Emu Gully Adventure Education Helidon — Local services in Helidon Spa

I recently attended a 3 day camp at Emu Gully with my school year 10 cohort, and based of what everyone was saying on the bus ride back to school, we all agreed our stay should've been at least a week long. As someone who attended every school camp location my school provided over the years, I can genuinely say I have learnt the most from this years camp. We were put through insanely physically rigorous activities such as carrying someone on a stretcher up and down the steepest hills, and through thick mud and it was seriously so beautiful to see the classmates in my group who I wouldn't usually talk to help me and each other get through it together. We picked each other up when we slipped and fell on the mud, we held the thick prickly bushes down on the night walk so our teammates could walk through all while making sure not to drop the person on the stretcher. It really taught me that sometimes the only people who can help you are the people around you, even if it's not your usually group of people. Paintball, while admittedly being one of the more painful activities, was also one of the funnest ones and so many people in my group showed bravery and leadership that I don't think they would've had an opportunity to show otherwise. It was a bit annoying to see how much fun our teachers were having shooting at us though. The last activity we did was the truck pull, and it was the one I learnt the most from. It was a very exhausting activity and by the time we had pulled the truck a second time, I was fully convinced I was done and couldn't walk, let alone pull a truck any more. So you can imagine my horror when the instructor tells us we can go a third time or sit out if we wanted to. I was decided on the fact that I was gonna sit out, because I believed I couldn't push myself any further than I did, but when I heard my classmates decide "what the heck, lets do it one more time" I was too embarrassed to be the only one sitting out. So I got up, and to my entire surprise, managed to help my cohort pull the truck one more time and beat our time. It was crazy to see that even though I had convinced myself I genuinely could not go any further, the influence of my teammates managed to push out the last little bit of strength I didn't know I had and get it done.

The instructors were amazing too. We were shown respect and allowed to voice our opinions without any judgement, even if it maybe wasn't what they wanted to hear. They provided a very immersive world war 1 and 2 I think, experience and I could tell they all genuinely loved what they did and the stories they got to share. Particularly Tunks, he explained activities and stories that made us understand the need for teamwork, and the pride and self fulfillment you get from helping the people around you. One of the other instructors, I forgot her name but she was blonde and directed the mud activities, told us during an activity that our no 1 priority was the "injured" person on the stretcher, our no 2 priority were the people around us, and our no 3, and last priority was ourselves. At first we thought it was weird that she expected us to put ourselves last especially in an activity like going through thick mud, but she explained that if everyone in the group was doing their job by putting each other at second priority, then there would be no need for every individual to look out for themself because there would be 20 other people already doing that for us. That completely changed my perspective.

The location of Emu Gully was beautiful and thankfully we didn't get any rain, the cabins and bathrooms were very clean and well maintained, and the food was hot and fresh, which is great for camp food. I genuinely am so sad to have left and hope we get to stay longer when our school comes...

i've just come back from 3 days from 'the challenge - emu gully adventure education group' and i'm going to give a rundown on the camp.

FOOD dinner day 1: was a butter chicken, and was amazing. 82/100 don’t ask why i’m using a 100 mark scale.

supper day 1: was a cup of milo, and your choice of an arnott's assorted biscuit. the milo was cold, but that is the only downside. 85/100

breakfast day 2: your choice of hashbrowns, eggs, sausages, cereal or baked beans. i chose everything except for the baked beans or cereal. again, it was full of flavour. 90/100

lunch day 2: was a wrap with pork and your choice of salad, most people didn't like the pork, but i didn't think it was too bad. 82/100

the other meals were good, but not worth talking about.

ACTIVITIES day 1: hula hoop competition - you had to get a hoop from the first person in your group to the last, with it always being connected to at least one person. a great first exercise in terms of team building. 95/100

day 2: you had 3 activities that all went for 45 minutes, that you rotated in your groups in. the activities were the swinging log, commando cable crossing and escape from colditz. they were all good, and again, got you to think and work together as a team. can't really fault it. 96/100

still day 2: after lunch, you had 4 more activities that you rotated in. these included the siege of tobruk, bridge over the river kwai, tunnel rats of Vietnam and the kokoda track. they all had a WW1 or WW2 theme to it, which i will talk about later. the tunnel rats of Vietnam was very claustrophobic for some people, but it is easily doable for all. the kokoda track was a mud walk that you had to carry one of your team on a stretcher through, with small mounds to carry them up. the only bad thing was the mud was freezing cold. 87/100

day 2 night: was a night walk. again, you had to carry someone on a stretcher, but this time, it was a 4km walk on a dirt track, going up and down steep hills etc. 70/100

other things camp instructors were funny (my instructors were Brittany, Chelsea, and Jack.) every activity had a strong tie to either WW1, WW2, or the Vietnam War. they gave a 10-15 minute story at the start of each activity, which explained why we are doing it etc. after each activity, there was a 10-15 minute debrief, going over how we worked as a team, and what we could do better if it was to be done again. we had a talk from a Vietnam war veteran which was really interesting. cabins were good, however they did get a bit cold through the night. Ernie the emu is amazing. in your day groups, you have none of your friends. this is good though, as you can get closer with other people.

if you have the chance to go, i strongly recommend it. you get a lot closer with your...

I was one of the students who attended this camp and it brought me a lot of joy. I had more interaction with my classmates at this camp. However, if you are going to this camp, please consider the following disadvantages first.

Mudslinging is a great experience, but the showers at the camp made it impossible to enjoy mudslinging at all. The showers in the campground are rudimentary bucket showers. Bucket showers are a terrible experience, and it is almost impossible to wash every part of your body unless you use more than 2 buckets (but other people will need them too, so there is usually only one bucket of water).

some activities are very dangerous, especially lifting stretcher in the mud. This activity involves carrying the stretcher up a steep hill and they even spray water all over it. The plow crews will even press you for time, making everyone very susceptible to injury. I know that more than half of my classmates were injured from falling after completing that activity. There is a very high chance of broken bones or dislocations in that environment, and that activity itself is already very dangerous, plus the time limit and other rules of the game are stupid. In fact, that activity should be canceled permanently.

The food in the camp is very bad, the food is almost the same for 4 days in a row. The food was mainly unhealthy food such as biscuits/instant noodles/other convenience foods. I know it may be more of a camping or soldiering atmosphere, but for a group of teenagers, this food is not going to be nutritional. My daily protein intake was only canned tuna and some meat from the dinner box (very little). Vegetables were even less.

4. the tunnel program should not be open to any student above the 10th grade level! It is very easy to get hurt in there and the camp staff doesn't even control the number of people. More than 10 people in a small space with a lot of intentionally placed rocks.

In short, if you want to keep your kids safe, don't come to this place. The camp does not have adequate security and emergency measures and the only fun to be had here is chatting with classmates at dinner. All other activities are very tiring/dangerous and unreasonable "military...