The early morning winter’s air is crisp against your cheek. You can feel your heart pounding. The pack on your back is heavy and carries all you need for the next nine days. You’ve been hiking through a rugged but pristine terrain in Hidden Valley, and you’ve navigated your way through an awe-inspiring ravine to face ‘The Gorge’. You must now fashion a raft from bamboo, logs, tyre tubes, water drums, rope and cord to get you and your pack across a river (and keep it dry). No, it’s not an episode of Survivor, it’s The Cathedral School’s Year 9 school camp.

When it comes to school camps, The Cathedral School does things a little differently. The main difference being that the students actually go camping.

For children in Year 2 through to Year 10, The Cathedral School’s Outdoor Education Program requires students to leave behind the home comforts of beds, pillows, warm showers and technology for a wild and wonderful experience away from the classroom – and civilisation as they know it.

There are no dorms, no plumbing, no buildings even. Instead, students sleep on the ground either in tents or shelters they have built themselves from materials they have found in the wilderness. They collect wood for the campfire, which is both a heat source and a stove. They cook meals, and dig ‘bush dunnies’. They find and treat water from a natural water supply. It’s a true-blue camping experience.

Angela Mitchell, Director of Outdoor Education at The Cathedral School, says the goal of the program is to push students outside of their comfort zones and embrace the personal growth that ensues. 

“Our camps allow students ample opportunities to discover the depths of their own ability to cope with and overcome challenges; not just physical but social, emotional, psychological and spiritual,” says Angela. “It’s in these learning environments where their overall success depends on their individual contribution to the group, which requires determination and perseverance.  

“By its normal course and through very real and natural consequences, our program develops self-reliance, independence and resilience in our students. It strengthens students’ physical and mental fortitude, fostering leadership and drawing on and developing their problem-solving, teamwork and communication skills.”

Angela says the social development benefits of the outdoor experience are also highly valuable for the students. “On camp, the need to interact, cooperate, compromise and communicate ‘face to face’ with others is essential to individual success and their overall enjoyment of the experience.”

“By its normal course and through very real and natural consequences, our program develops self-reliance, independence and resilience in our students.”

– ANGELA MITCHELL

Of course, the camps progress with the students. (No, the seven-year-olds aren’t sent across the river on make-shift rafts!). Year 2 students camp for two days at Alligator Creek and Year 3 students for three days at Crystal Creek. From then, camp stays extend to four, five, nine and 11 days, and students venture to Mt Fox, Wallaman Falls, Echo Creek, Broadwater, Paluma and Hidden Valley – Puzzle Creek and Running River. The Year 10 students also sail the South Passage tall ship and camp on Orpheus Island, Pelorus Island. This year Angela is also trialling two new campsites at Tully National Park and Mungalla Station. (All camps operate within a 300km radius of Townsville.)

“The younger students learn basic camping skills from erecting a tent, to social skills; how to cooperate and compromise in order to get along with their peers all day (and night!),” says Angela. “They cook their own damper on the campfire, and learn safety skills such as crab and spider crawling on steep and slippery terrain and rock slides. They learn very basic rock climbing, safe swimming in creeks and gentle rapids, and most importantly how to be organised and responsible for their own equipment.

“From Year 7 onward, students are assigned to a working group (rotated every 24 hours) such as ‘Cooks’, ‘Fire’, ‘Hygiene/Water’ and ‘Dunny Diggers’, and they soon learn that camp cannot function successfully without every group doing their job,” explains Angela. By Year 9 camp, tents are obsolete and students must build their own bush shelter.

Activities for each camp are age-appropriate and range from swimming and snorkelling, liloing, bushwalking and hiking, mapping and navigation, kayaking, abseiling, rock climbing, stand-up paddle boarding, sailing, mountain biking, rafting, marine and environmental studies, rogaining, flora and fauna observations, survival skills and camp cooking competitions. All year levels learn general camping skills and environmental sustainability – and, if Angela succeeds, a love and respect for the great outdoors.

“On camp, our students are consistently stretched and holistically challenged; resulting in the development of more capable, courageous and compassionate human beings in our ever-changing society,”
says Angela.

“Our Outdoor Education Program also takes our students and staff to some of the most beautiful, pristine natural and practically untouched environments in North Queensland.”