It has been a wonderful start for Group 42. There is a really positive feel on campus and staff are enjoying getting to know the students.

We have had some unseasonably warm and humid weather over the last couple of days, but the occasional rainstorm brings welcome relief. The rain continued yesterday and there are more falls forecast for today. Our rainwater tank is filling up!

Students have been busy with the Orientation Program and have had tours of the campus and town. Over Sunday afternoon, Monday and Tuesday students spent quality time with their House Leaders getting to know each other and making decisions on how to best run their household.

By today all students will have visited Sovereign Hill and spent time in the local area learning about the history of Clunes. Students have also visited the local Clunes Museum and Clunes Bottle Museum. This is a good introduction to the town and gives students plenty of ideas for their Clunes Project.

Email is now up and working and hopefully you will have received at least one email from your child. Students have access to their email in the mornings and then again in the afternoons and House Leaders will be encouraging them to write home. Letters and small parcels in the post are also highly prized items.

Friday was our first Community Service session. Students volunteer for one community service each Friday morning. This is a great way for students to connect with members of the local community and give back to the community that does so much for our campus. Throughout the term members of the community will work with your children teaching them to cook, helping them with their Clunes Projects and also being part of many of our course days as guest speakers.

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. Students also have the option to be part of 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.

We’ll be holding the Group 42 Film Night this Thursday at 7.30pm in the SC Lecture Theatre at the St Kilda Road campus. Steve Schneider, one of our campus deputies, will be there and is looking forward to showing you all some footage of the previous week of the Clunes Program. If you are unable to attend, there will be a copy of the DVD available at each campus reception a few days after.

This week we went to Sovereign Hill. It has been ages since I went and so I got a lot more out of it than when I was a kid. Most people would not know how much detail is put into everything that they do there. They have a whistle that blows half an hour before people can come in so they can get rid of tire tracks with a plow on a tractor. It really was good because we had a tour guide that would explain everything to us and gave information about the place and things to help us with our projects. A lot of people got lots of good information on the place and we all bought raspberry drops. It was a really good day because it was hot instead of cold and rainy so everyone had a good time.

The Clunes Football Club is a chance for the Wesley students to keep up their skills or see what it is like to play for a country team. Unlike back home Clunes Football Club plays on a Saturday and trains on Tuesdays and Thursdays. All players from Wesley train both nights but only 2-3 can play on Saturday, which means that students may only get 1 or 2 matches. The only bad thing is if you’re born before April 30 you are too old to play the games but can still keep your skills up by training with the team both nights. This is a great opportunity to play footy up at Clunes and meet all the town kids and play with them. This is also an opportunity for another idea for the Clunes project that is due in the last week. So sign up and see what footy means to the country towns around Australia.

The Clunes Museum is a historic building which was established in 1876 by a donation from Holley Barkell to the people of Clunes. There are many things displayed such as kitchen display, gold display, historic photos and antique dolls. The staff assist you to know what those things are. There is also a museum shop inside that sells historic publications relating to Clunes and surrounding areas such as post cards and souvenirs. It would be open from 10am to 4pm on Saturdays and 11am to 4pm on Sundays so if you are at Clunes on the weekend it would be good for you to go there.

Wesley students at Clunes this week have been part of a number of different activities, many with an ulterior motive of becoming part of the local community and part of the Clunes Campus. As the community is such a vital part in any society, staff at the Clunes campus decided that a boat race would be a fantastic way to bring the students together using team spirit. The students were asked to assemble a boat using cardboard boxes, remembering to make it as creative as possible. Many groups used costumes and decorations to give their boat a unique and quirky look. A parade was organised to give the proud contestants a chance to demonstrate their work to the other competitors. An agility course was also arranged to test the strength and speed of the boats. At the end of the contest the majority of the boats had fallen apart, nevertheless the sense of community was most definitely still in tact.

On Thursday night, Group 42 had their first cluster sport. The first challenge was that each cluster house had to walk to the Community Centre without making a sound and the cluster that managed to do that would get 25 points. Green cluster won. Once we got to the Community Centre we had to play a game called the Ring of Fire. Green and Red clusters started first and Red house ended up winning. The next game was a called Around the World. Blue and Green clusters had to play that and Green won. One of the girls from Red cluster won the MVP for the night and the overall winning house of the Chocolate Bavarian Cheesecake Cup with a grand total of 405 points was the Red cluster!