Education Outside the Classroom

(Guest blogger William)

This past week, my class has been learning outdoor education, along with the rest of the Year 7/8 team. On Wednesday the 4th, my class went to Adrenalin Forest, also known as a “confidence course in the trees.” It was a natural forest with platforms build around some of the trees. The first platform had a ladder leading from the ground up to it (about 3 meters high). To get from platform to platform, you needed to cross an obstacle – using a rope or cable bridge of some sort. There were also a few flying foxes, which you got across using a pulley attached to your harness. The object was to get through all of the tracks, 1 - 6, with 1 being the easiest and 6 being the hardest (over 30 meters up in the trees). You had to complete one track to continue on to the next one. My favourite obstacle was when there was a rope hooked into the tree above you and you swung into a net, from which you climbed up to the next platform. My least favourite obstacle was a section that had slack rope that zig-zagged between two cables and it shifted as you walked across it. It was very freaky when we were on level 5 and the wind picked up making the trees sway. I think I may want to go here again for my birthday.

On Thursday, we went on an entry level tramp (hike) around Godley Head, a point on the Banks Peninsula. The total tramp was about 3 hours, but we had two breaks in between. Our first break was at a place called Boulder Bay. It had some “baches” which are houses sunk into the rock wall faces. These were built many decades ago as summer homes, often without running water. [Mark reports: in addition to the few dozen “baches” (small vacation homes), there were a few genuine cave dwellings – caves with concrete floors, framed front walls with wooden doors and glass windows, and questionable plumbing. Years ago there were several dozen, but most have been vacated and destroyed by the environment-conscious government.] As we explored we sadly found two little blue penguins that were dead. After another stretch of tramping, we reached our lunch spot – the gun ports at the tip of Godley Head. These were put in place for WWI and WWII to protect Lyttleton Harbour from attack. We were allowed to go down into the bunkers where the soldiers lived. It was pretty freaky when we found a live rat down one of the tunnels. I could imagine the gun ports being manned like I’ve seen in movies. We also saw several dead sheep carcasses, but many live ones, too. My favourite part was spending time in Boulder Bay skipping stones. My dad got to go, but I’d like to take the rest of my family back some day.