Wierd Photos

Here are a couple of weird photos we took at Pine Valley.

Vampire Kez. You'll only get that one if you know the Twilight Saga. red eyes, pale skin, even the facial expression!


Walking on water! Isn't that cool!

Pine Valley

Holiday phase one complete. We have walked into Pine Valley, climbed the Acropolise (half of us, anyway), explored the Laberanth and returned to civilisation. I'l mix some more details in with the photos.


We took our boat across Lake St Claire so that we didn't have to pay a fortune to use the ferry.


We started our walk at Narcissus Hut (the place we finnished the overland track). Then carried our packs into Pine Valley.


Rachel crossing a log bridge on the way into Pine Valley.


Beck and an echidna on the way into Pine Valley. BTW it is only a three hour walk across flat ground into Pine Valley, nothing difficult.


When we got to Pine Valley all the campsites were taken so we camped on the helipad. it was clean and dry and we all fitted (just). Luckily no helicopters came while we were there!


Beck eating Breaky on the Helipad.


On the second day we climbed the Acropolis; which is a big mountain beside Pine Valley. It was a sleep climb out of pine valley, then we walked across a plateu before another steep climb up the mountain.


This is us with the Acroplis in the background. If you enlarge the image you'll be able to see the writing up the top which shows where each of us go to.


This is on the way up. When we were all still happy and confident.


When we reached a more dificult bit (where Kez stopped), Rachel freaked out. She started wimpering and arguing and saying how she wouldn't go any further. We managed to get her to continue; but after her episode, Keziah wasn't going any where near that track.

We got Rachel nearly to the top. She was all shakey and wouldn't climb through the last easy bolder field to the top. So Dad had to take her back down. That last photo is the highest Ray got.


This is the group that made it to the top! Me, Beck, Mum and Dad. Mum was really proud of herself cause she sais that twelve months ago there's no way she would've got there. She's also pround of herself cause last time my friend Jacqui's mum tryed to climb it she didn't get to the top cause of her knee.


Mum, Beck and Dad at the top of the Acropilis with Jerrion in the background (I was taking the piccy)


Dad helping Mum down of the Acropilis.

The next day we climbed into the Laberith. The Labirith is a plateu of little tarns which look like this;


This is the tarn we ate lunch near.


To get to the Labirith you have to climb out of Pine Valley again. This time a section of the track headed up a stream.


The only problem with the Labireth was the ants. There were these little black ants everywhere and every time you stopped they'd climb all over you and attack you. They didn't sting, just sorta pinched and it didn't hurt exactly, it was just really frustrating. So we ate our lunch in the only ant-free place we could find - a rock in the middle of the waterfall.


After lunch I went swimming in a waterfall. Well, not swimming exactly - more like a shower. I tryed two different bits of the waterfall - that one...


...and this one. Which one do you think lookes nicer???


And here I am back at Narcissus Jettty, right at the end of the whole thing, jumping into Lake St Clair. It was rainy and cold and everyone thought I was a freak - especially the Queenslanders who had just finnished the overland track. But Beck came and joined me. So I'm not the only frek. Except she only jumped in once. I jumped in again and again and again.

Holidays!

There here again! And they stay for a whole 2 months! Here's an outline of what my holidays are looking like so far;

19 - 22 December
Walking into Pine valley with my family and climbing the surrounding mountains.

23 December
Recovery day at home.

24 Decmber
Spend a night in Lonny with Dad's dad.

25 December
Spend the morning with Dad's dad and the head up to Ansons Bay (Mum's family)

25 - 27 December
Stuck at Ansons Bay with Mum's mum

27 December - 1 January
Lake Leake, hopefully with the Morleys

2 - 3 January
Recovery at home

4 - 15 January
Camping at Fortescue Bay with my family and my friends.

16 - 17 January
Recovery at home

18 - around the 26 January
I'm going to Hayley's church camp.

And then I come home and stay home until the January long weekend, when we will probably be back at the shack.

Very busy, I know, but thats the way i like it!

School's Out!

We finished school today! No more classes, no more teachers, no more homework (not that we got any to start with). But also it means that I won't see my friends as much. Which is the only sad thing.

Anyway, leading up to the end of the year, lots of stuff happens.

1. We stop doing work
2. We Have to clean everything up (the art rooms, the woodwork room, our lockers, etc)
3. The grade tens have there leavers dinner
4. Next years prefects get announced (that'll be me next year)
5. We have our awards assembly.

In our junior awards assembly (grades 7 and 8) there are three basic awards - general merit, special merit and excellence. General merit is for people who are well behaved, but nothing more. Special merit is an extension of general merit (so if you get special merit then you don't get general merit too) and excellence means your smart. I got special merit and excellence.

Then there are some special awards. There is the good example award which went to Andy Renalds. There's the citizanship award which went to Loren. Most improved literacy and most improved music both went to grade sevens.

Then theres the really special awards. The best overall junior award (which means that your fairly good at everything, sport included) went to Kelsey. And then the junior most spok award went to...drum roll plz...ME!

Ok, so junior spok wasn't exactly written on the award, but its what they ment. On my trophy (thats right, trophy) it sais 'Junior Outstanding Accademic Achievement' and when Mrs Watts was anouncing it she said it was one of the most prestegious junior awards. It basically means I'm the smartest kid in my grade. And even though I poke fun at it, I'm fairly proud of myself for winning it.

What really dissapoints me is that neither of my parents were impressed by my achievement! Kelsey's parents were really proud and really impressed and really happy that Kelsey did so well. But my parents... no, they're not impressed; no they're not proud of me; no, they don't care that I got awarded smartest kid in my grade. They just give me this look which sais 'good, your not a completely useless lazy idiot' and they kept saying they'd like to see what I could do if I actually tryed. Its really really demotivating when the best in your school isn't good enough. And it makes we wonder weather its worth doing well at all.

But yeah, i got a $50 book voucher and the trophie is the prettiest one I've ever seen.

TOUR!

Tour. Its all over now. It was so much fun and I got so tired and its good to be home and I can't wait to do it again next year!

I won't tell you too many boring details, I'll just post a lot of photos with a few bits of writing.

We spent a lot of time on busses. A LOT. 5 hours on Sunday arvo. Almost 2 hours on Monday, about 3 hours on Tuesday, an hour and a half on Wednesday and 45 minutes-ish on Thursday. We filled in this time talking, listening to Ipods, playing Yatzee and catching up on our sleep. In this photo you have Loren and Jacqui with the Ipod and Griggssy and Hill leaning over the seat.

On Monday we went surfing! Well, we also played at St Marys Distric High; but surfing was way more fun! In this photo we're getting ready to paddle out to the beach with the waves.

Here we are surfing. The waves were huge and it was really cold and Lorens feet turned blue - but I didn't have a problem cause its the first time I've ever experienced the wonder of wetsuits!

I even stood up on my board! It was only for about 2 seconds, but still - it was something. And it was so much fun trying that no-one really cared about actually being able to surf!

This is our band playing at Dodges Ferry Primary. We played at schools all over the east coast - St Hellens, St Marys, Swansea, Triabunna, Orford, Dodges Ferry and Sorell.

Me playing in the band at Dodges. It got a bit boring playing the same pieces over and over again, but the kid's reactions were amazing! They listened so carefully and they really seemed to enjoy hearing our music!

In this picture we are playing 'A Musical Fairytale' by RT Honeyman. Its a really cool piece because we tell the story of a king and a prince and a princess and it really funny! Zac tells the story and we accompany him with tunes to help tell the story. All the primary school kids love it - but Simon won't let us play it to any high school kids. :-(

You are probably wondering why we are banging on a window. Well here's the answer - Hannah's Ipod dock was inside the room and we were stuck out side. Mrs Ross confiscated Hannah's dock because it was 'too loud'. Which is kinda hard to believe, seeing as it wasn't turned on. So we protested. We banged on the window and we yelled at her and we sung out of tune Xmas Charols with Sam accumpenying us on Cornet. Then we sang Amazing Grace and Sconnie kept yelling at us cause he didn't get how we all knew all the words. I don't get that either. Our whole band was there protesting and we just about all knew the words to Amazing Grace! Amazing!

Anyway, the teachers thought our protest was halerious. They recored it on thier cameras and they teased us with the dock and the Mrs Barrot went to the grade 10 boy's room and stold their complementary milk out of the fridge. Then she drank it in front of all of us! So we started chanting 'milk, milk, milk, milk, milk!' And banging all our pots and panns. Simon decided then that we were making too much noise and got us to try negotiating. That didn't really work. We tryed negotiating by ourselves, which didn't work cause Ms Ross and Mrs Barrot just laughed at us. Then Simon helped us. He took Griggssy into the girl teachers room and Briddy got in too. Then she yanked the door open and we all got in. We grabbed the dock and Sconnie grabbed Mrs Ross's Ipod and then we ran out. But we forgot the cord for the Ipod dock! So then we spent another half an hour trying to get the cord for the dock back. We eventually swapped Mrs Ross's Ipod for Hannah's Ipod dock cord.

On Thursday arvo we played at the Orford fair. It was so cool cause everything was free! Free ice-cream, free popcorn, free sausges, free facepainting, free EVERYTHING! I was in heaven!

Here you have Kelsey, Briddy, me and Hannah after several free sausages, a free ice cream, a free bag of popcorn and free face-painting. But then we had to go play to provide Orford with free entertainment. :-(

Anyway, tour was awesome and Simon sais that we were good so he'll take us to NZ next year!

New Moon

New Moon is so much better than Twilight! I mean, in the books New Moon is way boring and Twilight is tons better - but in the movies New Moon is so so so much better!!! I think that this is mostly because Jacob Black is mega hot.

I know a lot of people think Edward (Robert patterson) is hot, but I don't. He wears lip-stick and guy-liner and he's got all this stubble round his jaw and his chest is really hairy and I think he is ugly as. Jacob, on the other hand is brown skinned, clean shaved, with lots of muscles. Jacob is HOT.

My favourite bit of the movie is the middle bit where Jacob is one of the main characters. But then Edward comes back and rouines everything. Stupid ugly vampire. My very favourite bit is when Jacob took his top of to wipe up Bella's blood, cause half the cinema gasped and then the other half of the cinema laughed at the half of the cinema that laughed. I did both. :-)

Anyway, the very last line of the movie was Edward saying, 'Bella, will you marry me?' And then my friend Loren who hasn't read it was like gasping to see what Bella would say and then...the movie ended! So now she's gonna read the books even faster so that she can know what Bella sais without having to wait for the next movie.

I'm going on Band tour now, so I'll talk to you all l8r.

TOUR

We leave 2moz! I seriously can't wait! I'm nearly all packed and I'm going to see New Moon 2nite! Ray went with Jordy last night and she said it was really good. The guy who plays Jacob (Taylor somethin) is really hot - so much hotter than Robert Patterson (Edward Cullen)! When Ray was there he took his top off and half the girls in the theatre like screamed or sumthin!!! I won't do that. I'm not that retarded! I'm going at 6:40 with Jacqui and Loren and Sara. Just about everyone else has already seen it.

Oh yeah! Thats right! I was talking about tour! Well we leave at 12 2moz and I'm starting to get nervous! Everyone sais its really fun and I got the right people in my room (Loren, Jacqui, Hayley and me), but still, I'm nervous. I'm sitting with hayley on the bus on the way up to St Helens. 5 hours! definately the worst part of tour!

Band, Band, Band

Anual Bands Concert last night. Junior Concert Band is over for the year. Gotta learn my Junior Stage Band charts. Senior Concert Band rehersal tomorrow night. Junior Stage Band playing at Clarence Celebrates in 2 weeks. Band tour in three days.

As you can see, my life is full of band, just like always. I had my last performance as a member of the Junior Concert Band last night. We played 4 pieces at Clarences anual bands concert, including Walk Like an Egyptian. I also played in Junior Stage Band on Trombone. We played 4 pieces; Twist and Shout (which I can't really play), Stand by Me, Fast Break and Happy Together (of the Smiths Thinly Cut add 'If you like thinly cut - we do - then these will be the chips for you - the chips from who? - the chips from Smiths, the ones you love, so happy toge-ther' Its also in Shrek and The Simpsons Movie).

Senior Concert Band played three pieces, and I got to play Timpini in one of them! (timpini is the wierd tuned drum and I can't tune them so i had to get Dylan to tune them for me).

We got out of the whole day of school yesterday to practise for the concert and we get the whole of next week of for...

TOUR!!!

If any of you actually care what we're doing on Tour, tell me in comments. Not that your likely to have read this far down this increadably boring post anyway. Anyway, Tour will be absolutely awesome and I'd love to tell you but I don't want to bore you to death.

Mt Anne

A couple of weekends ago Dad and I climbed Mt Anne. It was a long 2 day walk. I don't want to make you really bored, so here's a photo gallery of the weekend!


This is me and Dad on top of Mt Eliza on the way to Mt Anne. We had lunch here at 2 o'clock on the Saturday. Mt Anne is in the background, between mine and Dad's heads.



This is me on top of Mt Anne. It was a beautiful day and the view was AWESOME! IT was a really climb up to the top - even without packs. It was steep and slippery and there were lots of narrow bits to climb across.


We found a bit of snow to camp on just past Mt Eliza. Inagine that! Its 24 degrees and we were comping on snow!


Me in the tent. on the snow, in thongs. That only happens in Tasmania.


My picture of a sunset from our campsite.

Me playing in the snow with Mt Anne in the background. On the Sunday morning. Btw this is a different bit of snow to the one we camped on.

Interschool Athletics

Its kinda a bit late to write about this cause it happened ages ago. Anyway, I got into the 400m and I did fairly well.

It was the division A carvinall (the best schools in the state) and I was runnign in division2. So that means I was running with Tasmania's best schools second best runners. Now for the non confusing bit - I came 4th. Which was nearly 5th, but then I found some extra speed right at the end.

I was running in lane 6. I like running closer to the middle, cause you feel like you start behind and then you run faster to feel like your catching up. In lane 6 I overtook the runners in lanes 7 and 8 really soon and then I lost my incentive to run faster until the stagger started to even out and the other runners started overtaking me.

After the carnical (which, btw, Clarence won) Mum took me shopping and I got a cool new dress, a white tank top, a blue scarf, a skirt, a black top and some black shoes (for band). It was a succesful shopping trip, especially cause I got my new bikini, which I really need.

School Athletics Carnival

After being postponed twice, our school athletics carnival finally happened today. It was a good day, most people got dressed up to support their houses and people like me who wanted to have fun did.

I went in the javelon, discus, 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m. I'm also in the 1500m, which is happening either tomorrow or Monday.

I didn't do very well in javelon or Discus, cause I'm just not good at field events. Track events, though, are a different story.

I came 5th in the best heat for the 100. I lost to my friend Loren by 0.07 seconds. Which is really dissapointing because they only take 4 people from 100m to the interschools.

In 200m I came 3rd to Jacqui and this girl called Georgia. In 400 I came second - just to Jacqui. But Emma and Paris, who were in the other heat, both beat me aswell.

In 800m I came equal 4th. Yes, that is possible. Jacqui won, Loren got 2nd and Emma got third. Louisa and I both came fourth, and it wasn't even deliberate! I was behind her coming around the last corner, but then I started sprinting and overtook her. Then she started sprinting to catch up to me and we both crossed the line at the same time! How cool is that!

Mrs Burgess (that teacher who loves me and I hate her) was doing the recording (writting down our names, places, times and houses. You should have seem her face the first time I came up to her with a place card. She was shocked! Her afce was saying, 'WOW, my favourite little spock can run!'. By the end of the day she'd gotten used to me being good at something other than work.

I don't know if I'm in the interschools or not - hopefuly I am, but it all depends on how many events people like Jacqui who got into everything are alowed to do.

I also don't know how Mawson, my house, has done. They'll add up the points and anounce it either tomorrow or Monday.

Fish!

And no, that is not ferering to the fish that surposedly live in Lake Leake. Which were, btw, absent again.

It is, in fact, refering to the fish in the Swan River, which were biting as well as ever.

On Saturday morning we went to fish in this river cause we actually catch fish. It was just my family though, not the morleys'.

We caught 6 fish.

We only have photos of 5 of them, cause Mum caught the sixth. One about the size of Ray's and it wasn't worth photographing.

Rachel's fish which she caught both at the same time (we fish with two hooks on our line)

My smaller fish, which was impressive when I caught it.

My bigger fish, which is actually a really good size and was also impressive when i caught it.

And Rebekah's fish which had to go and be better than both of mine. Isn't it HUGE???

Injuries

I was at Lake Leake again this weekend. (It was show weekend, so we had 4 days off). Considering that last time I went to Lake leake I managed to fall out of the boat...anyone want to gues how I utterly embarrased myself this time?

No? No one? plz guess! (post your guess as a comment before reading on)

The answer is threefold (nice big word, don't you think?)

1. I burnt my arms and legs in the sun
2. I burnt my feet in the fire
3. I face planted off my bike

Ok, so getting sun burnt is kinda understandable. Me and james were kiacking around the lake in the nice, warm sun on Friday. It was really nice and calm and peacful and we both paddle about the same speed, so it was really really nice.There's not really any other way to describe it. Nice.

But the thing about kyaching is that i was waering boardies and my rashy. My rashy comes half way down the top of my arms. So now I have a burn/tan line half way down the tops of my arms! So not cool!

Any way, sunburn hurts, but fire-burn hurts more.

OK, scroll down a bit. See that? Its our bonfire! We built it last time and we lit it on Thursday night. And no, i wasn't quiet dum enough to get me feet burnt in that.

Before I tell you how I did get my feet burnt, here are a few pics from the bonfire. It was tons of fun and even better cause we all got to stay late. Ray weant a bit photo carzy, but here are 4 pics I think capture the night.

The us:

The Bonfire:

The sparklers:

Ok, so back to the hot topic - my feet.

Have you ever had a bonfire? Do you know how the bonfire ash is all white and looks really harmless? Do you know how hot that ash really is?

I do.

James and I are pyro-maniacs. On friday mornign we started the fire up again with bits of bark and sticks and drift-wood. we kept that fire going all day on friday and for a bit on Saturday morning. This required freequently hunting out more sticks, bark and driftwood for our hungry fire. I think we basicly cleared our bit of shore-line from everything burnable.

We were trying to put a particularly big bit of wood on the fire when I stepped into the harmless-looking white ash. In thongs.

It really hurt and I wasn't very smart. I sorta stamped up and down a bit before I ran to the lake. I stood in the lake until my feet went numb and then got out - just to return as soon as the feeling came back into my feet.

I wore proper shoes around that fire after that.

Now, for number 3. Oh yeah, the face-plant. The easiest way for me to explane it would be for you to watch this video. Sorry for the bad quality - it was filmed on James' fone.

If you don't laugh, then there must be something wrong with you.

LolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLolLOL!!!

I havn't shown it to anyone yet who hasn't laughed. And James hasn't stopped laughing since I did it. Another thing he can add to his list if things he can never let me forget.

Dad

Dad comes home form Frace 2moz! He better have got me a pressie, cause he had really nice stuff for the french people when he left!

Plus I've talked to him on the fone lots, and none of the others have. So I think that means I get a better pressent.

I want to go walk up Mt Anne with him next weekend, cause we didn't get to before he left. But Mum'll prob complain if he takes off again so soon after coming back. Even if he is with me.

Would you rather...

There's a new pole at the side of the page (just under the 'dull and boring life' thingo) plz answer it, and leave any comments about it on this post. :)

Not all bad...

Ok. So we didn't rock at the estedfords. But neither did we fail. We just weren't as good as Clarence should be.

The Junior Stage band got a merit. The Junior Concert band didn't place. The Training Band got a merit. The Senior Stage Band came second. The Senior Concert Band won. That sound fairly normal...FOR OGALVIE!!!! Not for us. We're better than that. We should be better than that. We have to be better than that! But we weren't. :(

There's always next year.

Friday

Today was the best day ever. Well, just about. Get this! We only had to go to half of homegroup, then we went to a Senior Band withdrawal. Then a break. Then a Junior Band withdrawal. Then a break. Then sport. Then Stage Band at lunch. Then...guess what?...another withdrawal!!! How cool is that day!!!

Btw: a withdrawal is where we get to skip class to do band practise. Sometimes its with the whole band, sometimes its just your section, and sometimes its an ensemble group - like our Flute Quartet in 4th period today.

Today we missed Woodwork, SOSE and Maths. I hate SOSE and Maths, so thats makes it even better.

Did anyones Friday beat that? I bet it didn't!

Awesome!!!

We had our last rehersal b4 the estedfords today and Junior Concert Band sounded AWESOME! Even Simon couldn't find anything wrong with us! After our first piece he juust said, 'you're gonna win.' The grade nines in the next room (who never seem to say anything nice) even said it was sounding great!

Estedfords are on Monday, so i hope we don't lose our awesome-ness before then. :)

Estedfords Again

Well, we are coming up to the next lot of Estedfords. This time I am playing 4 times. With the Junior Stage Band, the Junior Concert Band, the Senior Concert band and my flute quartet.

I hope we do well, but I don't think we've got that much of a chance.

To start with, the aduticater's mostly deaf. So he'll be judging a lot from how we look. And we can compete with places like Friends and Colegiate when it comes to playing - but when it comes to uniform they are way out of our leage. Which is really not fair on us.

Plus, the Junior Stage Band seems to have gotten worse. I think its cause that band used to be all grade 8s and now we've got grade 7s aswell. Which means that our sound has gotten way worse, even though we now have more players. But I've definately improved! :)

Junior Stage is playing Happy Together (from Shrek), The Peanut Vender and Stand By Me (which we played last estedford too). We were hoping to play Twist and Shout, but we didn't get there.

Junior Concert is playing Into The Clouds, How Can I Keep From Singing, and probably Friend Like Me (from Aladin). We want to play The Final Countdown, but Simon said no, because its not technical enough to do any good.

Senior Concert is playing Sabre Dance and King Across the Water. If we manage to suddenly improve we'll also play The Greek Folk Suite, which is really hard cause its written in 7:8. So you have to count one-and-ah, two-and, three-and; one-and-ah, two-and, three-and.

You're propably asleep, but oh well. I don't have anything better to do this arvo than bore my reletives to death.

Retard.

I'm really hate retarded kids. I really really hate them. I know we're all ment to be exceptant and everything, and I would be exceptant of them - if they went to there own schools and didn't mess up our schools. I mean, Clarence is messed up enough already without some stupid retards messing it up even more.

At lunch 2day one of the retarded kids went mental. Someone said something to him and he just lost it. I don't know what was said to him, but he really went off! He started bashing up twwo grade nine boys - both at once. Mrs palmer (who's my English teacher) tryed to calm him down, but then he tryed to hit her too. Thats the story I heard, but even if it wasn't that, it was something else pretty serious, cause they locked us all away in our home rooms untill they could catch him.

Half way through lunch there was an anouncment that we all had to go to our home rooms for an 'attendance check'. It was fairly wierd - the principal, who usually spends her whole life in her office, sent the message over the PA, so we all knew it was something out of the ordinary.

The most anyoying thing was that we were in the middle of a band rehersal. And we still had to go back to our homerooms. Personally, I think we were a lot safer in the music room with Simon (Mr Reade) and Miss Badcock and Sam (a grade nine boy) and Dylan (he's 18 and he helps out with percussion) than stuck in home group with Mrs Burgess. Stupid teacher. She wouldn't even let us look out the window so we could watch them try to catch the retard.

The school had to call the kids family to come and get him cause they couldn't manage to calm him down enough to catch him. It took 20 minutes before they let the school out of lock down.

My question is; If this kid is retarded enough to be a threat to the whole school, then whats he doing there in the first place?

Busy, Busy, Busy

OK, so you know basicly what I did last week. I got back from Lake Leake on Monday. This is what I've done since then...

• Tuesday - slept, ate, and spent the afternoon at Lucinda's cause I didn't feel like going wlaking with Rachel's boyfriends family.
• Wednesday - slept, ate, went shopping. I got an Ipod docking station - so now I can listen to my music aloud in my room with the twins, two new tops from Supre - one pink, one blue, and the other three Twilight books. Then I got home, showered, got changed, and wnet to Jacqui's for a sleepover. We talked, ate and watched The Mighty Boosh, When a Stranger Calls and the Doctor Who epesodes with the gass mask kid.
• Thusrday - didn't sleep. Talked, played computer games, watched TV. eventaully we slept. Hayley had to get up and leave at 9, so then me and Jacqui and Loren had eggs and backon for breakfast. We mucked around and then we wnt to Woodies Roller World with my family and Rachel's boyfriend's family.
• Friday (today) - I slept. lots. Then i got up and ate and showered and now I'm blogging. Tonight i'm going to Lucinda's party and then sleeping at her place. It'll be tons of fun and I get to meet all her frieds from Seabrooke.

Busy. Busy, Busy!

Lake Leake

OK, so most recently I have been at Lake Leake with my family. And I think that most of you would have good enough memories to know that a weekend at Lake Leake also means a weekend with the Morleys (Sam, James, and Ollie).

We went up on Thursday night; after I got home form band camp, got my hair cut, had a shower and struggled to find enough clothes to pack.

The morleys didn't come till Saturday morning and not much happened till they arrived. We went fishing (unsuccesfully), played games (I consistently beat Mum at Scrabble now!), read, rode our bikes, etc.

The lake was amazing! It was so full! The ground was like one big sponge, you trod on it and all this water seeped up through it! Our car got bogged and we had to get the neighbours 4-wheel-drive to pull it out. There was supposedly ment to be fish in the now-overflowing lake, but we didn't see any evidence to conferm this untill later.

Just to show you the difference between the lake now and the lake before, here is a picture from last time we were there, back in May.


See the dirt? See the parched land? Now look at this...




Water! Look how high it is! It was flooding over the damn and raging down the river. It has pulled half our boat ramp away and we don't know where it is now. And yes, Rachel is holding a fish. And yes, she did catch it. And yes, I thought that was impossible aswell.

She caught that one on Saturday afternoon, when she went out fishing with James and Dad.

And she caught this one off the shore on Sunday morning.



I went fishing in the boat on Firday morning, on Saturday morning and again on Sunday morning, and I didn't catch a sigle fish! Not one! But I did manage to catch a tree, lose two of dad's lures, and fall overboard. Rachel didn't do any of that!

Ok, so right now you are probably thinking something along the lines of, 'I knew she was an unco, but I didn't know it was possible to be that unco'. This is how it happened. We were fishing right over the back of the lake, as far as you can get from the shacks. There are lots of tree stumps in the lake where we were and I did too big a cast. Which means my lure, with three hooks on the end, got caught up the top of one of the trees.

James reckons that was the most unco bit, but I'm not sure. I think that falling out of the boat might possibly beat it.

The lure that was at the top of the tree happened to be one of Dad's favourites. So, enevitably, he wanted it back, from the top of a tree round the back of the lake.

BTW; it was really windy, which makes getting a lure out of the top of a tree at the back of the lake that much harder.

This is how it worked

• James and I had to hold onto the tree - really hard - so that the boat didn't drift away
• James was sitting on the floor of the boat and I was leaning out over the side
• Dad was trying to get the lure back using ropes
• Dad was standing up, and I was standing up
• It was windy.

Dad slipped. The baot rocked sideways. James fell backwards. I fell forwards. No one quiet knew what hapened. I was wet and cold. James was just sitting back up. Dad had started laughing.

And the award for the unco of the year goes to...Hannah Dilger! For getting her lure caught in the top of a tree and then falling out of the boat.

James says it was the best fishing trip he's ever been on. He caught a fish and he got to see me get soaked. He's never gonna let me forget it, but luckily no-one filmed it.

I was the only one on that fishing trip who didn't catch a fish. Both James and Dad did. All I managed to catch was a cold.

Band Camp

From Monday to Thursday last week I was on a Band Camp. It was tons of fun, but it would have been more fun if the weather had been nicer. We were staying at Orana Guide Camp, on Lauderdale beach, and we all had our bathers with us hoping for a swim. But it only stopped raining once, and even then, it wasn't exactly sunny and warm.

I thought I'd share a few photos with you, tel you a bit about it.

This first photo is of my friend Loren, with Dylan, one of the Tutors. He's 19 and he's a percussionest. It was both their birthdays on the monday, Loren's 14th and Dylan's 19th, so we made them cakes. Me and Loren and Kelsey and Hayley made two huge cakes at my place on Sunday afternoon. There was enough cake to go round aproximately 65 students and 10 tutors with leftovers.


We also decorated the cakes. In this photo Loren is standing in front of Dyaln's cake (which looks like it belongs to a six-year-old girl) and Dylan is standing in front of Loren's cake (the chocolate one with 'loren' written on it).

Here is a photo of them blowing out the candles of there own cakes.


The next photo is of the freaks I had to share my room with. These freaks are also known as my friends. Jacqui wasn't there for this photo, she came later cause she had sailing monday-tuesday.


Sammy is up the top in the blue hoodie, she's a grade 7 and she plays percusion. Loren is in the pink, she's one of my 4 closest friends and she plays trumpet. Kelsey is at the bottom leaning over everyone else. She plays bass clarienet and can be really nice...when she feels like it. Halyey is the other one. She's one of my three closest friends and she plays flute and trombone, like me.



Pillow fights! Sammy's arm is smashing a pillow into Loren and Hayley is about to, too.


And here's a photo of Jacqui durring a pillow fight. She's also (as you all probably know) one of my three closest friends.

Our room was such a mess! We had stuff everywhere! We even pulled our matress onto the floor so we could jump from bunk to bunk with out risking hurting ourselves. At one stage only really skiny people could get in and out of our door.

Anyway, it was tons of fun and I'll go again next year, as long as my friends are going again.