September is the time of the year when the Level 2 Geographers head off on their annual shopping trip to Hanmer Springs.

What you ask! How can this be research! Well it can be and it is! 

The aim on the ‘Field Trip proposal’ for the Principal, looks a little different. It states that we are going ‘To investigate and explain the different patterns of retail and commercial businesses in selected North Canterbury towns’, but really we just want to go to the Hanmer Springs Lolly shop and the rest is just for show. 

Yeah, No! We were real geographers and wanted to get out in the field, or in this case the towns. We tested our data collection skills by doing a quick trip to the QEII shops reading cadastral maps and plotting the location of retail and commercial businesses, once we had worked out where north was and the names of the roads! That’s why we practised close to home first. 

Once everyone was prepared with the ‘how too and ‘why’ of the research, we headed off to North Canterbury to collect our real data at Amberley, Culverden and Hanmer Springs. 

Despite being early spring, the weather didn’t play along with a fine Norwest day! We instead experienced a combination of freezing wind, rain, clear skies and cold wind, all within the space of 4 hours. Mrs Franklin kept saying that it would get better, and the rain front would pass over us, which it did. But not after it had wet us all! Amberley provided to be a little larger and more challenging than the QEII shopping area, when it came to map reading, and sorting out exactly what sort of retail shop it was or commercial business each square represented on the map. It is fair to say that each group got a different number in most categories and missed a few businesses downside streets. It is a good thing we were not comparing findings between groups, just comparing each places findings within a group. (that’s just geography speak to reassure the student’s that their data would be okay, even when each group had different data!). Once finished the students actually understood what they were doing, so that was a bonus. 

Next stop was Culverden, so Mrs Franklin could do some of her Christmas shopping with Mrs Carey and Ms Shadbolt. It is all about supporting the local community and Culverden has a wonderful shop that is an outlet for local artist’s and craft’s peoples work. The students did a little more data collection. 

Hanmer Springs was our final destination. By now students really understood what they were doing and took off around town with their clipboards. Unfortunately, it was here that the rain caught up with the trip, but Mrs Franklin sent the students on their way, saying ‘Geographers work in the rain and besides, you need the data!’ The students did what they were told and stopped under verandas or trees while the worst of the rain went through. Once they had wandered the town and chatted to locals and tourists, they were allowed back in the vans and headed back to Christchurch. 

Mrs Franklin was happy. The student’s had their data and she had her husband’s birthday present, a handmade pen made out of Kauri by a local Culverden farmer. Now she just has to hide it until his birthday. Nothing like a good geography field trip to solve everyone’s problems.