I made it to the end of the first term, and finally got to go explore. This is one part travel blog and one part reflection on Term 1. (If you just want to see my travel pictures scroll down a bit.)
I was feeling very tired as teaching in Australia is "flat out" for the entire 10-11 weeks each term. There are almost no long weekends and the culture here doesn't seem to celebrate holidays like we do in Canada. I found myself losing track of time because I think in terms of months and special holidays like Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day. In Australia they order everything by week and school is very regimented as to what happens each week and it is generally well planned out in advance. You can go onto their computer system and see what is planned for each week the whole year. You also have all of your meetings, assemblies, assessments and other responsibilities planned in advance.
At my school, at least, I have a staff meeting for an hour and a half every Wednesday. These are never missed and they are always full of information and timed so that there is not a minute wasted. There is no off topic discussion and is very much directed. Speaking of which, I have many leaders at my school. There is the principal, several line managers and other school leaders that help and support you. (They also get their own special parking spots which I thought was amusing). I have never seen so many people at the top end of a school before. I have a line manager who I deal with the most, but I also see the other senior leaders for staff meetings, action meetings, PLC meetings, IB meetings, working party meetings, and cluster meetings. (Let me know if I missed any).
We get a lot of time to plan during the school day. (Much more than Canada) However, a lot of it can be taken up by PLC and IB meetings, which again are run by a leader. Everyone gets to have their say to an extent, but in the end you teach and assess what the group has come up with, and it is strictly defined what that can look like. At the end of a few weeks you present what your students did at the next meeting and discuss next steps. I found this part difficult for a few reasons. One was just lack of organization on my part as I was mixing up my meetings and lost track of what I was supposed to bring to each meeting. Now that I know how it's supposed to work and where to find meeting dates, I am hopeful that I will do better and be less stressed about meetings for the next term.
The other is that in Canada you get to run things a bit more on your own. You do plan with your team, but how you do that and when is on your own terms. In the end how you teach and your personal style is up to you. Here there are many more standardized tests as well as directed team planning with a focus on creating a product to share at meetings. I've found the word 'accountability' to be the reasoning behind all of this. When I say that we don't do any of this in Canada, I get a confused look from some, and am usually asked, "How do you tell if the teachers are doing a good job?" Maybe we are just more unionized in Canada, but I feel that we end up getting better results when we let teachers teach, and don't focus on creating ways to test the teacher.
On the positive side, the camaraderie at the school is amazing. Along with having everything well planned is knowing who and when you and everyone else is responsible for food and other special events. Each team is responsible for a few morning teas (this is more than just tea and is a highlight of the culture for me), and other social events. You sign up for two potlucks at the beginning of the year as well as staff birthday celebrations. Everything runs like clockwork and nothing is ever forgotten, so I have to be up to date and very organized. I love how the teachers here get together regularly and are extremely friendly and are willing to socialize outside of work.
I definitely needed this break and I'm more knowledgeable going into this next term, so I feel more confident about the next 10 weeks.
Point Lowly Beach House
We decided to put off going to another state until we had fully explored South Australia. Term 2 school holidays we might go to Melbourne or Sydney, but I haven't decided yet. I'm very much enjoying how Australia splits up their terms so that we get four terms that are around 10 weeks each that are broken up by 2 weeks of holidays.
For our first stop we stayed at a beautiful beach house on Point Lowly which is close to the mining town of Whyalla and next to a petroleum plant. Despite that it was a gorgeous and private experience. We had the whole beach to ourselves as we backed right on to it.
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| Miles loved the Lego table |
The boys spent their time looking for crabs and other sea creatures under all of the rocks and building sand castles. We walked over to the Point Lowly Light house as well to see and read about the history of the area.We spent a day in Whyalla, which is actually a great little blue collar town that has a nice beach and dolphin viewing. We spent most of the afternoon watching the dolphins and the giant pelicans along the beach,
Whyalla has a great lookout and we walked up to the top and found some artillery guns and some information about when the royal family last visited.
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| Kangaroos out our back door |
Point Lowly is well known for the Giant Australian cuttlefish migration that takes place in the winter here. We found some information, but it looks like we will miss them this time around. Might be worth coming back to see them. We did find out what all of the oval things on the beach were. Cuttlefish bones!
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| We made an inukshuk |
Our next stop on our journey was to Port Lincoln. I wanted to come here because of the seafood and because the have amazing beaches, Great White sharks and sea lions. I didn't get my wish to go diving with the sea lions, but I want to go back. Jenny didn't think the boys would be able to participate so it wasn't worth it. We stayed right on the marina and the boys enjoyed playing with Miles' fishing rod and they actually caught some fish. We threw them back in, but it was an experience to see the fish jumping right out of the water.
Some of the boats here were huge yachts and we found out that Port Lincoln has the greatest number of millionaires per capita in South Australia. It reminded me a lot of Victoria in British Columbia, but with palm trees.
On the next day we headed to Coffin Bay. We were immediately greeted by a group of emus on the road. We got out of the car and followed them for a while. Coffin bay is well known for it's oysters so we took the oyster walk, but didn't find any. We saw the bay filled with pelicans and fishing boats and yachts.
The last day in Port Lincoln, we drove to Coffin Bay National Park. We had researched a lot before coming to South Australia, and the beaches here looked amazing and we were not disappointed.
We drove to Almonta Beach, which was the only beach that you could access with a 2WD car. It had the clearest, crystal blue water and whitest sand beach I have ever experienced. The sand was so soft and spongy you sank right into it every time you walked.
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| Almonta Beach |
We headed back to Port Lincoln and had dinner at the Marina hotel. We needed to try the seafood on the "Seafood Frontier."
The oysters were really good and the pizza was amazing. I wasn't a huge fan of the chilled squid tentacles though.
Mount Remarkable: Mambray Creek campground
I had to go get a camp stove from K-Mart and they just sold these simple little stoves that run on Butane gas. Very weird.. maybe Australians didn't get the memo about propane stoves.
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| The gum trees here are huge! Apparently they have carpet pythons living inside them. |
We went on an early morning hike and saw a small wallaby at the top of the hill. We were happy to leave the next day though as the entire campsite was filled with annoying black flies that wouldn't leave us alone. I had about ten of them on me the entire time.
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| We spent a day at Port Pirie. (mostly to get away from the flies) and found this great museum. The boys loved the helicopter and learning about the World Wars. |
Innes National Park
We spent the last two nights of our vacation in Innes National Park. I mostly liked the idea of going to the bottom of the "boot" (Look at the map below). We had a much better camping experience here despite the feral bees here. (They mostly left us alone) Again the beaches here were amazing and made for fantastic pictures. Henry has really become a rock climber and likes to explore and look for crabs wherever he goes.
Miles has no fear and will run off on a beach and start making things with the sand. We really need to clean out the car because sand is now everywhere. There have been many shipwrecks along the coast of the Yorke Peninsula and we got to see one washed up on the beach. The waves were ridiculously high and we saw quite a few riptides so we stayed away from the water at this beach and kept a respectful distance.
This was the longest road trip I have ever been on, and it was in a different country! I think when I go back to Canada, I am going to have to make the trip to Eastern Canada. I might know some people who might be worth visiting!
