On Federal election day, 2nd July 2016, 40 students and 5 staff members started their journey to Thredbo located in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. After 5 hours of flying and having a quick stopover in Melbourne, we took a short bus ride to Best Western Motel in Canberra, where we spent the first night of our trip. We woke up the next morning to a chilly temperature of 2 degrees Celsius and got began the three hour bus ride to Thredbo.
With the Snowy Mountains visible in the distance during the bus ride and after making a quick stop off at the ski hire shop, the group was buzzing with excitement. We arrived at the beautiful village of Thredbo which was located right at the base of the ski slopes and was lined with piles of snow. We all quickly jumped off the bus, unloaded our luggage, suited up and made our way out onto ‘Friday flats’ to begin our first lesson. The majority of the students had never skied or snowboarded before so the first lesson was filled with laughter and many novices falling over.
Breakfast was served every day at 7am with our skiing and snowboarding lessons beginning straight afterwards which meant that we were on the slopes from 7:30am until 4pm! By Tuesday, the snow had started to fall heavily, allowing for even better skiing conditions and amazing photographs. It was a brilliant experience and one that we will never forget, especially for those that had never seen snow before. On Wednesday night we held a talent show which consisted of different groups of students dressing up as famous singers or bands. The night was filled with lots of laughter and joy. On Thursday night, we went across to the Thredbo Leisure Centre and attempted to complete the inflatable obstacle courses, which only few of us successfully managed to do! The rocket ship was a favourite of the groups and caused numerous students and staff to belly flop and bounce into the water. We were also fortunate enough to experience night time skiing on Friday which involved fireworks and long awaited races down the slopes between staff members and students.
Many friendships were made over the course of the week that will remain with us throughout our time at the School. By the end of the week every single student had improved their performance on the slopes, with most of us being able to do green and blue runs. When the time had finally come to leave everyone was disappointed that this amazing experience had come and gone so quickly. We had one last morning up on the slopes before leaving Thredbo to start the journey back home.
From all of the students we would love to give a special thanks to all of the teachers, Mr Watkins, Mr Hawkes, Mr McCann and Ms McDairmid, who gave up their time to come on this trip and deal with all of us for a week, especially Ms Oxley who put hours of time and effort into organising the tour. We can’t thank you enough!
Written by Isabelle Szemray (Year 12)