Volleyball Newsletter - Brighton Secondary School

Eyre Peninsula Tour cont...
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On Tuesday we left early and drove for four hours to the Great Australian Bight. Here we went to the whale
centre and spent the day looking at whales. They were Southern Wright whales and they were big. At first
they looked like piles of rocks in the water but after a while they started to move and play. The whales would
lie in their back, flip their tails out of the water or poke their heads out of the water, which is called spy
hopping. This was a great experience for everyone, one that we will never forget.
Wednesday was probably the best day on the trip; this was when we went to the aboriginal community at
Koonibba which is 40km west of Ceduna, to a school called Koonibba. This is the only school in the
community; it’s from kindergarten to year 7. When we first arrived we were put into groups and had to set
up the nets. The children then lined up and got split into groups. Some of the groups had older children and
other groups had 2-3 year olds. We found the kids could not get the ball over the net and so we dropped the
net to it looked like a tennis net, this worked extremely well because they could now get a rally going and
they became a lot more confidant. We taught them basic volleyball skills and played games with them. After
playing volleyball with them or just mucking around they wanted us to help them in their classroom, here we
read to them and helped them with their work. When it was time to go we all felt sad to say goodbye. They
had started out scared and by the end some were crying not wanting us to leave and hugging and laughing.
This was an unbelievable experience for all of us. They continued to smile throughout the whole day, which
made us smile. We both got so much out of this day. We made new friends, they learnt new volleyball skills
and we got to see a completely different life style to our own and that was an incredible experience.