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There
are three trips on offer to Year 11 students only during the April,
June/July and September 2009 school holidays. The trips are run by Reverend
Roger Williams from Mentone Grammar who is an inspiration and has a wealth
of knowledge on the history of the Kokoda Track and Papua New Guinea. Trips include a village stay.
Kokoda, 2008
Sarah
Maxwell and Lucy Phillips, Year 11
 In the holidays six girls from
MGGS combined with girls and boys from various schools throughout Victoria to trek and explore the wonders of Papua New Guinea. Arriving in Papua New Guinea at the beginning of the wet season shocked us as the weather was around 35oC
every day and very humid. For the first week we trekked up and down the
muddy and steep Kokoda track. Through rain and shine we hiked along in the
footsteps of the World War Two Australian soldiers and Papua New Guinean
“Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels”.
After finishing the
hike we endured a three hour truck trip to finally arrive at Martyr’s
School. Here we stayed the night and the following day were taken off to
separate villages to individually live with our host sister from Martyr’s
School. The village stay was instrumental in understanding the conditions
and ways that these people lived.
Our second week was
spent in the coastal region of PNG. We spent two days kayaking through the
30OC ocean water and around the tropical islands.
After bouts of sea sickness from the waves, our kayaking trip concluded
with snorkelling over a plane wreck from World War Two.
The last three days
were spent riding along the coast of New Ireland. We explored the Palm Oil
Factories, a major export for Papua New Guinea, which covered a large
portion of the Island. We concluded our trip with a stay in Rapopo
Plantation Resort, in close proximity to the old town of Rabaul, which had
been devastated by a series of volcanic eruptions in September 1994. While
we were in Rapopo, one of the volcanoes was erupting, emitting volcanic ash
and lava into the atmosphere. The last part to our trip was a visit to the Rabaul Hospital where we spoke with the children and their families before we headed back
to the airport to go home.
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