On Monday, 24th November, 18 excited Year 10 students and three teachers headed off to Camp Omakau. The drive to Omakau was a long one; however, we had two stops on the way. Our first stop was just outside of Middlemarch, where we did the Sutton Salt Lake walk (there was not much of a lake, but there were some great photo opportunities). Our second stop was in Ranfurly, where we ate lunch. We arrived at our campsite at about 3pm and set up our tents in the hot sun. Then we went for a short walk along part of the Rail Trail and headed back to camp for dinner and a couple of games of Mafia – something we did every night.

On Day 2, everyone woke up early feeling absolutely freezing, as the temperature had dropped to 4º the night before! Luckily, it warmed up later in the day. Our activities on the second day were done in two groups – walking around Clyde and horse riding. Horse riding was by far the most exciting activity. The owner of the horses, Debs, managed to match us perfectly with our horses, and we did an hour-long trek around the hills and paddocks. Both groups met up in the afternoon, and those who were brave enough to take a dip in the chilly Clyde Dam were able to go for a swim.

Wednesday was another action-packed day. We started the day at Omakau School, where we played games with groups of schoolchildren. There were lots of different games we played with the kids, ranging from Multisport to Octopus. So many of the kids were so sweet, and it was a great chance to engage with younger children. The afternoon was spent in Cromwell. Instead of going to the water park like previous years did, we went to Highlands Speedway! Mrs Seward was able to drive on the race track and a Lamborghini driving at over 200 km/h whizzed past us. Then we were able to race some go-karts – the best lap time was 56 seconds! We got to do mini golf as well, which the teachers joined in with. Despite this busy day, we still had lots of energy when we returned to camp that evening.

Every camp has at least one day of bad weather, and this happened to us on Thursday. When we woke up, it started to rain, and this meant we had to go to the Alexandra pool instead of playing croquet. The pool was a great alternative, though, as everyone who swam had heaps of fun. It was a double swimming day for some of us, as we got the opportunity to swim in the freezing cold St Bathans after our walk in the (very windy) weather. The wind was so bad that one of our beloved tents ripped, and to honour the tent, we all went out for ice cream. That was most people’s highlight of the day.

Just like that, Friday, the last day of camp! We packed up our tents promptly and headed back to Dunedin, stopping at Manuka Gorge to go for a walk. We walked through a 443 metre long tunnel in the pitch darkness, which was very scary and an excellent opportunity to jump scare people. We then continued on to Dunedin and arrived back at school around 1:30 pm.

Camp Omakau was an amazing experience, and we’re all so grateful for being able to attend. Thank you so much to Ms Seward, Mr Cassidy and Miss Veenvliet for coming on camp with us – organising a camp is a big job, and it couldn’t have happened without you! It was so much fun and all of us made new connections and memories that we’ll carry through the rest of our time at OGHS and beyond.