5. Ferry

Goodbye Yeppoon.

The ferry ride was fun, I suppose, even thought it was a bit bumpy. I was sitting at the back where I had a stunning view of the Keppel Islands. I noticed Tiejana, I girl who had been in my classes for a while and I greeted her. She just looked at me. I thought, "Oh no, not another one." And then she greeted me back and sat next to me and Rachel. Sigh of relief.

I sat there, hugging my bag, watching the ferry dock slowly shrink to a dot.

I would estimate that the ferry trip was about 30 minutes long. And then we were there.

I was about to fight my way through the door when Gary pointed out that I may not want to wear shoes. I gratefully took them off as well as my socks, and descended the steep ramp. It had ropes as rails so we could cling to them and not fall in the sea.

"Eeee, it's cold!"

"Oh my gosh, my jeans are wet!"

What did you expect? It's water you're wading in. Even though I had pulled my skirt up a bit, there was a darker black ring around the bottom where sea water had touched it.

When everybody was off they seemed to want to have a chat but the teachers were saying, "Help with the luggage." which was being passed down to us by the Skipper. What they really meant was, "Oi! Come and carry this heavy luggage to the tractor!" Fair enough, I say. You have this pack of about forty kids/teenagers from the ages 11 - 15 standing around so you'd want them to do some work.

There was a half-pack of about ten students standing a few meters up on the sand that was just doing nothing and they were yelled at to get a move on.

As I was about to help carry a largish, heavy-looking suitcase, a saw someone else take mine up and couldn't help thinking, "Don't drop it!"

After piling all of our suitcases, carry-on bags and shoes onto the tractor we walked for about five minutes along a sandy/grassy track to the Admin. Cabin.

Here we were introduced to the teachers on the island (in case you don't know, we were staying at the North Keppel Island Environmental Education Centre) informed of what water was drinkable, some rules and what would happen next.

We were also sorted into cabins by grades and obviously, I would go in the Grade 8 cabin right? Well, that's what I thought, but it turned out to be full to the brim with grade eighters so I sort of just…'overflowed' into the Grade 9 cabin with Tiejana, who did Grade 9 Japanese. There were only five of us in total in the Grade 9 cabin and Tiejana and I shared a room. We had one of the largest cabins because it was the wheelchair cabin so we had a ramp and two showers. We took our luggage in and had about ten minutes of just un-packing and settling in. I munched some Mentos that Christopher had given me for my thirteenth birthday and had a conversation with Tiejana.

And then the bell rang to signal lunch. It had been explained to us previously that when the bell rang that meant that we had to go directly to the 'dining room' perhaps, without dawdling. Well, you can imagine that a lot of people did dawdle, but if we'd been told to 'take our time' when emerging from our cabins then it would take about ten minutes or more to get us all up there.

We sat at the picnic tables outside, under the trees. I think we had burgers for lunch and they were very nice and fresh! Well, we had two wonderful cooks. When we had all started eating, one of the teachers on the island called for our attention. He told us a bit about what would be happening after lunch and the rest of the day. When we had eaten we were going to play some Initiative Games and after dinner we would be having a Possum Debate.

Now, you probably won't know about the possum problem on North Keppel Island. Well, they are a pest, just like Cane Toads (luckily there aren't any Cane Toads there). The possums scratch at trees and kill them, they wake people up at night, they poo everywhere, they make a mess and do nothing good for the flora on the island. The possums have no predator.

So we had the day to decide if we for or against the possums living on the island. One boy said, "Shoot 'em all."

Tiejana said, "Aww, poor possums."

I could see both arguments but they simply couldn't stay there ruining a beautiful piece of land. I didn't want them hurt though.

After lunch there was some lovely, juicy fruit to snack on and then we were off for some games.