Camp [Thursday] - Camp, School, Thursday

This blog will probably be the most interesting blog so far.
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So today I get up as usual, and guess what's on the menu for breakfast? Bacon, those yummy slices of bacon in which I cooked on the grill. We had some toast, and that bacon sandwich was to die for. We got our fire going while we were cooking breakfast and James had told us we needed a huge fire that will last all day because we were having a roast tonight. We chuck on some big logs that would hopefully last until around 3PM (it was around 8AM that time). Now, after we've cleaned up, James explains to us the activity we will be doing today. It was called "Survivor", a full day activity in which is basically orienteering, so we needed to get a good fire to last.

He sits down with us and explains to us all the rules, etc. He then gives everyone an item which is needed for Survivor. I got a compass, and some other people in my group got the clue sheet, rule sheet and map. Everyone else including the people that got something received a little card that needed punching in. Finally, we were ready to go.

The first clue read that we needed to go into a paddock next to the cattle pddock. Easy, we found it in no tim.e (the paddock we went in for rabbiting). The next hard part was to find a tree among trees. It said something like "is it just a tree? or is something out of the ordinary? what's different about it?". Later on, we found out it was just to put us off. Great, searching for a tree among 50 different trees. James and our class teacher that went along gave us a hint to move on to the second clue.

The second clue went like "find the landmark in the paddock. make a reading of 182 degrees and walk 100 metres.". Alright, so there was a HUGE tree in the middle of the paddock and a huge ditch to the right. Mmm yeah, better go with the big tree. Since I have the compass, everyone seems to swarm over me demanding that I hand it over. Greeat. I did a pretty crappy job too, since I was way off. I got the reading pretty well, within 5 metres ( a sensational feat of navigation *cough*). Problem was, I was about 15 metres backwards from the actual orange peg that was needed. One of the guys in my group decided that everyone walk in a line and basically look everywhere as we slowly advance. It was a great idea, but I was pretty stubborn and didn't go along with it. Eventually, that idea worked, with my friend finding the orange peg suspended about 3 metres above the ground. Well, time for some heavy lifting. The problem is now we have to life every single person up. Two of the guys decided to do it, and we each put our foot on their hands where they boosted us up. We actually did pretty well with some of the heavy guys. Eventually, we got all of them. The hole punch letter was "J".

Well, we're done here, so we head off to the big tree. Well well, it's a bit of a find-it place isn't it? Some dead logs surrounded the tree at random places when we reached there. We then saw a big black box with long screws jutting out on each corner. We turned it over and found 2 helmets, 2 life jackets, a wheel and 8 or so pins. Weird, what do we have to use these for? Then one of my friends spotted a long pole container that acted like a pontoon. Out we go, hunting for parts. Each time we found something hidden around the tree. Eventually, we got them all while I was at the box trying to build whatever the hell it was. In the end, we got 2 helmets, 2 life jackets, 8 pins, 4 wheels, 2 oars, 2 pontoons and a long rope (VERY long rope connected by 30 or so short lengths of rope, so there was a knot at equal intervals). Ok... so we need this for our "Adventure". Our group slowly built it by connecting the wheels onto the box and using 2 pins (one in the front of the wheel, one on the back) to keep it from falling off. Slowly, we did this. When we were done, we chucked all of our backpacks into the box and attached the rope onto a small drilled hole on the front of the box. Hmmm yeah, not such a good idea. The rope was too long and the rope knots kept undoing themselves. So, we rolled the rope up and chucked it in the box. The cool thing was, we made the oars stand up on a slant so the end hit the front bottom corner and the back was riding past up. So it was basically a trolley where you could push it along. The good thing was the backpacks helped it stop from riding up. It was pretty fun pushing when you got the hang of driving it. Off we went.

The next clue (crap, I'm forgetting) was for us to find the old fenceless post. Pfft, the easiest clue in the whole thing. It was about 700 metres away. When we reached it, we read the next clue (I totally forgot this). It went something like "find the old bog and something something". Basically, we had to find a bog, and there would be our next peg. Ok... so me and a friend got a bit stubborn and went off about 200 metres away thinking we had it. How annoying it was when it wasn't. The rule also said to stay within 10 metres of each other...not such a great idea. When we arrived back, we walked into a small place where the fence enclosed around us, sort of like this:
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And then there's a closed thing at the top (ADD UNDERLINE MRB!). Okay, so we looked around, poked around outside the fence. Then, one of the girls spotted a toilet roll on a metal bar standing up. Great, let's all go over the 1.2metre fence. Instead, we went under with about 30 cm between the wires. So we made James stand of the fence to sink it down a bit. Eventually, everyone got over. Oh no! We need the cart over here and the rope! So, leaving all the other stuff back, we lifted the cart over. It was actually easy because it had such an easy grip (just grip the long screws jutting out from below and lift, they were about 30 cm long with the wheel being only 5 cm). Problem was, it killed your hands because of the ridges. Alright, so we walk along the supposed imaginary line of the dried up bog. James drew a line, about 10 or so metres from the vertical metal bar that had a toilet roll container with a peg. Mmhmm...so I had the rope which I previously rolled up. While everyone was planning, I tied a lasso knot around the box and tightened it. When they stopped and looked at it, James said that it was a good idea. Too bad no one knew I did it >_>. Eh, what the hey, it's meant to be a team thing. Now who si first? We need to get 11 or so people across. The boys go first. Luckily, the bog is at maybe a 5 degree slant? That's enough. We get ready and push with all our might on the cart. My friend fell short about half way. So, very smartly, he stood up, and basically pushed the cart with his body weight and feet. If you've ever played with a swing, you'd know. He finally reached it, and punctured an "O" onto his card. Now the tough part. We had to pull him back. So, we got some of the guys to reel him in, and since there were prickly bushes about 1 metre behind us, it was pretty hard. Eventually, we got him back. Oh, did I mention the cattle skull that was right beside the metal? We asked James if we could have it but he said no

. It looked exactly out of the movies, in those deserts, except this was real! DUN DUN DUN!

As we pushed and reeled each person in and out, we got better, but at one point the rope slipped off, and we had to retrieve it from leaning over the cart. Instead of bothering making another knot that may slip again, we made the person grab the rope, go down, put the rope behind their body, and lean back. A VERY effective way, except it had a tendency to make you come back about 3 metres to the side. Alright, so we were finally done after punching in an "I". The next clue went something like " 5 23 5 15 15 256 ". Okay, you get the point. It was a number code that we needed to translate into letters. We passed off the letter thought because it had 32 in it...WTF? Then, for some odd reason it said 22...*X-Files music*. Ok, so the translation was something like "Now head for the water tank. Are you sure you are heading the right way? Do not untangle any ropes". So we look on the crappy-not-to-scale map. We see 3 little circles, two very very very very very very very very very very very (10 billion years later) very very far away clustered together. One was not far away from us. Eventually, we all decided to go to the far away one, with me thinking we needed to go to the close one. I found out I was wrong. We crossed the fence again, and another, carrying the box to the massive sheep's paddock. You could barely see it, it was about a 1km or so walk. So, everyone this time, gets their backpack after it being kicked off the cart. Me and a couple of the guys put ours in the cart because we were pushing it. Funnily enough, on the way, we see a dried out skull that resembled something like a vulture. Everything was dried out, only the bone. My friend took it along lol.

When we finally reached it, I checked the first one and called out there were no ropes. When one of my friend climbed the other one he saw a peg in the middle. He said there were about 5 or so skulls there. Great, this tank was really tall, and you had to reach across. We took roughly 5 minutes for one person. Finally, my friend cleverly pushed the peg aside so we could just reach up and puncture it. The letter read "I". When we were done, we walked over to the side where one of those long animal feeders are in movies. This contained water. We wondered if it was drinkable, so my friend ran his hand in it. Out came slushie mud (at least I think it was) and algae. Disgusting. At this time there were countless jutting rocks, so the cart was just about to break. I had to steer it out. While I was dodging the cart around my friend didn't want the skull anymore so he *Note: this may be a bit graphic* He ripped up the skull bit by bit, and stood on it. When we was finished crushing the head, he went to the teeth. He saw the gums, the skin coloured thing that was holding the teeth together and started grotesquely ripping the teeth bones from the gums. What was left was strands of gum hanging out from it's head, crushed into tiny little pieces.. That's it. Now, we walk over to another fence, after reading the map that we need to head over to a stump and retrieve a plastic bottle. When we lifted the cart over, guess what? Endless strong bushes that you couldn't push the cart AT ALL. So, me and my friend had to carry it about 50 metres. God, my hands were imprinted with dents. We stopped at a downhill and ate lunch. Below was a blood bog, otherwise known as the "Blood River". This was where sheep carcasses were tossed into. I wasn't hungry because I pretty much hated the sandwich I made, so I put it back. Up we went again. We went downhill, with my other two friends carrying the box downhill and uphill. We walked onto the road and opened a gate to a stump.

When we reached the stump (about 1.5metres tall) we saw a circle about 2 metres radius from the stump. This was so hard. While we were planning, we found out everything was useless except the rope. I came up with an idea to wrap the bottle up with the rope going around, but we stuffed it. The standing up bottle was now lyign down. We couldn't reset it at all. So, again with the planning. Funnily enough, there was a huge cloud, the only one in the sky that covered the sun. It looked like a fricken spaceship! James took a picture of it, then finally one of our group came up with an idea. It was probably the craziest idea ever, but it actually worked. We were going to make a tightrope, held strong by us. So, we wrapped the rope around a tree, and pulled back against the stump to make the rope tight. One of us in the group crazily enough, got onto the rope, it amazingly held strong, and got the bottle! Man, that was some crazy shit. Inside was a peg and we punched in "L".

The next clue said that we needed to head down into a small bog at the bottom of a hill and travel to the middle to a buoy and clip our cards. We headed off and on the way, James opened up some Zam-buh. He said that it was "everything", so I took some (it smelled like eucalyptus) and rubed it on two cuts I cut from those darned knives. Cockiness gets to you when you think those knives were blunt and harmless. Yeah, well, they were sharp enough to only scratch the surface, but it stung. My teacher also got some and rubbed it on her lips. Later on, when I asked Eric what it was, he said it was lip-balm...(