OUT OF BOUNDS

50 MILE WALK

Mr Scott Galipo Mathematics Teacher

The 34th annual 50 Mile Walk took place over the August long weekend, with Year 11 boys from Anderson, Shearer and Stuart Houses taking part in this unique challenge.

ON THE THURSDAY AFTERNOON, 20 boys and a team of 11 staff departed Scotch College for Moray in Dwellingup. The night was filled with plenty of food, ice-breaker games and the traditional strapping of feet. Shaye Pett had the honour of reading No Sweat, by former staff member Greg Peck (OSC 1971), to the boys this year, and it was then that the enormity of the challenge started to sink in for the walkers.

At 3am on Friday morning, the walkers woke to the sound of Max De Nardi’s bagpipes blaring The Lion Sleeps Tonight. At 3.45am, bagpipes again filled the early morning sky to the tune of the school song and the walkers were on their way. Each hour, they were met by a team of support staff who transported their bags, water bottles and food. The group set a cracking pace early in the morning, with the support crew working hard to beat the walkers to each stop. At the stop near Stringers Campsite around 10am, they were greeted by two PLC nurses who kindly volunteered their time to support them. Many boys used this stop to get their feet re-strapped and to get rid of some layers of clothes as they headed towards the warmest part of the day.

The pace slowed up during the afternoon, yet spirits raised when they were met by over 20 parents at the dinner stop near Baden Powell around 4.30pm. Warm clothes and head torches were put on again, as the group started their final few legs. The completion of the 50 Mile Walk is always a special moment, with Max De Nardi bagpiping the walkers through the streamers and balloons to the cheers of parents and the support staff.

Twenty boys and four staff completed the 50 Mile Walk this year. A huge congratulations to all the boys who made the decision to take on this gruelling challenge. A massive thank you must go to the following staff who were involved: Lisa Evans, Nick Guard, Nick Warrington, Shaye Pett, Meg Baker, David Kyle, Prue Bermingham and PLC staff Audrey Lee, Phoebe Robinson and Nanette Smith.

ROTTNEST ISLAND

YEAR 9 CAMP

Josh Griffin and Marco Ghiselli Year 9

ALONG WITH THE REST OF YEAR 9, we set out to Rottnest Island. We thought Rottnest was a perfect time to build new relationships and create new friendships with students, not only those in your House but all the other Houses. We were extremely excited to head off to Rottnest Island. However, the two of us had already visited many times, unlike a few students within the year, so we knew what to expect. As soon as we arrived, it was a beautiful sunny morning and the water was crystal clear. What a great start! All we could think of was to cast a line in the water and grab some food from the bakery, but we knew the point of this camp was to form new friends, have fun and make a good impression on our new teachers for that year.

In our opinion, the best parts of the camp were snorkelling at Henrietta Rocks and the Basin and creating sand sculptures. A highlight for me was being in the water swimming alongside fish and going in and out of ledges. We were very excited and confident swimming in the water because we had done it many times, however, we were able to sympathise with those who were less confident in the water. Another great part of camp was being paired up with another House. For us, this was Anderson House. This meant we were able to bond with other people other than within Alexander House.

We also had personal highlights of the camp, such as the free time after activities had finished, where the cohort played cricket and basketball around the barracks. We were even lucky enough to put on a massive batting partnership with Headmaster Dr O’Connell, whilst playing cricket during the break times. Overall, we thought camp was excellent and well organised by the teachers and staff and we had so much fun doing activities with other kids in our year. We also enjoyed the activities and experience of camp, as we felt it helped to further build connections with others in our year. Whilst the pair of us had already visited Rottnest before, we were able to explore more of the Island than we otherwise had before. In the end, we formed new relationships with other kids, which was great.

TOURNAMENT

OF MINDS

I REALLY ENJOYED WORKING WITH SUCH A PROFOUND GROUP OF BOYS...

Adrian Garbowski Year 8

TOURNAMENT OF MINDS is a competition in which you must use your critical thinking, reasoning skills and, most importantly, teamwork to complete a series of challenges. These challenges include a long-term challenge, which you work on for several weeks and a spontaneous challenge given to you on the competition day. However, this year we were unable to hold a competition day, so we completed the challenge by submitting a video.

A challenge that we faced was that none of our group members had worked together before, and we had to overcome that hurdle at the start to really begin our TOMs journey. My team included boys from Years 6, 7 and 8: Xavier Balnaves, Caden Hart, Oscar Ho, Jack Mayo, Charlie Robinson, Raf Donavon and myself. One thing that I am sure everyone in this team took out of this is that no matter what challenges life throws at you, you can always overcome them with the right work ethic and attitude. This experience will carry us through our school journey and life and always remind us of the key values of a true young man.

I really enjoyed working with such a profound group of boys, and I would like to thank and congratulate them for their effort, attitude and excitement they displayed throughout this journey. Harry Osborne Year 8

TOURNAMENT OF MINDS is a fun and engaging competition in which boys from Middle School and Junior School participate. In TOMs, as we like to call it, we had some very fun and creative training sessions every Thursday afternoon for the second half of Autumn Term and at the start of Winter Term we were given the longterm challenge. My team decided on answering the challenge using STEM. We worked on the challenge for six weeks until competition day. My team for 2020 consisted of William Arundel, Alex Buswell, Declan Riordan, Heath Arbuckle, Xavier Vanden Driesen, Nicholas Zhao and myself. Our long-term challenge was that, as a group, we had found an object that held information about the past and future. Our entire idea revolved around a group of school students and a teacher who were in the Amazon for a school trip and were teleported to another world. Then the entire world held a competition to find out how to activate the orb.

On behalf of everyone that participated in TOMs this year, I would like to thank Mrs Woods, Ms Hodgson and Ms Grech for putting together this amazing opportunity and for their guidance and support throughout the challenge.