Duke of Edinburgh – Outdoor Skills Elective Day Hike

Written by Oliver L, Year 9

On Friday 25 August, Gary Brand and Dylan Thorn took the Outdoor Skills elective for Duke of Edinburgh out for a day hike to the Mathias Track in Olinda.

We left school just after 9am and arrived at the track around 10:30am and set off. We hiked along the track observing the views along the way. The weather was perfect and the conditions could not have been better. Blue skies and comfortable hiking temperature of 15°. We stopped for lunch at a spot with large rocks that we could sit on with a beautiful lookout over the nearby valleys.

After lunch we headed back but, due to a slight lack of attention, we ended up missing a couple of turns. Luckily, this only cost us about an extra 500 metres of walking.

On the way back, Gary set us a task of estimating distance from where we were until we got to the end. Closest to the correct distance was both Zac S and Sam W.

Overall, we hiked just over 7 kilometres around the track. It was a great day and everyone had a blast. We even stopped and got ice cream on the way back to school!