15, the helpers got called to the dining room and Group C (Mr Sherlocks group) got called out to the fire for our Bush Breakfasts. For the Bush Breakfast, we were making a type of toasted sandwich, called a jaffle. We were doing this, using jaffle irons, there was a selection of ingredients, such as: Skippy (kangaroo), Baked Beans, Bacon, Eggs, tomato sauce, barbeque sauce and Cheese. We could use as much or as of different ingredients as we wanted. In any order except, the cheese, which had to be in the middle of the jaffle. We then closed and latched the iron and walked over to the fires, where we would be cooking them. We put the jaffles into the heat of the fire and walked back to get plates, as we were only allowed to do one thing at a time. We then turned over the jaffle and waited a minute or two, then carefully took the jaffles out. Sharon cut off the crusts and took them out of the jaffle irons for us. We lent the irons onto a rock and went, collected our jaffle, then went to sit down and enjoy them. They were very nice and everyone enjoyed them. After the bush breakfast, we had just enough time to go and get ready for the days adventures, which we were all very excited about. To kickstart our day’s activities, we went to Lake Douglas to do some gold panning. We couldn’t wait to get started. First off, we had to get into groups and go collect as close to, two handfuls of a gold-containing mineral called Quarts. We then got showed how to crush the quarts in a big cylindrical pot called a ‘Dolly Pot’ into a very fine powder. We then emptied the contents into a plastic-type bowl, you then put a little bit of water, slosh it around and carefully empty the water out and hopefully spot some gold in the groves of the pan, where it should get caught. Some people were very lucky and found multiple pieces of gold. Others weren't so lucky and didn't find any. After this, we had a scrumptious morning tea, a got into new groups for our next activity of bush humpy building. Our task was to build a humpy out of natural materials, that could fit every person from our group inside of it. We also had to make up a song and dance to advertise our humpy, as if we were selling it. Following this, we got into our buses and headed to Coolgardie Park for lunch. Following lunch, we headed over to the town hall, just down the road from Coolgardie Park,, where we met up with our tour guide named Vic. The first thing we did with Vic was have a history lesson, whilst he past around a 3 ounce gold nugget that he had found, we then followed him into the amazing Coolgardie Town Hall. Inside the main part of the hall was a fantastic painting done to look like the curtains and props onstage. A lot of us believed it for a bit until we were told that it was actually a painting. We then went to many different places to learn about people and places of Coolgardie’s history. These included: Jack Cairns Humpy, Coolgardie Cemetery, Warden Finnerty’s house, Coolgardie’s Tourist Bureau, a museum and an extra little treat was thrown in for us as well. We went over the road and met Vic’s friend who had a collection of some signs and souvenirs of the past. Subsequent to this, we got to go home and have a rest before dinner later in the evening, which was followed by a very fun Games Night, before we were off to bed, before our last full day in Kalgoorlie. By Taylor and Merenia