Duke of Edinburgh Student Experiences and Reflections

Duke of Edinburgh Bush Prac Weekends

The Bush Prac weekends are designed to extend the navigation and survival skills of the Duke of Edinburgh participants and act as the practice journey towards their Bronze Award. Two weekends were held this year out at Wee Jasper, NSW. A number of new Marist and Merici students participated in hiking, river crossings and survival scenarios. They were joined by a number of older students who helped to run the weekend. Thank you to all our wonderful volunteers who make these adventures possible!

“On Duke of Edinburgh, a whole bunch of girls and a few boys got driven out to Wee Jasper. On the first night, we set up our tents and cooked and ate dinner around the fire. We played some campfire games which were a lot of fun. Then we went over what we would do throughout the camp and went to bed. On Saturday morning, we did a cold morning exercise to warm us up a bit. We then packed up our tents, ate breakfast and went on to Nav. This is where we marked where we would hike on the first day. After this we began our hike. We hiked about 6km in total through the beautiful bush lands of Wee Jasper. 

We ended up at the same camp site that we started up and set our camp up again. Then we went and did a river crossing in the Molonglo creek (I think it was). It was absolutely freezing but very satisfactory in the end. We went back to the camp afterwards, warmed up and then got into making and feeding our own little campfires. We were put in groups of 3 and cooked our dinner around the fire chatting to each other and telling jokes.

On the final morning of our Duke of Edinburgh Bush Prac we did yet another morning exercise and packed up camp again. We then ate breakfast while doing our Nav. We started on our hike up Potter's hill, which was so satisfying. Then we all met after the hike and took the bus home back to good old Canberra. What an awesome weekend!!!”  Laura de Puit

“The camp gave us the opportunity to learn things like how to use a compass and map and how to set up camp. We were allowed to independently navigate our way through the bush and when we hiked to the top of the mountain we got an amazing view. We also took part in a river crossing. When I first heard about the river crossing I wasn't looking forward to walking through a cold river in shorts, but when we did it was actually really fun despite the cold water.”  Jacinta Wright

For more information on the Duke of Edinburgh program please email [email protected].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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