Urban Camp (Melbourne)

Year 5/6’s

After an early start on Monday 18th March, students and teachers travelled to Melbourne on the train. The rest of the 3 days and 2-nights was jammed packed full of tours, workshops, coaching sessions, and tourists’ attractions.

Please read the students’ reviews/recounts about their three days away.

Sibel Uguz

I really enjoyed camp so much! It was the best camp yet. I can't believe this is my last year at

Sirius College! On camp, the other school at Urban Camp was very nice. I loved the activities we did! We did many activities.

Tennis

When we first arrived in Melbourne, we participated in a tennis lesson with John and Reza. First, we split up into two groups. After we had to practise hitting the balls over the net. We played a little team game. We split up into two more groups on the same tennis court and we versed each other in a match of which team could get the most balls over the net in five minutes. My team in the group won. Then we played another match but everyone was on their own. I got all of the tennis balls over the net, so that meant I got twenty out of twenty. When we finished the lesson, we went for a tour. Andrew was our tour guide. We saw what the courts look like outside and inside. We also saw the retractable roof but we didn’t see what it looked like when it was opening or closing but I would have liked to. It was closed at the time. We also saw a photo montage of social media posts to make it look like a number of tennis players.

Fun fact: One of the most popular foods eaten by tennis players was sushi. They ate so much they had to get a limit of six sushi packs per player.

Cook’s Cottage

After the tennis centre, we went to Cook’s Cottage. We learnt that lavender scent makes you sleepy and parsley keeps you from having stinky breath. These still work to this day. Some of them that don't work were rubbing a black cat's tail on your eye to stop an eye infection and if you ate a spider it will stop you from getting a fever or take the fever away. Then my group dressed up mannequins. Afterwards we got dressed up and took plenty of photos. It was amazing to see what Cook’s Cottage looked like.

Melbourne Star

After we unpacked, we went onto the Melbourne Star. It was amazing! It was so much fun when we went up to the top of the one-hundred and twenty-metre tall Ferris wheel which was based on the London Eye concept. The only scary part was the door. If you were to lean on it, you would open the handle and then the door would be able to open. Other than that, the view was great! My favourite part of the view had to be the bridge that was lit up. It was just beautiful; all the colours went together perfectly. I wish we could go on it again. If I could give one recommendation, it would be to make the doors safer. Other than that, I wouldn't change anything. It was fantastic!

Immigration Museum

I enjoyed learning about the five different immigrants’ and refugee stories. The person with my group was a boy from South Africa. He moved to Australia to escape the war in his country. He went to secondary school and graduated from university with an engineering degree. After that, we received ‘passports’ to fill in. To do that, we needed the information from the galleries in the upstairs area. Then we had to leave. It was fun!

Movie Night

On movie night, we watched the “Tooth Fairy”. It was about a man, Rock Johnson, who murdered a child's fantasy about a tooth fairy. He told a six-year-old that the tooth fairy wasn’t real but little did he know that there was a whole world of fairies who collected teeth and gave money to children. He had to become a tooth fairy for two weeks and he taught another fairy who had no wings. He kept doing his job as a tooth fairy for the two weeks and he helped the other fairy get his wings that he wanted for so long. In the end, he had to forget all about the tooth fairy world but he learnt his lesson that the tooth fairy was real.

Chinese Museum

On Wednesday, we went to the Chinese Museum. We saw the dragon that they use in the Chinese New Year parade. The dragon is sixty-three meters long! So long right! Anyway, we learnt about what life was like in the 1800’s. How the Chinese lived, travelled and also some of their traditions they brought with them. It was cool how they all believed in the idea of mining gold during the gold rush. After that we learnt how to make Chinese knots to make either a bracelet or a keychain. I can tie the knots so the cord/string finishes straight or I can do it swirly. It is fairly easy. It was a lot of fun, how they showed us everything!