19 Sep 2019
From the 2nd - 4th of September, 56 students from Kittyhawk, Oxford and Delta travelled to Canberra with their teachers for our annual Stage 3 Camp. In Term 3, Year 5 and 6 have been exploring Government and how the voices of the people are heard and impact the country/world this term. Students and teachers were lucky enough to be able to visit the attractions in Canberra to help their learning due to a Government initiative called the PACER rebate whereby the Federal Government funds all primary students to attend these focal Australian locations. We applied for the funding rebate and received it – meaning all families got a $20 discount on the total cost of camp.
We left school bright and early at 6:00am and travelled for three hours before we reached Canberra. First we visited Parliament House for a tour of the Lower House (House of Representatives) and the Upper House (Senate) before seeing the portraits of all the previous Prime Ministers. Then we ate lunch in the Old Parliament Rose Garden where we met some unfriendly magpies (what a typical Australian beginning to spring, right?). After a short break we then visited the Australian National Gallery where we interacted with lots of different exhibits that focused on Indigenous culture, artefacts and environments. Our final visit for the day was a sombre one to the Australian War Memorial where we toured the museum and saw lots of aircraft (the Lancaster, the Kittyhawk, the Spitfire, de Havilland and many more). We also paid our respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and began to watch the sunset in remembrance. We soon grew somewhat tired and hungry so we opted to travel to our accommodation at the Bush Capital Lodge for dinner and an evening of fun… we had a surprise party for Miss Turrin! We played party games and even had glow sticks and balloons. Eventually we all went to sleep and were woken very early for our ‘snow day’ the next morning!
We got ready and ate our brekky super early and headed off for the snow before 7am! Upon reaching Cooma we hired our snow clothes and continued driving to the SkiTube station at Bullock’s Flat where we ate lunch and hopped onto the SkiTube train to Perisher! When we arrived at Perisher we walked over to the Quad chairlift and got into groups of 4 to travel up the chairlift. We got off halfway and had a play in the snow, and of course a SNOWBALL FIGHT! Then we travelled the rest of the way to the top of the chairlift and came back down again. The views were epic and we weren’t at all scared. Then we walked over to Tube Town where we all got to snow tube down the small slope in a giant inflatable tube – it was SO much fun! We were so tired when we got back on the Ski Tube train lots of us almost fell asleep. The return journey to Canberra on the bus meant lots of us napped before dinner and our popcorn/hot chocolate movie night.
We woke up early and packed up for our last day of Stage 3 camp to go to Questacon where we had heaps of fun playing on the interactive exhibits such as the free fall and a robot playing table hockey. Then we had lunch and headed straight to the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS). At the AIS we saw where lots of famous Australian athletes train and prepare for the Olympics, and we had even more fun with the sport simulators. After, we hopped back on the bus to go backed to school. We even had a dinner stop at McDonald’s which was a great treat.
It was such an amazing time on our Stage 3 Canberra Camp and we’re so grateful for the fun opportunities we had together!
