The Duke of Ed Experience (:

I came back from the Duke of Edinburgh hike on Friday afternoon so I'll recount what happened.

Day 1:
I met Julia ( http://www.littlemisscrayons.wordpress.com/ ) on the platform and we caught the train together to the place we were going to meet for Duke of Ed. I felt really awkward carrying such a large bag and holding my mat. :P

We got there on time, but the teachers were running behind schedule. ): So we didn't begin walking at 9:30am like scheduled, but we walked around 11:30 am ! Since it took such a long time till our turn ( the teacher had to explain the map and directions ) we crossed Princes Highway to go to the shops nearby. In IGA, Julia bought a bar of Cadbury Bubbly Dairy Milk Chocolate as emergency food. :P When we got back, we had to get our debriefing.

We were the 10th group to leave since we were allocated a group number. But once we were on the track it was fun. :D We walked and walked and walked. That's all I remember.

There was a point where we thought we missed a checkpoint so we freaked out. Lol. But then we passed a man and he said that further on there were other people so we walked there and turned out we didn't. There was a beautiful clear lake/pool of water at the checkpoint. Really beautiful and apparently you are allowed to swim in it, but we didn't. ): Though it looked really inviting. :D

A picture of it with me ( I'm covered :P ) :



LOOK AT THE POOL!

 That was the first checkpoint. So after that, we kept walking and walking and walking all over again. Around the 3rd checkpoint ( after uphill climbing ): ) it was around 12:45PM and we wanted to have a lunch break, so we had a lunch break for about 10 minutes. So we started walking again.

When we reached a part called the 'Fire Trail' or something, the path widened out but the whole ground was covered in gravel and was uphill. ): So Julia and I started rapping to make us walk faster. And it worked ! Lol. After running out of raps to rap, we made up a really dirty rap together. Has anyone noticed that raps are either :
1) Really dirty-minded or
2) Contains many swear words in it. :P ???

So since we didn't want to swear, we decided to make it really dirty. We rapped about....the White House and stuff. :P Lol. So funny !

When we arrived at the campsite, it turns out we were the 4th group to get there ! Great progress ! (: As the teacher recommended, we immediately began pitching our tents up and we had to make some adjustments since the ground we chose didn't really suit the tent.

This is the inside part of the tent that was taken the next day when we were taking it down :P :

Once the tent was pitched, we chilled a bit inside and then we "explored" the surroundings. And we found that Wolli Creek was really close-by and we walked over there. Like the pool of water we saw earlier on the track, this one was a running creek. So Julia and I took our shoes off and played in the water. Well we weren't all the way in ( that came out wrong :P ), just our legs. :P It was so refreshing and good. Funny story :

* Julia is putting on my sock because she took the wrong shoe. Lol *
Me : Uhm...That's my shoe, Julia. :P
Julia : What? Pfft. No it isn't. *Looks down and at me and down again* OH CRAP! I'm so sorry ! Omg. *Hides face*
Me : *Laugh*

You won't believe how many times Julia has mistaken other things that belong to me, belong to her. OMG, that sounds wrong if you think about it. :P

So after playing around in the creek ;) we went to cook dinner, which was just cup noodles and other snacks. Everyone was freaked out by the stove. Lol. It was just loud. :P Heh.

Night :P :
It was one extremely long night.... Lol. People were running around and stuff - very distracting. Lol.

So after "dinner" we went to chill again. :D So we basically laid in our sleeping bags. And sat there. And listened to people outside. :P Then a friend came over and we chatted about this guy she likes loves for about 2 hours. Lol. It was really funny and ...fun. ! :P After she left, we tried to sleep. It was really early though - 8:30 PM.

After Julia fell asleep, I really had to pee, so guiltly I had to wake her up. ): So when we went to pee, it was really dark and all you could see was shadows. And it was cold. ): I brought my toilet paper. :P

Anyways, Julia's torch was really dark and pretty much useless and the toilets were really far away. So we just walked somewhere away from people, and urinated on the side of the road. :O Lol. Funny conversation after we were done :

Me : Oi! Julia ! Give me your torch because I want to see where we peed. ( Ok. I had issues obviously but I really wanted to know :P )
Julia : What the heck? Uhm...*turns on torch*
Me : *Point* Shine it over there! Omg, can you see it? I think it's over there actually. *Squats down to try and see better.* Let's check it tomorrow morning !

But I told Julia to take a picture of it the next morning. It was hard to find but the ones in the red circle is where we peed. Lol. Not that you would want to know :P

We went back to bed of course and my sleep wasn't that great - drifted in and out of sleep endlessly throughout the night. ):

Day 2:
So after "breakfast" ( which was dry cereal, or for Julia, cup noodles. Also tuna. (: ) we headed off again. This time, we were the 5th group that left.

By the way, a picture of our bags before we left ( when we were packing up the tent ) :




Blue is Julia's; Black is mine (:

 Not shortly after the first checkpoint, it turned out we walked off the wrong track. The track we accidently went on was also taken by 3 other groups as well. :O But we found our way out. But not long after, I realised there was leech on my right ankle ==" And it was fat. Huge. Julia realised there was one on her as well but on her heel. Well that really long part ?? Her one was so small ): Luckyyyy! But the teacher following us turned up Lol.

So obviously, I hyperventilated because anything slimy and wriggly I can not stand. Ew. So I sat down and took out matches to try and burn it off. But once it fell off, it latched on again. ==" By then, we've already used half the box. :O So another suggestion since we didn't bring salt was to wait for it to suck it's share and fall off.

After about 10 minutes later, the leech still hadn't come off. And it was getting fatter. ): Maybe it had a grudge on me ): Of course Julia's one already fell off by then. Only took a matter of minutes for her one. :P Finally, the last group that went past had salt so we poured it on and it fell off. Slowly. ):

Once we started walking again, I was paranoid for the rest of the trip. And the overgrown bushes that kept scratching us everywhere didn't help ): I was so glad when we reached the end of the trip and went home. (:

Nevertheless, the trip was really enjoyable and memorable. Going to do the second trip on the 13-14th of October. (:

Love,

Michelle <3