Lock has been an excellent opportunity for me, and I have learned many things that I hope to carry for many years to come. During Lock, we focused on three main Topics, Kayaking, Bush cooking and roping and climbing, but along the way, I have grown my capabilities and learnt other things like Leave No Trace.

Kayaking

One of the things we learnt in Lock for 2022 was kayaking, every week during our double period we ventured out to Shelley foreshore and learnt many skills like how to use a skirt while kayaking, different strokes and how to capsize safely. I enjoyed this part of the course because although it was hard and freezing in the water, I still got to go outside and take a break from schoolwork. One capability that I developed was resilience as every time I capsized I had to be able to stay calm and fix the situation by getting myself out of the kayak or pulling myself back out of the water.

Roping and Climbing

I enjoyed the roping and climbing unit for Lock. To begin with, I had to learn many knots which will not only help me rock climb but also could help me in future experiences and could be very useful in an emergency. After learning these knots we then learnt how to belay a person climbing, this includes either someone else putting their life in your hands or you putting your life in someone else. After learning how to belay we started to climb on the wall, although it was quite challenging and I did not get to the top I still learnt to trust others more. This was a great way to develop collaboration and effective communication skills. If I did not work as a team and talk to each other I could have easily made a mistake and dropped the person climbing, to work this out me and my partner had to talk each other through what was happening and do things like telling the climber to slow down if you were getting overwhelmed while belaying.

Bush Cooking

I Have always liked being outdoors and camping and I think that bush cooking was a good course for me to learn. During bush cooking, I was taught how to make an effective fire outdoors using sticks for fuel and using techniques to get enough oxygen in the fire. Once I could make an effective fire and burn it down into hot coals I then learnt how to cook things on the fire safely. From then, I continued to spend the term doing a Masterchef challenge with my other classmate cooking a different style of meal every week. I think that bush cooking has improved quite a lot of my college capabilities which have been: Problem-solving, organisation, effective communication and creativity. Bush cooking includes all of these capabilities because while cooking we have to be safe and part of that includes planning everything ahead of time and being careful around the fire.

Dwellingup Day Camp

Generally, in Lock, there is a week camp but due to covid, we had to cancel the camp and only do a day camp. although this was annoying we did not get to go on a camp we could not change anything and we still got a fun day. During our Dwellingup day camp, we did bush cooking, high-ropes course and kayaking. When we got to Nanga Mill which was our base camp, we had to cook a meal depending on what rotation we had, for my group it was the first one so I and my cooking group made pancakes with bacon and berries. This caused a few problems as we did not have a pan so we had to cook on a very dirty hot plate, this got very hot and the pancakes stuck to it so we used alfoil which worked better but was still sticky. even though the pancakes did not look so good they tastes yummy and fueled us for the rest of the day.

After cooking on the fire we went to Treetop Adventures which is a series of high ropes courses. I had done this in year eight camp but It was fun to come back with some experience and do the harder courses. This was really fun and probably the highlight of my day in Dwellingup because you could do the course completely independently and if you got stuck or scared you had your friends near you to push you further.

The final activity of the day was kayaking but the group I was in did not get much time in the water as we had to drive to a spot about twenty minutes away and there were roadworks along the way. we hardly had enough time to get in the water, explore a bit and then get out and pack everything up.

Overall I enjoyed this day and although there were a lot of hurdles to get over the result was great and taught me that if something is not right or there you will still have fun no matter what.

Leave No Trace

Leave no trace is a very important thing to know when you go camping or just are anywhere in the world. Leave no trace has 7 main principles to keep the environment you are around the same as when you came or better. These principles are:

• Plan Ahead and Prepare
• Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
• Dispose of Waste Properly
• Leave what you Find
• Minimize Campfire Impacts
• Respect Wildlife
• Be Respectful of Others

As a school and as an individual I completed a lot of these steps, when we made our fire we had to burn it down to nothing t the end and make sure it was out so that it couldn’t spread t the further community. I also Respected wildlife and others by not being too loud and not trying to chase, feed or follow any of the animals. Towards the end of the day we had to do an emu ob which is where the whole class lines up tightly together and walks forward looking for any rubbish, this is a good tactic for collecting rubbish because it is hard to miss any and a big area can be covered quickly. We also had to plan the meals and what we needed to bring for the day, dispose of fo any rubbish that we found or made, and I did not take anything that I found back home.