Throughout the term, I developed multiple of skills in Lock class. The three areas that we have developed our learning in were kayaking, Bush cooking and rock climbing
These activities have allowed me to develop a multitude of skills and expand on my abilities. This includes my problem-solving, organisation and my ethics when it comes to camping and bush life.
Kayaking:
Kayaking was an interesting, unit in which I developed my organisational skills, alongside the practical aspects of kayaking. This was another unit which required us to focus on safety procedures before we could get completely stuck into the fun part. We enjoyed a variety of kayaking activities, including seal launches from the Rossmoyne foreshore jetty, playing water polo and flipping underwater. My favourite activity was definitely the jetty launch, as it was very fun, but I was also able to watch everyone else fall in. This unit confronted my organisational skills, because I had to not only remember what kayak was mine(Never mattered as they brought different ones each week) but I also had to remember how to properly adjust it. On our one-day camp to Dwellingup, we got to implement some of the skills we had learnt in kayaking by doing a huge seal launch down a flight of stairs into the Murray River. When we were on the water, Mr Fletcher allowed us to think back on our day and relax, by explaining how the river was used for irrigations, but also why we used the stairs to launch, as if we didn’t we could have damaged the river bank.
Rock climbing & knot tying:
The rock climbing and knot tying unit was a new experience for me as my experience up till that point had been the rock climbing wall at Pasar Malam. I enjoyed this unit because I tried things that I had never tried before and I had fun throughout the unit. This was a unit where everyone had to take on a huge amount of responsibility for their own safety of and the safety of other people around them, and it was important to not too rush even though rock climbing was Exciting for me. The knot tying unit challenged my problem-solving skills as it took a lot of repetition for me to nail all of my knots. I struggled most with dressing the figure 8 knot and I needed lots of feedback from Ms Stieber, Mr Young and my classmates to correctly tie my knot.
Bush Cooking:
Bush cooking has so far been my favourite unit. This unit requires us to plan the meals that we will cook based around a certain cuisine. This has also tied in with what we have been learning about leave no trace principle. Leave no trace has applied to our bush cooking unit in many ways, and we have been able to make simple changes to ensure that we are following leave no trace. One of the ways that we have implemented leave no trace into our bush cooking is by letting our fires burn all the way down before we completely extinguishing them. This involves us only adding as much wood as we need to start the fire, and then as we need more adding it instead of adding too much at the beginning, which is a simple change that can make a big difference. Minimising campfire impacts is one of the principles of leave no trace. On our day trip to Dwellingup, we had the opportunity to do bush cooking. This required two major capabilities: organisation and problem solving. My group decided to make pancakes. Bush cooking required organisation capabilities because we had to plan our meals and make sure that we had all the right equipment. Our “pancakes” were, honestly a bit off a mess. When we first used our foil as a pan the pancake mixture would stick to the foil, so we had to throw it away. However, when we began to use our hotplate it was bent on an angle and that’s not to mention that our fire was too hot meaning our pancakes were both burnt and raw. I learnt a lot about making pancakes on camp. Mainly that you shouldn’t. However after our bush cooking Mr Zaurs had us all sit in a circle and he began to talk about the “leave no trace” principles and how we could implement them. We learnt about slops pits, and how birds and animals would eat our leftovers, and how that negatively affected them. Mr Zaurs then made everyone there pickup 5 pieces of rubbish.