For a week at the end of May, each Year 13 Biology class travelled to Wainui and spent a night in YMCA accommodation by the shore front.

Being the first group, we were blessed to be up at the crack of dawn to satisfy Mr Thew’s agenda.

When we arrived we got stuck into collecting snails, crabs and a few starfish on the rocky shore, which we would later experiment (non-harmfully) on for our internal. Some slippery rocks combined with rain and gumboots wasn’t a good combination and caused a few people to end up on their rear ends.

The researching and experimenting for this internal were done in a building which Mr Thew had called a ‘shack’ the whole week leading up to the trip. This meant that most of us were expecting the worst, only to be surprised with how good the ‘shack’ really was! We had access to all the equipment and supplies we needed for our experiments and were able to conduct them very independently while still having a teacher around to answer any questions we might have had.

The following morning we were able to continue our internal work if we wished and some discovered that crabs had escaped their tanks to join the snails for a reunion. Thankfully for us, the “shack” is separate from the sleeping and eating quarters, so the crabs didn’t find their way to us like in past years in Kaikoura, where people were woken by crabs in their sleeping bags.

This Biology field trip was one of the best camps over our five years at Girls’ High. There was no set activity schedule which meant we were able to have fun while still getting on with our internals in our own time and at our own pace. It was a very independent camp and allowed us to see what it could possibly be like if we were to pursue a future in biology and research.

Kate Watson and Poppy Coleman-Christensen (Yr 13 Biology students)