ARCHERY:
The first thing we learnt in MUIR was archery, at least once a week (usually Mondays, Thursdays and sometimes Tuesdays doubles) we would go to the oval and get taught by an archery instructor (Mary). We first started with the basics, learning how to hold, shoot and load the bow, even though I missed the first few lessons I’m happy to say that I caught up quickly. Each week Mary would put the targets back from the shooting line than the week before, to slowly increase the difficulty. This was the case most weeks, however, some weeks we did an extra challenge such as the ‘siege’ game in which the target was flat on the ground, so we had to shoot up and over relatively straight on. In the last class, we did we played games and there were prizes. Archery was the main reason I chose to do Muir, and it made me very happy I did. I learnt an enormous amount and I hope to do it outside of school in the future. One of the main capabilities I used during archery was resilience, I started out being really bad, I could barely load my bow and I couldn’t hold it the right way, but with each lesson, I fixed another little problem until my form started to look good. I think my primary motivation for this was that I wanted to get better at archery, so even though I kept getting it wrong, I really wanted to improve. I think in the future I will try and apply this mindset to more things whether I enjoy doing the ‘thing’ or not.
Orienteering
We learnt orienteering at the same time as we learnt archery. We first learnt how to read and orientate a compass, along with its different uses depending on whether we are making, following, or checking a bearing. Following this, we did simple activities (mainly on Tuesday’s double) like walking to different, lettered cones. Following this we spent a few lessons, doing map reading and doing courses spread out throughout the whole school. We went on two excursions one to ‘Manning Park’ and the latter to ‘Piney Lakes’, these days were very informative as we had to navigate in a place where we didn’t already know the terrain and locations of everything. The term concluded with a big excursion to Jorgensen National Park. We spent the day completing courses in the huge park, I, unfortunately, couldn’t go in a group with my friends. Still, it might have been a blessing in disguise as being in a group with more athletic and active people allowed me to push myself and test my knowledge of the unit more. In the end, my group managed to finish three courses in the day ranging from a difficulty intermediate to hard. Initially, I wasn’t too sure if I would enjoy orienteering, but it ended up providing some of my favourite memories from this class. Orienteering actually turned out to be quite difficult in some cases, reading the map and figuring out where you were. Especially at Manning park and piney lakes, my group got turned around a lot after hitting dead ends. We used problem-solving to trace our steps and figure out what we did wrong and where we had to go to fix our problem. Sometimes it took us a few seconds sometimes it took us up to 10 minutes but I’m really happy to say that in the end, no matter how long it took, we managed to figure out what we did wrong and correct it. I’m not the best at problem-solving and I relied heavily on my group when these situations arise, in future I hope to get to a stage where I can apply this problem-solving to other aspects of my life.
Snorkelling
We started off the unit doing learning the basics in the aquatics centre, learning the proper way to clear and clean our snorkel and how we should dive and swim. We had a few lessons in class, to learn some more safety info including this acronym-
- Safety
- Accidents
- First aide
- Emergency
- Sun
- Nutrition
- Ocean
- Reef
- Keep safe
- Environment
- Leave no trace
(s.a.f.e. s.n.o.r.k.e.l.)
-In week 2 of term three we went to Coogee Beach to practice for Rottnest. The water was cold and the conditions weren’t great, it was very ‘wavey’ and murky, still, it was great practice our camp in week 4 of term 4 (31 of October).
We left for camp on the 31st of October. We arrived at 7:30 in the morning and left on the bus at around 8 in our class groups, these would be the groups we would be tenting and snorkelling in. After we arrived at Rottnest (the ferry was about half an hour) we took a quick break and then ideally started walking to our first snorkelling site. I loved the walks, it was on the walks where I had my favourite moments like singing every musical I knew with Shoshana and it was nice to be away from everything and just be walking in the outdoors. The first swim on the first day was probably my favourite time getting in the water. Not only was the scenery beautiful but we also got to swim through this really cool tunnel filled with fish and plants. After swimming around in the first site, we finished our game of beach cricket, packed up and started walking to base camp. Once there we put up our tents, changed into some warmer clothes and went to do the amazing race.
I personally didn’t really like the Amazing Race (mainly because I got lost 😅) but It was really interesting to see more of the island, especially since it was my first time being there. After the Amazing Race, we chilled at camp and then had dinner (which was delicious). I have to say this was probably my best camp experience in terms of dinner, it was nice that we didn’t have to spend two hours cooking and cleaning our own supplies and we could just sit and eat, (this was possible thanks to all our amazing teachers who cooked for us so a big thanks to them.) We had a quick group meeting and then got ready for bed.
The next day we got up nice and early, packed up our tents and had some breakfast. I failed miserably at attempting to pour some milk into my cereal bowl so I opted to have a leftover hotdog from dinner. We finished getting ready and relaxed at camp until it was time to go. We had another really pleasant walk to our next and final swimming ground ‘The Basin’.
It was very windy so we didn’t get to do as much as we wanted because of the danger from the waves pushing us into the reef, however, it still was an amazing experience and the sheer quantity of reef and the depth of the water made swimming through the area feel magical.
Our final task of the trip was to buy lunch in town, I had a cinnamon roll, some chips and an ice cream, it wasn’t exactly the most nutritious lunch but it was delicious all the same.
Leave no trace
Now so much in archery, but in orienteering and snorkelling ‘leave no trace’ has been a big focus in the units. In orienteering it was important to stay on the pats provided so we didn’t spread any diseases out from the bushland to the rest of the parks, this is obviously very important in preserving the wildlife and livelihood of native species so it was an important point to remember (some parks even had shoe ashing stations wich my group used most of the time when entering or exiting an area of plant life that could have a disease). Another point in orienteering where we had to be mindful of what we were doing was on the end-of-term excursion to Jorgensens National Park where there are large areas of diseased trees and undergrowths that we can’t go into otherwise we could spread it to the rest of the park, however, this was much more simple as we simply didn’t go near those areas and the majority of them had been fenced off.
Another big part of leave no trace was when we went on our overnight camp to Rotto. We did several checks of the campsite areas after we had packed up tents, as well as had rules saying not to touch any reef, animals or other wildlife. A big reason for this is preservation, we want to ensure that these areas are clean and available for the next people to use not only because it would be the right thing to do, but so we as a school and the larger public wouldn’t lose the privilege of access to these areas.
