Mr Benson sighed in relief as he shut the bus doors when we finished packing all our stuff. I turned and looked excitedly at my friend Sammy and we got on the bus excitedly. I looked around at the other students getting in the bus. Out of the 2 classes in Outdoor rec, only 15 could come on this trip. The rest had exams they needed to study for this week. The 15 students consisted of Sammy, Courtney, Chloe, Riley, James, Jesse, Ben, Billy, Lochie, Darcy, Will and some others I don't know. There were 2 teachers with us, Mr Benson and Mrs Cassidy. They were actually really good teachers so I was happy with that. I was going camping with my Outdoor Recreation group, a VET subject that I was doing in class. We're going to the Grampians and doing some hiking for 4 days as part of the course. We all sat on the bus by ourselves so we had more room, plus it was boiling hot.
Courtney and Chloe - two very popular girls who sat very close to the front and told Mr Benson to turn the music up. We had 3 and a half hours on this bus and I was not looking forward to it. In the seats next to me were James and Riley. James was quiet but he was the hottest guy in my year. Most of the boys on this bus were very attractive, I am very lucky that way.
For 3 hours we all chilled, eating lollies, talking, singing to the music- it was pretty fun. I was talking to Riley about soccer when we passed through Buninyong, a small town outside of Ballarat that I had pretty much grown-up in. I missed this town, my grandparents used to live here but then they moved closer to Ballarat. I spent every holiday up here and some weekends too.
"Hey didn't you used to live here Alexa?" Sammy asked me
"Yeah around here," I replied. I used to live in Sebastopol which was really close to here.
"Why did you move?" Riley asked me.
"Mum got a job in Geelong," I said not really wanting to talk about it. We passed the park where I used to play all the time and I smiled, remembering how I thought I was a princess playing in a castle.
"Its quite a nice town," Riley said looking at me with his big green eyes. I smiled at that and laughed.
"Yeah, I love it here, it's old and pretty" I explained looking out the window. We left Buninyong with another 2 hour drive until we reached the Grampians. I sighed and re-joined myself in the conversation. By the end of the drive we were hyped up after all the lollies and we all cheered when we got to the Grampians. We drove for as far as we could, but when we couldn't drive anymore we parked under a tree.
"Alright guys, grab a pack and then we can go," Mr Benson said as we all got out. The backpacks were extremely heavy because they were filled with everything we would need for 4 days. Mine weighed at least 6kilos and it was small! We began our hike going downhill and it burnt my thighs. It was tough work, sometimes we were going through completely over grown bush, following Mr Benson. Trees and bushes were scratching my arms and I almost fell over a dozen times. We kept away from the cliffs but stayed at their bases until we went through a dense part of trees. We walked through it for about 5 minutes until I opened up into a small clearing with a little creek. Behind us was a cliff face that sort of made an open cave, sheltering us from the sky. It was beautiful and I turned to Mr Benson.
"How did you find this place?" I asked knowing it wasn't a well-known camping site because it looked practically untouched.
"Me and my wife found it a few years ago when we came here, we have been camping here since," He said with a huge smile. We were all exhausted from our hike but seeing this place had revved us up a bit.
"Alright everyone lets unpack and get set up before night time!" Mrs Cassidy ordered walking to the other side of the clearing. I groaned as I slowly let my pack down and sat on it for a little while. Me and Sammy were sharing a tent and we decided where to put it. We found a spot and started to get out tent out when Riley and James chose to put their tent next you ours. Fine by me, I thought to myself. Sammy and I struggled to put up our tent and we had to get James and Riley to help us. Finally it was up and we started to unpack the food which we gave to Mrs Cassidy and Mr Benson to put away safely. It was starting to get late so we just made some two-minute noodles for tea. We all sat around the fire just talking until slowly we all started to go to bed until there was only a few of us left. I put out the fire and me and Sammy went back to our tent where we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the ground.