Year 6 Camp Reflections from the Girls

Hannah (Year 6)

At camp, we went to cabins at Clifton Gardens and tents at Cockatoo Island. The food was good for camp food and we did a lot of fun activities. We had to survive a very long bus ride to get to the fun.

One very fun activity we did at camp was snorkelling. I went snorkelling on the third day with both my friends. With snorkelling masks on, we had to dive to the bottom and collect sand from the beach floor. It was fun.

A second fun activity was sailing. We all took turns on each job. Someone was steering, someone was controlling how fast we would go and two people controlled the small sail. We went so fast. It was very, very fun.

The activity I disliked was the walk around. We had to collect letters but we were moving very slow and we barely got anywhere. I don’t like being slow, I more like being quick and getting stuff done.

But camp was fun and I was super happy I was put in a group with my best friends. I was disappointed when we had to go home but also relieved because we were all tired. All in all, camp was great.

Elizabeth (Year 6)

This year’s camp was, in a word, enjoyable. There were many activities which I had not ever experienced, such as sailing, snorkelling and kayaking, as well as the camping itself. It was probably the first camp I had been to where we were required to cook our own food over a stove, and sleep in tents for more than a night.

The first thing I enjoyed was sleeping in cabins. I cannot explain the relief Groups 4, 5 and 6 felt when finally sleeping in cabins after being thrown into a drastically changed atmosphere with being in tents for two nights. We were extremely lucky with the weather, being in the tents when it was dry and the cabins when it was raining. The cabins were by far the cleanest and well kept of any camp I’d been to. I loved the privilege of having experienced people cook for us after two days of us attempting to cook for ourselves, which wasn’t too bad, albeit we only technically cooked for a night.

The second thing I enjoyed was snorkelling. Although it got off to a rough start (me attempting and failing to use a snorkel), by the end of the activity I had managed to learn a skill that I will be able to perform throughout later holidays or camps. I do remember, however, the freezing water upon getting into the water. That was probably the main reason I found snorkelling so hard. The highlight of the activity, by far, was jumping off the jetty. Jetty jumping was fun because me and my friends could create silly poses in the air before landing in icy water.

My least favourite thing at camp was getting up in the morning. It was frequently cold in the mornings and the early morning wake-up was no treat, especially after having staying up the entire night talking and goofing off. The first morning in the cabins, my cabin slept in. I think this was from the drastic contrast of sleeping in a proper mattress for the first time in three days.

In conclusion, I enjoyed all of the activities on camp and feel that they will benefit me in the future. I will admit I found it humorous that the camp took place no more than 20 minutes from my home, but because I had never been there, without the simple knowledge that I was so close, I would’ve thought it a new state. I remember the relief we all felt when we got back home. We were all so ready to have a good night’s sleep as well as, of course, catching up on all social media and streaming services. If anything, this camp was extraordinarily memorable.

Taylor (Year 6)

On 21 March, the whole of Year 6 went on camp! We were all so excited for the week of fun ahead of us. There were six pods, three of them went to Chowder Bay first, and the other half went to Cockatoo Island first. On the Wednesday, the girls from Cockatoo Island went to Chowder Bay and we all got to see our friends who weren’t in our group. The whole day was just fun, games, and catching up with our friends. At the end of the day, we all swapped over.

One of my favourite activities I did during the camp was sailing. Sailing was amazing, it wasn’t the boat that I normally sail, it was a catamaran. I was on a boat with all of my friends the whole time. We even went to a nearby beach and collected sea shells! I found a really pretty iridescent shell. When we got back to shore, everyone was happy and enjoyed the sail. It was really fun having the wind push you through the water.

Another activity I really enjoyed was jumping off the jetty at Chowder Bay. The actual activity was snorkelling, but the water was really murky so you couldn’t see much, but the jumping part was awesome. Snorkelling was still fun though. My friends and I did all sorts of jumps off the pier. Afterwards, we got to keep the snorkel.

There were a few things that weren’t as enjoyable as others, but one of my least favourites was shoving wet sand through a sieve trying to find little pieces of plastic. It had just rained before we had our activity, so all of the sand was wet. It made the sand really hard to sift. I found a little piece of plastic, but the activity overall was helping scientists with research about plastic pollution.

Most of the activities on camp were really enjoyable, I also really loved the amount of dogs that came by at Chowder Bay. The owners even let us pet them! They were all so cute. Most of my friends were with me except one, MY BEST FRIEND! We were separated for a whole week! But afterwards we caught up and had a really good time. After camp we were all so exhausted from the amount of fun we had from camp. It was so good to be back at home with my family and my bed.

Celeste (Year 6)

Year 6 camp began with a LOT of pleading, a painful packing experience, a sad farewell, a jam of songs on the bus, a headache, and finally an arrival at Balmoral beach. Camp wasn’t looking good for me. Especially with an extension of the duration so it went for an entire two days more than normal, which just exacerbated my homesickness. A deep breath and a leap of faith off a wharf really put things into perspective for me. Firstly and most obviously, it was really fun. But secondly, I was really frightened to do it. I stood on the wharf and stared at the distance between me and the water, which was extremely daunting. Another thing that wasn’t helping my circumstances was the level of opacity that the water had on that particular day, which would make it almost impossible to spot any potential hazards such as rocks through the water. But I jumped anyway, and the water was okay and the distance wasn’t as high as it seemed. In fact, I extremely enjoyed myself, and it reminded me of my camp experience. It was really awesome when I just jumped in. The fun didn’t cease after that. On just the next day, we went kayaking. Although frightened by a past experience on a previous camp, I decided to put that behind me and start over. Climbing into the kayak felt wonderful. And as soon as I dipped my paddle in the water and scooped it behind me, I began to move forward. It was honestly euphoric. I learnt to raft, and after that we played a game. But nothing – not even the sheer amount of effort that it took to move the paddles sometimes, and the back pain it caused me – could stop me feeling like a brand new brave person. And although camp had plenty more wonderful experiences, it had its share of not-so-great ones too. For example, the excessive amount of sausages I ate on the fourth day (my fault, I’ll admit!) left me feeling extremely weak on the fifth and final day, when we had to do a massive hike along the edges of Cockatoo Island! I was absolutely exhausted and ready for the long bus ride that awaited me. And when I finally boarded that bus, I had some time to rethink my camp experience. I realised I had been pretty irrational with my expectations for camp. The homesickness wasn’t that bad when I was distracted by fun activities all day. I had all my friends in my camp group. The food was great. It was sunny for the majority of the week. I learnt how to put up (and take down!) a tent. I made all my friends laugh with jokes about llamas and my funny voices. I joined a cult. I got to have an experience other people would pay so much money to have, as part of the school curriculum. Just like when I leapt off the wharf. It looked daunting, but all I had to do was jump.

Emily (Year 6)

I went to camp last week with my friends and I enjoyed it a lot. Before camp, I had to pack my bag and my day pack. On Monday, we learnt what group we were in and went on the bus to Chowder Bay. It took around an hour to get there because we were meant to go to Balmoral first to do our activities but accidentally stopped in the wrong place, but we eventually arrived and began to do some activities.

One of my favourite things was sailing. It was sunny and warm, and the catamaran was very speedy. I was in a group with my friends Mara and Indi as well as some others. It was really exciting when we did a race with the other sailboats. It was a dramatic competition since we were all so competitive, especially when we turned around and we stopped for a few seconds and had to gain speed again; we were worried the other team would catch up. Luckily, we ended up winning. At the end we jumped off the boats and paddled back into shore, and after we put the boats back to where they should be we had spare time so we messed about in the water for a few minutes before going to eat lunch.

Indi and I also started a tribal clan; the Weiu Tribe (pronounced whee-oo). We made a special greeting and showed it off to everyone, becoming enraged if they returned it incorrectly and performing a war dance. By the end of camp most of our group and all of our friends had joined the Weiu Tribe and knew the all different dances. The Weiu Tribe began on Wednesday, our first night in Cockatoo Island. I went to Indi and Kathy’s tent for a ‘dance party’. Since no-one but me, Indi and Kathy were there I began to provide music in the form of saying ‘Weiu, Weiu. Weiu, Weiu.’. The next day, as a joke I made a Weiu greeting. Indi started doing it to other people and dancing to the ‘music’ I performed last night, and soon people began to join in.

However, not everything in camp was good. On the last day, we had to hike from Taronga Zoo to Chowder Bay, and it was 4.4 kilometres long. My bag felt like it weighed a tonne. When we stopped for lunch and a kookaburra snatched Kathy’s wrap out of her hands and ate it! The track was very muddy as well, and ruined my trainers. We had to climb rocks and the fences to avoid the mud! Some girls opted to walk through it, but I had to avoid the mud because I had debating and needed to look good. I was so relieved when we eventually arrived at Chowder Bay.

After camp had finished, we had some time before debating where we chatted. Since we weren’t going back to school on the bus, some parents had to drive us to Queenwood, which was thankfully nearby. We debated against Queenwood and won, and then we finally got to go home. It was a relief to be back in my own house again, but overall camp was very fun and I am looking forward to doing it again next year.

Click on the image gallery below to view full-sized images.