It has been a busy week for Clunes Group 38. The students have settled in well and are starting to adjust to the rhythms and routines of the Wesley @ Clunes program. We have had some much-needed rain last week. We had our first frost for the year mid last week and some extremely cold nights. The beanies and scarves are out and are being used regularly.


The Clunes Booktown was run over this weekend and all reports are that it was a huge success with an estimated 12,000 people visiting Clunes.
The group 38 students did a wonderful job helping with set up and helping with pack up on the Sunday afternoon. Their efforts were the talk of the town and were much appreciated by all. The weather over the weekend could not have been more perfect, beautiful sunny days on both Saturday and Sunday.

The first week of the Clunes Journey focuses on orientating students to the program, campus and the town of Clunes. It has been a week of trying new things such as house cleaning, cooking and rosters, the Running and Fitness programs and making decisions about the Clunes Project. All students have visited Sovereign Hill and have had an introduction to Clunes and its history. Students have had cooking classes for each evening meal and on Friday they did their first food shop down at the
local supermarket, butcher and greengrocer.

On Saturday afternoon all students walked up Mount Beckworth. Mount Beckworth has special significance for past and present students. It is a place we visit regularly, particularly all together at the start of the program and again all together at the end of the program. Many of Group 38 have chosen to participate in the Mount Beckworth Running Program, which involves training over the next 7 weeks with the aim to work as a team and run from the Clunes Campus to the top of Mount Beckworth in Week 8.

Staff are very impressed with Group 38 and believe that they can keep up the good work. I am looking forward to seeing you all at the Group 38 Film night on Thursday this week. If you are unable to attend there will be a copy of the DVD available at each campus reception.

There were many interesting things about Sovereign Hill, which really helped me to understand what things were like back then. One of the more interesting things I might have seen was the gold smelting were we saw a smelter make a gold bar and if you’re lucky even get to hold it. An interesting tour we went on was the mine tour where we go into an actual gold mine and see how it actually was down there. Another interesting thing we saw was the boiler and the steam engine. It was very interesting to see how they could use steam to power all these machines. The staff at Sovereign Hill were also very intellectual and definitely knew their stuff about Sovereign Hill and the gold rush. Sovereign hill was a very enjoyable place to spend the day.

The Clunes museum was a great way to get to know how Clunes came to be from the early settlers to the present day. We learnt more about the Clunes gold rush, which made the town very wealthy and then to the time when the gold finally ran out and Clunes began to decline. We found out that Clunes was becoming a ghost town until Wesley built the Clunes campus. After that Clunes became a place where people wanted to see, such as when the parents come to visit their kids at Clunes. The museum has many interesting exhibits that show what Clunes was like and what they used at the time. Another thing at the museum were the Clunes jumpers. They came in many different colors and sizes so everyone was happy. The Clunes museum is a must see for people who want to know more about the town

Last Sunday the Term 2 Year Nines started their Clunes journey. The 2 busses left at 10:15am and arrived at 2pm but on the way we stopped at a playground and got sorted into our house groups so we could meet our new companions for the next 8 weeks. When we got there it was pouring with rain and the staff had to put a big blanket on top of all our bags so when they took off the blanket we had to quickly carry our bags to the houses before our items got too wet. After we unpacked we were sent to the Jube Hall to meet the teacher/leaders that would look after us for the 56 days to come. A little while after that we went down to the Clunes Town Hall where we got to have some morning tea with the Clunes residents, most of them have been living here for over 40 years! This was really interesting because they had lots of stories to tell, and they had cake. We also had a chance to learn about fire safety when the CFA came in to teach us how to protect ourselves when fire strikes, often related to cooking accidents. After that we had burgers for dinner and then went to our house to relax after the big day. I think that Clunes will be a very interesting place to live and that we will have a lot of adventures and long lasting memories ahead to come. The journey has just begun.

One of the fun things about living in Clunes is that we get to participate in Cluster Sport, which is when 4, teams (Yellow, Blue, Red, Green) participate in an 8 week season of competitive mini games. Last night was the first night we did Cluster Sport and all 4 teams competed for 2 chocolate cheesecakes, Green Cluster won with a score of 320. Usually only 2 teams will go down and play each other but this time we had all 4 teams because the staff wanted us to get a feel of it before the real competition started. Cluster Sport is a good way to meet new people, and to get active instead of just sitting around the house playing on the computer, or just doing nothing. We get to dress up in house colours because the more colour we have the more points we receive. I think that Cluster is a good way for people to come together and have fun. Bring it on!

On Wednesday after dinner all the houses had to make their own house banner that would be hung up inside their houses. Everybody in the house had to contribute to the design and the painting of their house banner. In House 12 we all put our handprints on in whatever colour we wanted. We put four prints across the top and four prints across the bottom. In the middle we put a huge 12 in yellow (because we’re Yellow Cluster) and we had different sized dots in all of the colours of our handprints surrounding it. All of the other house banners we’ve seen look amazing, and every house banner is different. It was lots of fun

On Tuesday all the houses were given the task of creating a boat out of cardboard boxes and masking tape. Each houses boat had to fit everybody from their house inside, and survive a race across the oval. There would be two houses that won. One was the house that made it across the oval first with their boat still in one piece. The second way a house could win was by having the prettiest boat. House 1 was first across the line (most other boats fell apart) and House 9 had the prettiest boat