It has been a very hot few weeks, but I am happy to report that as I look out the window it looks like rain is on the way. There is that lovely smell of rain hitting the dry ground somewhere in the distance and we hope that is reaches us soon. The wind is getting stronger and it is bringing the much-welcomed cool change.

This weekend is going to be an exciting one for our campus and the Clunes community. Tomorrow the Clunes Agricultural Society will be hosting the 149th Annual Clunes Show. All of our students will be attending and each house is putting a number of entries into the various competition categories. This afternoon all houses will be baking, mounting artwork and photographs and preparing vegetables from the garden to enter into the show. Tomorrow all students at some point over the day have volunteered to assist the Clunes Agricultural Society in the running of various events.

With just over a week until Presentation Day, students are fully engaged in their Clunes project practicals and there is some great work being done. On Monday students will work with their Learning Mentors on how to write and deliver their Presentation Day speeches. The whole campus is looking forward to you visiting the campus on Presentation Day. An email with more specific details will be sent to parents within the next couple of days.

This morning I spent some time working with students and enjoyed listening to their chatter about the week that has been and the activities they have been involved in. It makes me really proud of what we do here and the opportunities that we provide for our students. This is not to say there have not been challenges, but it is from these challenges that the most learning has occurred. Group 40 are a great group of young people and they have all had successes in different ways. One of the great aspects of our program is that there are opportunities for everyone. The Wesley @ Clunes staff are an amazing bunch of committed educators and work extremely hard with each group of students. I am sure you can imagine the myriad of issues they work through with individuals, houses and the campus as a whole.

It looks like we will have a cooler night tonight and we will all be able to get a good nights sleep. We all look forward to seeing you next weekend on Presentation Day.

On Saturday night as part of the Saturday night fever we had Performance Night where anyone who wanted to perform was able to in front of the rest of the Clunes campus in Jubilee Hall. There were various performances including singing, dancing, stand-up comedy, music and many more. The audience was very entertained throughout the night with the performances being very unique and different. Various talents were shown throughout the night, which most of the audience had never seen from these people before. There was lots of laughter and entertainment throughout the night.

On Monday we had Mentor Day, in which we have been doing our projects. We all should have finished our essays by now so we got started on our practicum. Practical plans were being made whilst others had already finished them. Some people got started straight on their practicals with various different types of them. Everyone had the whole day to do their practicals and it is advised that we should spend 16 hours of work on our projects. We also have a bit of next Monday and study nights to be finishing our practicals. Presentation is getting very close and time has gone quickly.

On Monday night cluster it was Yellow that was up against Blue. Dodge ball was the opening game of the night. The first two dodge ball matches were very one sided with Yellow taking out the win. When the third match came up it was one against eight towards the end of the game where Blue had eight and Yellow had one. Just as it looked like it was all over there was a great throw from one of the Yellow members knocking over the Blue’s cone to take out the win. The rest of the night was much the same with the other games and Yellow was taking the points. By the end of the night a Yellow member got the M.V.P and Yellow won by over one hundred points.

Every Thursday night is the local Clunes cricket team training. Most of the cricket players from on the campus go along to join in with the local team each week. We walk down at six each evening to go and enjoy playing some cricket and to get to know some of the local cricket players. Hopefully in the weeks to come there might be an opportunity to play as a fill in with the team on the weekend. The locals are always willing to get to know us and to talk about anything that might interest us, most likely cricket.

In fitness we do lots of hard work; we do push ups, sit-ups, crunches, dips, squats and other kinds of muscle training. We always start with stretches at the start of all our sessions and after that we normally have a game of some kind of sport. On Monday we played some soccer and football. On Fridays, during fitness, we do yoga and we do different kinds of poses like the starting position where we just sit cross legged with hands on knees and the dog and cat pose where we are in a position with hands and knees on the floor.

We had Aboriginal Studies on Thursday. It was a very hot that day, about 40 degrees and being in the Hannah St house was horrible with horrible air-conditioning and plus the Hannah St stank like mad with the chickens living inside there sometimes. However, this did not stop our class of Aboriginal Studies and we had to do either a journal entry, poem or a newspaper article about Indigenous people. Then we watched a movie of a musical about Aborigines starring Paul Kelly and after that we had to do a self-assessment about what we had learnt with our Aboriginal Studies.

For the Self class we have to do a six-hour solo. In preparation for that we did a two-hour solo. Everyone packed their bags full of food and jumped on the bus. Everyone got their own spot and settled in. Some people set up shelters, others slept, some drew pictures or took pictures, some tried to ignore the flies but they were everywhere. Everyone now knows what to do for the next solo. At the end of two hours of silence some people were busting to talk. Everyone survived the two-hours. I wonder how we will go on the six-hour solo.

This was our last gold lesson. The fist thing we did was get on a bus and pick up our tour guide. He then guided us around Clunes and showed us where all of the different pubs and brothels used to be around Clunes. At the end of the tour we went into an old bank and went into the vault. We were shown the safe, which took two keys to unlock. After that we went back to campus and finished off our projects. When all the projects had been completed we did our self-assessment sheets. After that we watched Ned Kelly and looked at the different parts of Clunes in the movie.

Last Thursday was our last class of Modern Era. Thursday was also an extremely hot day and that made it quite difficult. In the past two classes we researched a building, then drew it from the outside. This class we had to make a real estate article for our building and we had to imagine in 20 years that it was for sale and we had to sell the building. As well as writing the description we also had to draw a picture of what our building would look like if it were renovated. At the end of the day we had to also write a self-assessment on how we worked and what we learnt in Modern Era. We also got icy poles at the end of the day, which was a great reward and a great way to end the class.

Last Sunday was the last day for our second rotation of our Sunday afternoon activities. This week Gatherers went to the Talbot markets on a very warm Sunday morning. We left at 11am instead of the normal 1pm time, because the market closed at 1pm. This gave us extra time for our own leisure in the afternoon. The Talbot market had a wide variety of shows and exhibits. The market had a circus acrobat, many stalls and also had lots of locally made food and drinks to sample.

On Thursday night, 20th of November, Green and Red clusters competed fiercely. Both clusters entered the game with unforgettable chants and the Red cluster took close victory on the chants and led the game. The next game was ball passing, a game where we have to pass the ball through the team with our legs. Green team won the game and was back on track. The Red cluster easily won the next game, Pin Dodge ball. But Green continued to take the lead by winning soccer, and the silent walk back to campus. The winning team was not announced yet but adding up the points, Green cluster seems like the winning cluster.

The movie “Finding Nemo” was shown on Sunday night, a movie that everyone remembers. The emotional attachment of the father and son was shown again with the adventure of the two clown fish. Meeting many kinds of people during the adventure, the fish learn from each other and from their own mistakes. Although it was a PG movie with animated fish, there were a great amount of lessons able to be learnt from the movie.