Nico's happenings - QLD Venture

Hi all

I told Nicky I would publish something about my latest camp - so here it is!

Well where do I start... maybe some shippy photo's?

The bow, as seen from the bowspirit, and me hoisting a Jib
If you didn't hear sometime or other, I spent the first week of the school holidays up north for Queensland venture. The 8 day long camp brought together some 300 - 400 venturers from across the state for an amazing
week of activities. After travelling on a bus all day, we got to Rocky, where the base camp was located, before pushing on to Airlie beach in the Whitsundays to board the 104 year old tallship, Solway Lass. We spent an incredible 3 days on board the ship sailing to: Whitehaven beach(Whitsunday Is.), Blue Pearl Bay, and Longford reef...

The ship itself was fascinating, for those who care it was a Haemaphrodite brigantine - meaning it had square sails on the foremast, but was gaff-rigged on the mainmast(a sail between top and bottom booms running backwards)... It was very intricate, and there were so many different systems to trim the sails, it was all very confusing at first but we slowly worked it out.

The Foremast

It was great doing it as a venturer group, because we were all quite cheerful(and with similar senses if humour I might add). There was quite a bit of buffoonery, and a good few characters. We got a bit of rough weather but not much, and for most of the trip it was cool and cloudy, but really great fun. They had a cargo net strung from the
bowsprit, so you could climb over the edge of the ship(even if it was moving), and sit a little lower than the main deck as you watched the wash below you... really awesome fun.

We had a few jobs on ship, the washing up of course had to be done but only with minimal water, there were two cooks in the crew because the ship caters mainly for international tourists, the brass had to be polished every morning, and the deck had to be scrubbed once the trip was over.


It was an awesome trip, and we all became quite good friends quickly. The crew loved us because we were enthusiastic and were more than happy to do the hard work for them, like hoisting the sails or the booms.(the booms were really heavy - it took 3 people to lift them, even with the heavy-duty pulley system!)







After we left the ship, we stayed in Proserpine for the night, before rendezvousing with the venturers who were scuba diving, and heading back to rocky. Then we had two one-day activities; I went abseiling at Mt Archer the first, and participated in a "mystery tour" on the second. The abseiling was good fun, it was a great location, and I learnt a lot about abseiling that I didn't know. There were 2 main drops: a 10 or 15 metre on where you had to shuffle from face - to -face to get down, and another 20 m cliff with various overhangs and similar challenges. The mystery tour took us to the Rocky Zoo, the coast around Rocky(which is quite beautiful), and the city. The leader had lots of "tricks" throughout the tour to keep us on our feet; driving off without us, asking for a "fare" every time we got on, getting people to spin a dial to decide which turn to make next... you get the picture!

Back on site, we met lots of new people and there was lots of colour and excitement. I can't tell half of it here, I suppose I should post some more pictures instead!!!!



Nico













The ship, as seen from the ship's boat





Abseiling Mt Archer on self - belay

















Docking after a great trip!