Avondale outdoor rec students guide teens across Top End
They call this study! Outdoor recreation students from Avondale have guided a group of teenagers on a four-day sea kayaking expedition in the Whitsundays.
The challenge of guiding the teenagers safely across one of the largest open-water crossing attempted by the students built camaraderie and confidence. The experience “brought the group together more than any one before it,” writes Zelman Wilkinson, a Diploma of Outdoor Recreation student from Newcastle. “We were willing to put our best foot forward to achieve the best outcome for Avondale and for the kids.”
The students and their teenage kayakers would paddle between islands in the Molle group in the mornings then explore beaches and coral reefs in the afternoons. The more relaxed pace came as a pleasant surprise to Wilkinson’s Gosford-based classmate Bridgette Winsor. “I usually power on, but I stayed back with my group to enjoy the scenery.” The result? “I got to know my kids.”
Leaders too often over-program, says David Low, Course Convenor for VET Outdoor Recreation at Avondale, “which doesn’t allow for the spontaneity of the natural world to reveal itself.”
With Low, the students also helped the teenagers earn their Pathfinder snorkelling and sea kayaking honours. Pathfinders is a worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church activity-based ministry for 10-15-year-olds.
The invitation to guide TeenX 2016 came from the Youth Department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in northern Australia.
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