Ethan Davis Autobiographical Assesment

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ASSESSMENT – ETHAN DAVIS

HIGH SCHOOL:

DAY 1: It was the first day of high school, I had a new uniform, new books, a locker, a timetable and suddenly it seemed I was responsible for way too many things. Although, this day I only really needed a pencil and a rubber, today was assessment day, I couldn’t believe it an assessment on the first day! It seemed that all the nightmares of high-school were becoming reality.  Although it wasn’t the most pleasant start to high school, it felt good to get it over and done with.

DAY 2: The Swimming Carnival! Everyone was rushing around all in our different coloured shirts: Red – Darling, Blue – Piper, Yellow – Bennelong and the best house Macquarie which was green. The whole school crammed into about 6 buses and drove to Drummoyne Olympic Swimming pool.  The whole senior school was there. I competed in all the races except for breaststroke (I was buying chips) and did pretty well in the end. I think I had two 1^st places and a 3^rd. In the end Bennelong won (for the first time ever).

DAY 3: Camp on the third day of school, after 1 day of exams and 1 day of swimming, everyone was getting pretty tired, and now camp, what could be worse. The bus ride took about two hours so we got there at about 9:30ish. We had lunch got our cabins then it was straight up activities. My first one was the flying fox, which was cool because you just glide along the tree canopy for about half a minute. It was boiling hot though so we spent a lot of time sitting down. After the flying fox it was Orienteering, we split up into groups of four and had to try to find our way around the campus which was by the way humongous. My group failed, really badly I think in total we found one marker. We had dinner, Spaghetti Bolognaise which was surprisingly good considering that it was camp food. We had a night activity after which was probably the highlight of the day, a waterslide. The water was nice and cool and outside it was dark and humid which made for the perfect mix. All my mates went in a massive bunch and we pushed, talked and fighted all the way down, it was really fun.

DAY 4: We woke up early after a night full of eating lollies and talking about surfing and what not. For breakfast we had hot breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast and then there were many different types of cereal: Nutri Grain, Weet–Bix and Cornflakes etc. After finishing our food we got into our groups (I was in group 2) and then set off on our long walk to rock-climbing it was another boiling hot day and everyone was really tired and just wanted to sit down in the shade and have a cold shower. Finally after the rock-climbing was over we walked back up the hill to have our lunch break which was just outside of where our next activity would be taking place, caving. After filling up on Gatorade we put on our helmets, got out our torches and went into the pitch black, windy, rocky tunnels. At least it was shady because I don’t think that anyone could have stayed in the sun any longer, it was 42·C with no wind.

Caving for me was the best activity at the whole camp because we were just able to wonder of in all of these side passages that were really challenging to get through. Me being a skinny kid, I thought that I won’t have to squeeze too much to fit in the tunnels but in some cases I was crawling along the ground and getting soaked in the wet mud. It was heaps fun. I can’t remember all of the activities after that but I can remember doing the waterslide that night, that waterslide once again put everyone in a good mood before bed, except for the fact the fact that I got bitten over and over by mosquitoes.

DAY 5: The last day! I think everyone was pretty happy to go home, but this last day wasn’t just going to be a bus ride home, we had 2 of what I thought were the best activities planned.  Giant Swing and Challenge Valley. First up was Challenge Valley, a massive obstacle course, I thought it would just be a few logs here and there but there  but there were massive nets to climb and massive water ditches to swim through, it really was challenging. Then the final activity, Giant swing. I was pretty pumped for it it was 12m above ground as tall as all of the trees that surrounded it when you reached the top. So what happened is you were harnessed on to a rope and then you were pulled right to the top by everyone else in the group, you then oulled another short rope that released you, it was cool cause you free-falled for about 3 seconds which feels a lot longer when your up there and you just kept on swinging until all your momentum was gone. It was finished, we could finally go home. We packed our belongings said goodbye to the instructors and caught the back home. It was a really fun trip in all.