Perth Day 2 - Camp!

依然范特西 is out! (Or almost out?)
夜的第七章 is nice. and 听妈妈的话 is very very nice.

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20050822 Monday



0700

The night before we were told to sleep well because we will be setting off for camp the next day. I remembered we played bridge until around 12-1am and we returned to our room to sleep. Good boys =)

After a long night sleep, we were busy packing our stuffs again for the camp.

Breakfast was filling. There was milk, juices, bacons, scrambled eggs, hotdogs, biscuits etc etc. Breakfast should be like this~ Not just bread with butter + milo like what I have at home. =/ In fact, the day before we had BBQ dinner in the hotel which was so sumptuous. Western meal rocks! =p

0800

After breakfast, we kept our luggages in a room and will be checking out of hotel before we return after the camp.

Its going to be another long bus trip to our camping site at Dwellingup.


110km from Perth. It seems close cause you thought you are looking at a Singapore map.

There were many guesses about the camp for the next 3 days. We have heard about the white water rafting, but we were mostly unsure about whats to come. (We did not expect it to be so fun at the end =])

The camping site was deep in the forests. Its 110km south of Perth in the Darling Ranges, bisected by the Murray River.

1200


That bus went the other way?!

The place was so hard to find i remembered our coach was abit lost.



After 2 hours of travelling, we finally arrived at our camping site.

There was a big grass field and a huge wooden building at the campsite. It looked simple. A big container stores rainwater and serve as drinking water. The place has only one toilet. Really basic one. Its basically just a toilet bowl, but everything just drops into a big pool of **** underneath. =)


This picture was hard to find... The big wooden building there. The one directly behind is the toilet. =D

We were already separated into groups before the camp. Our group had 16 4K guys and 3 Geppers. :) Then, we were introduced to our instructors, Diane and Ted. Diane introduced herself as Di (Die) and I kept thinking who will be so stupid to have such an inauspicious name. :p

They were friendly instructors, especially Diane. She kept smiling throughout the whole camp and was really friendly. For a while, I thought she was a bit sot and crazy, haha. Ted was on an attachment and looked cool. He was just a few years older than us, but he looked like he is 20+. Other than that, he was just like another one of us enjoying the camp. =D

First thing we did was to build our tents. Easy. I think our group was the first to finish. haha.

Our first program for the camp was rope course. We walked a short distance to reach a place with ropes across trees. It was a pretty lame programme where we had to walk on the ropes, and there was like 6,7 different kinds. Its just another "instill team-spirit, promote cooperation" kind of activity, but we had alot of fun, especially with the help and encouragement of Di and Ted.

After the rope course, we had some free time. I remembered playing several games at the big grass field when there was free time. Ted taught us cricket (the game, not the insect) Everyone had fun trying to throw and bat the ball.

1600

Dinner was a feast again, even in the wild. The instructors were bbq-ing chicken and beef. There were salad, tapioca, meat, vegetables and many more which I have forgotten. Everyone were squeezing on the few tables in the small 'canteen'. I remembered there was a few lamppost-like heater placed in the centre to keep us warm. lol.

2000

That night, we had a small campfire in the campfire building. Everyone gathered in the big wooden building. It was really getting cold at night and the campfire was enough to provide us with warmth. If the temperature range is from 5-20, im sure the 5degree is at nighttime, especially when we are deep inside the forests.

The instructors demonstrated to us techniques of raising fire using simple tools. They also told us we could bbq marshmallows using the campfires we raised. After that, we were asked which activity we wanted to do first. Obviously, all of us wanted to try the marshmallows =X.

By the time we exit the wooden building, we were amazed by what we saw - a sky full of stars. Diane pointed to us many horoscopes in the sky. Most were hard to identify and we were busy trying to figure out which star connects to which to form pisces, virgo etc. But the easiest to identify was Scorpio. It was big and had an obvious tail like a scorpion. =D

It was hard to identify the stars among the gazillion of stars. So Diane used a torchlight to point and show to us. She also showed us how to locate the Southern Cross. Southern Cross can only be seen clearly when you are at the Southern Hemisphere. It included constructing a line perpendicular between two stars to locate another star. Quite chim, but it can show you South-direction in case you are lost in the wild. The stars of the Southern Cross were actually very bright, and we did not know it could actually be seen at city Perth too.


Southern Cross at the centre

Then, we tried melting marshmallows with a small piece of chocolate with the little campfire. As the chocolate was hard, we keep breaking the whole thing instead of poking through. So we threw it away and used a new one. LoL. The instructors joined us too. Everyone was crowding around the fire, to bbq the marshmallow and also to get warmth. Melted chocolate on soft marshmallows is really delicious~ =)

When we returned to our tents, I lied on the ground and looked at the countless stars. The sky was superb - filled with stars. I was really awed by the starry sky.

I also remembered breathing out air and shining it with torchlight, and i saw mist. That was how cold it was in the wild of Perth during winter. Stupid me kept wasting the torchlight's battery to see the mist produced. Lol.

Then, its a good night sleep for the next day...