The campus has been a hive of activity this week. Group 39 can be proud of their achievements in the Collective Potential Program.

Our Collective Potential Program aims for students to see what they can achieve for others when they work together. There were four projects students were involved in over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Firstly, River Rescue where students camped out at the Ullina Landcare Reserve just out of Clunes. We have developed a partnership with Ullina Landcare and have been working on this site for a couple of years helping with the revegetation of Birches Creek. This week students planted trees and helped fence off areas of the creek. The group did a fantastic job. Secondly, there was a group working with Conservation Volunteers Australia. This group worked at different sites near Creswick and on the final day worked on the creek here in Clunes. They spend time planting and removing weeds, etc. The third group worked on a community art project to create sculptures from recycled materials. They were a very creative bunch and the final products were excellent. The fourth and final group were most of our music students who prepared a performance for a nursing home in Creswick and also conducted performances at both the Smeaton and Clunes Primary Schools. I listened to their practice performance here in the Bluestone Church and I was very impressed. We certainly have some very talented students in Group 39. All students can feel proud of their achievements this week.

We have had some much welcome rain this week, the Village Green which only a few months ago was bare dirt is now lush green grass. There is more rain forecast for today.

The students are well into their Clunes Projects. Essays are completed and students are now working on their practical pieces. There is a diverse range of topics within three broad themes: Community, Rural Australia or Clunes. Students are busy preparing for Presentation Day.

In Week 6 Group 39 will have focus days on Place and Time and Self. On the Self focus day students will complete a half-day Solo at the base of Mount Beckworth. Most students will have participated in Solo activities before during camps and other outdoor education trips. Solos are an excellent way to assist students to reflect on their experiences and make goals for the last couple of weeks of their Clunes journey. In Week 8 students will participate in a whole day Solo at the same site.

Tonight a group of students have volunteered to wait tables at the Clunes Community Dinner. This assistance is most appreciated by the Clunes Community. Tomorrow night a group of students have been invited to have a BBQ with the local Senior Citizens. We have a built a strong relationship with the Senior Citizens, not only during our Friday walks but also many of the Senior Citizens assist students with their Clunes Project research. Next week each house has invited a member of the Clunes Community to dinner. Early in the term a number of Clunes residents worked with our students to teach them an easy meal to cook, it is now the students turn to show what they have learnt and give thanks.

At 4.00pm on Monday I had community cooking, along with five other people. We were making chicken and corn soup and apple cinnamon cake. Every student who was cooking in the Town Hall kitchen was cooking for two houses. We started cooking the cake first, so when it was baking in the oven we could start on the soup. For the soup we had to chop up the onion and chicken and then put them into a large pot on the stove. We then added the corn pieces and let the soup boil. It was a great experience, as I had never cooked it before. It was also a nice dinner to have.

On Saturday, all the houses, instead of having brother and sister time, came together to have a big sports round robin. There were different sports like football, soccer, basketball, cricket and netball. My house and our brother house played football and basketball twice. It was a really fun, sunny afternoon as it was the only sport a lot of people had played that week.

Last Thursday was a cluster night and it was going to be green and yellow battling each other to win the night and get their team on top of the ladder. Every cluster night we have to walk down to the community center, but we have to do it silently so we don’t disturb people sleeping. Once we got down there we had to make a chant about fruit salad, elephants and silence. We both did our chants and then it was time to play the games. Yellow won all three games and by the end of the night it was looking promising for yellow but unfortunately a couple of yellow’s player decided to have a water fight when they got back from the community centre and lost yellow one hundred points and the night.

One of the biggest challenges of living with eight guys is that they all want lots of food, but they don’t want to clean up after the meal. Luckily the staff here can help us with any house issues we have. But overall the cleaning isn’t that bad as long as everyone does their part and we pass inspection on time. For my house the cooking has been going extremely well and any meals that seem to get burnt haven’t tasted that bad.

On Tuesday, a group of 19 students and two teachers set off for River Rescue. We walked with our backpacks through fields, through fences, and along the river on the way to our destination. After two hours of walking, we reached the camp site, and set up our tents and equipment. We had sandwiches for lunch, and work started later in the afternoon. We headed to a nearby field with our tree-planting equipment, and were instructed on how to plant the trees. The large group separated into 3 smaller groups, which consisted of a hole digger, crowbar/Hamilton digger, planter and a guard maker. These jobs rotated between people. There were also a few people that were standing by if anyone needed help. The hole digger would dig a ‘dish’ for the plant to go in, the person with the crowbar or Hamilton digger would punch a hole in the dish, a person would put the plant in the hole, and then a guard would be set up to protect the plant. This process took place for an hour, and then everyone went back to camp. Later on in the evening, all the students had ‘solo time’, which is where we went on our own for half an hour and wrote in our journals. For dinner, our teacher cooked a Sweet Potato risotto, which everyone liked. After dinner, we relaxed in front of the hot fire until it was time for bed.
On Wednesday, work started early on the fields, with a big day ahead of us. We had toast and cereal for breakfast. The equipment was brought up to the fields, and work started. Everyone worked effectively throughout the whole day, and we planted all 601 trees. This meant that we had an easy day the next day, because we did not have to do any work. On Thursday, we relaxed and had a good breakfast. In the afternoon, a few people worked on fencing for a short amount of time, but apart from that, it was easy day for everyone. By the end of River Rescue, everyone felt proud of themselves for planting the most trees planted in any River Rescue.

Earth Team Workers is where we go around to different areas in Creswick and Clunes to help preserve native plants and environments with the help of a volunteer group. On the first day the group went to Creswick to a sports reserve where we cut down introduced species to Australia and planted native trees and then mulched the area. On the second day we went to the botanical gardens in Creswick where there were more introduced species, which were taller and harder to cut down. On the third and last day of the program we were in Clunes down near the creek. There we removed more bushes and trees that were killing the gum trees and other native plants.

On Monday night it was time for Red and Blue to go at it again in cluster. Red started the night well by being the first team to get there and both clusters got points for the silent walk. Once there the clusters got their chants ready and Blue came out on top. Blue kept on going winning all of the three games. But both clusters got points for the silent walk back. But Red got heaps of bonus points with Blue winning the night 340-300.

Each weekend one member from each house is selected to go shopping. Shopping happens each Saturday morning, each house has a different budget depending on how many people in the house or how much money was left over from the previous week. To commence shopping we walk down the main street and to the local IGA to do the supermarket shopping, next we head over to the green grocer and finally the last thing we have to do is collect our meat from the butcher. Shopping teaches us to compare prices between well-known brands and no name brands. It also teaches us how to stick to set budgets.

Make and create is a class that we do in the collective potential program. Collective potential is about a group of people working to the best of their ability to achieve a goal. Our goal was to make sculptures out of rubbish that represents self, community, spiritual, and culture. My group was working on community and our sculpture was a BBQ with a city on top made out of cans and wood in the shape of buildings. Other sculptures that were being made were an eagle, a robot and a culture tower. They were all completed over the course and a bird cage was in the middle connecting the 4 pieces to each other to represent how all the links are made.

On Sunday afternoon, while most of the campus was out on visiting weekend the remaining students went into the Bluestone. The afternoon was run by the four student teachers. We spent the whole afternoon creating banners for our cluster teams, it was a fun activity and a good way to bond even further with our cluster. The banners were created so that when we had cluster sports during the week we could march behind them on the way down to the community centre. Everybody worked really hard that afternoon and the finished products were great.

On Wednesday in fitness we played a game of basketball the whole time. The teams were half and half and it was an early lead to the green team which was soon compromised by the plain tops and was held for a while. But the greens came back to be up by 10 with 5 minutes to play. The final score was 34-37 plains winning it was a really close game and am hoping to have another go.

The Father and Son campout was a campout which ran from the afternoon of last Friday until the next morning. This was an opportunity where the boys of group 39 could interact and have conversations with older men, not necessarily a father, whom boys within the group had invited to come along. The boys were split into the two "Self" groups, and each surrounded a small camp-fire. The older men mentioned various pearls of wisdom and childhood memories in exchange for us boys to give our opinion and ask questions. The night concluded with everyone sleeping in a shed in their camping bags, and we all headed back to campus the next morning once everything had been packed away.

This training session was slightly more challenging due to the fact that it was a slightly warmer day and that everyone on the team was required to run up and back a reasonably straight yet slightly steep hill twice. The reason why we had to run the hills was because the team had completed the Friday Challenge the session before. The run started with the usual 5 kilometre trail, an extension of the 3 kilometre trail along with a hill. Once everyone had formed a pack at the bottom of the hill, the stenuous run up the hill began. Running up that hill twice was harder than I expected it to be, but I managed to complete it.