Today was just an average day at The Alpine School. This morning I was happy to not be on meals duty, so I got to sleep in a bit. I woke up at 7:00 and made my way to breakfast. After breakfast, I cleaned my room and put on a load of washing. My room smelt a bit because my roommate just got back from expo 2. I started working early this morning on our CLP project. I kept adding to the movie we’re making for CLP presentation night and it’s looking good.

Today 1B had Water Journey; this is when we go down to the Victoria River and conduct tests to ascertain whether or not the water in the river is clean.

We discovered in our “Journey” that the Cobungra section of the Victoria River is indeed quite clean and has low levels of salt and acids ECT. After we had conducted tests we tried to catch bugs so as to identify whether or not the river was supporting life. We caught a variety of Insects therefore informing us that it was indeed quite vibrant with being, we then went about learning of the effects of certain industries and recreational activities  possible effects on river systems.

After all this we had a barbeque and went back to school, all in all the day was most enjoyable and I would personally give it an 8/10.

By William K-R

Parent visiting weekend was a very exciting time for all of us here at the Alpine School. We all had count downs on our wardrobes and couldn’t wait to see our families. Most of us stayed in Bright although I stayed in Swift’s Creek and Billy stayed in Omeo and a few people stayed in Dinner Plain. Each and every one of us ate a fair amount of chocolate and junk food. I know I did. Most of us including myself went out for dinner to the pub. I had chicken parmajarma.

Everybody was excited to see mum dad and siblings and the teachers were excited to have a break from us all. It was a great weekend but it is great to be back at the Alpine School and continuing on with our everyday schedule.

Today at the alpine school we had our ALP (alpine learning project) presentations. We presented what we have been studying for the last three weeks to students from this school, and the Omeo Primary School.

Today Alpine Students got into four different groups and helped out the community in some way. The four groups that you could choose from to help the community were: seed removal, rubbish removal from local huts, going down to Omeo to have a chat with the elders and rubbish removal from Dinner Plain.

We just got back from expo! It was great. We left at 9:30am and got to our campsite at 2:30pm. It was a pretty safe and easy walk there about 7km’s. Not too hard at all. We had a new teacher Mr Martin who used to work at the Alpine school and came along to help. Along the way, we sang lots of songs and talked, talked and did more talking! It was a great journey.

Well Alpine has been something that I have noticed that within 3 weeks has changed my perspectives on life, me, family and just everything I look at. The last couple of weeks there have been little fights between the girls and the guys but it has brought us all closer together and I know that for a 100% fact because it has brought my CLP team gradually closer.

Our day starts bright and early at 6:30am. We all rather hop in the shower, make our bed or go for a jog outside. By 7:00 the place is buzzing as everyone makes their way to breakfast in the common room.  We all dig into our cereal and toast and talk about the day ahead of us.

After the student leaders make their announcements everyone goes back into their wings. Before the morning class we spend our time emailing and getting ready for the day’s activities. Some might be going on a day hike while others are getting their laptops and heading off to a passport session.

Wow, I can’t believe no one has written about this subject yet!! I feel pretty lucky!!

Well, I don’t think to many people here have seen snow before now and we were all really really happy to see it. We went outside at our first opportunity to play in the snow. The first thing I noticed was how soft it was. I know in every story that has snow in it they tell you how soft it is but it really is surprising how amazingly soft frozen water or ice is. Of course that is until you compact it and throw it at someone. Everybody commented on how beautiful it was. Unfortunately because of the snow poor Mr. Michie had to rewrite a whole week of our time table. So instead of bike riding there was skiing and that sort of thing. By now every one is just so used to it that they won’t notice it until it’s gone, which it almost is.

By Jeremy

Today was a very special day -  we had two indigenous men come to the Alpine School. Their names were Rob Andy and Will Bryant. They took us at different periods of the day. 2A and 2B were in the morning and 1A and 1B were in the afternoon.  The first thing that we covered was about tribes.  We talked about how many different tribes there were in Australia - there was 880.

On the 23/4 we had food and safety class. We learnt how to properly store, serve and cook foods. We learnt how to stop from spreading germs and bacteria’s. It was a good day and we learnt a lot from it.

Today my expo group did intro to bikes. We first had to get a helmet and a bike that was our approximate size from down in the storage area. We then went to the basketball court and fixed any problems with the size, such as how high the seat is.

Today we had Expo skills to prepare us for our upcoming expo(expedition). We have our expo in about a week an a half. We had a talk in the morning about all the gear, roles and all the different things we need. After that we went for a walk and me as the Camp Manager along with the navigators picked a camp spot. When we found a good spot we set up our tents and made our lunch.

On Sunday everyone woke up early and found out it was snowing we were all excited because some of us hadn’t seen it before. I had never seen so many people up so early. The snow got thicker and thicker and some places it was really deep.

Today was our first rest day. Because the snow hadn’t melted yet, we had an introduction to cross-country snow skiing. We broke into 2 groups of about 10 and fitted all our gear. The school provides the skiing shoes, skis, stocks, packs, all the warm clothes and gore-tex jackets.

When we go hiking in the snow you need to have the right gear on like the gortex jacket, thermals, beanie and gloves or you will freeze and get hypothermia. When Ararat and The Lakes went hiking we also had snow shoes on to keep us from sinking knee deep in the snow but it was still hard walking.

What I learnt from bridge building was how to make a tripod and a stable bridge. I also learnt a lot of teamwork skills it might be support or just helping out when needed I also had a lot of fun doing it but some bits weren’t as good as others but I had a great time overall.

By Chris W.