Moreland week 2 2018
Welcome to week two everyone! This week is a particularly exciting one as we have our first camp.
The week started off at our local hub at Oxygen Youth Centre in Coburg. To the gratitude of the young people they all arrived at oxygen on time and read to go. We started the day with a visit from Jacinta and Bec from headspace and touched on topics of wellbeing and mental health. We completed a few ice breakers, had a group discussion and did some physical hands on work with coping strategies. It was great to see how involved the young people were and how insightful they were on wellbeing and mental health. I think everyone in that room got something out of this session. We then finished the day by gong on a bike ride around Coburg lake. On this ride we refined and touched up our bike riding skills by focusing on breaks, gears and appropriate bike lengths. We finished the day with a Q and A about camp.
Thursday morning was the beginning of first two-day camp! We got our packs ready, packed up our tents, sleeping bags and mats, and all of our food and cooking supplies, and got ready to make our way to the You Yangs Regional Park. Before we headed off, we all equipped ourselves with some wet weather gear as we knew the weather wasn’t going to be in our favour! About an hour outside of Melbourne, the You Yangs offers great hiking and mountain bike riding tracks, which we were all excited to give a try. Once we arrived, we got our packs out of the bus with their wet weather covers, put on our wet weather gear and filled up our water bottles. We started the hike, with the most difficult part close to the beginning, but with a lot of teamwork and encouragement all of the young people got each other through it. Throughout the hike we were faced with some cold and wet weather, but we focused on our high resilience responses and worked as a team to get through the tricky bits. Once we got close to the end of the track we saw some kangaroo friends, and knew we weren’t far off our campsite. As soon as we got there the rain started so it was a race against time to get our tents and shelter up so we could stay dry. It got dark very quickly, and we gathered around the shelter to cook our dinner and reflect upon the day. With the rain and stormy weather coming in hard, we called it an early night and got into our tents for a much needed rest.
After a long and rough night of cold and wet weather, the group woke up and we got packed up before the rain started again. With puddles in our tents, wet sleeping bags and the like, the positive attitudes and resilience that each young person showed was amazing. After breakfast we prepared ourselves for our bike ride, hoping to outride the rain! Even those who weren’t looking forward to the bike ride showed their high resilience responses and positive mindsets, and we began on the bumpy track. After having to cut the ride short due to the weather conditions, we got back to the bus, packed up the bikes and got into the warmth of the bus, ready to head back to unpack and head home. After a quick and speedy unpack, we all got home to much need hot shower.
