Leadership and teamwork:

The 2020 Year 9 camp to Kalbarri encouraged many displays of the school values in empathy, respect, integrity and courage (ERIC) from all the students. The intended objective of this camp was to expand our horizon of skills, to enable us to build on skills with an emphasis on leadership and teamwork which would help us immensely beyond the realm of school both in our endeavours and careers.
With a focus on leadership building from the start, we organised ourselves into groups, called leadership groups, each group oversaw everything for a particular day of that week. On this trip, we took the reins to decide how we wanted this camp to go for us. There were no parents or guardians to guide and instruct us on what to do. Although we had teachers present at the camp, there were only facilitators.
On the day where a few of my friends and I were in charge, we experienced a few challenges. One of those challenges particularly involved the supply of food.
This posed as a problem because we left the base camp on the first night and by the fourth night, which was when we were leaders, most of the food had been used up. This wouldn’t have been an issue because we were returning to base camp that day but we also had a physically demanding hike out of a gorge in 28 degrees weather. We needed everyone full of nutrition and hydrated for us to make it out of the site safely.
The rest of my leadership group and I decided it would be best to split the leftover food we had and use the lunch supplies for the next day, then head to base camp early enough so that we would be able to be there by our next meal. So that is what we did.

The next day on the hike back up the route we were taking had an incline of 50 degrees or so, on unstable rocks and sand, not only was this what we had to do but we also had five kgs worth of supplies and tools on our back to carry up with us.

This is when we decided to split the group into two, the first had all the climbers who were more experienced and agile. I was with the second group, I could have gone up with the first group but I knew it would make the climb easier if there was somebody at the back encouraging them and making sure they got up safely. This initiative was a wise choice considering one of the students with us was asthmatic and getting dehydrated. He didn’t want to slow down otherwise we would fall behind but I reassured him it would be okay and we stopped for a bit, rehydrated and rested before completing our climb if we hadn’t then a serious accident could have occurred.
Taking initiative on this trip was mandatory to ensure our safety and enjoyment. This camp was an amazing experience where we learnt a lot and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.