60 in 60 #25 Carine Part 3
I am reflecting on the last 60 years, and writing 60 blog posts. 30 about people and 30 about events, places, experiences and entities.
The inimitable Bruce Boelen
I spent eleven years as the chaplain at Carine SHS in the northern suburbs of Perth, from 1993 to 2004. It was a homecoming for me as I spent my final two years of high school at Carine. It was the best job I’ve ever had. As described in Carine parts 1 & 2, there were a lot of serious and heavy times at Carine, along with some spectacular successes. As the inaugural chaplain I had a lot of freedom to shape the role in my own image as it were! This is a snapshot of some of the ways I was able to do that.
With a love of camping and an interest in leadership training I was drawn to the Peer Support Program that involved training year 10 students to be mentors to the incoming year 8s at the start of the school year. I took over the program, renamed it the Student Mentor Program and initiated the Year 10 Leadership Camp as the core training experience. I was already directing a camp called RYPEN for Rotary and used the program from it as a template for the year 10 camp. It grew in popularity and size each year as more kids wanted to get involved.
On the first day we took the kids abseiling off the grain silos near Rockingham for some confidence building and trust. This was always a highlight, except for the year the school bus I was driving ran out of diesel as we left the silos. By the time we got fuel and back under way it took a couple of hours to get to the campsite, a drive that usually took 20 minutes!
At night we played a wide game called Colditz around the Woodman Point campsite. The students were ‘prisoners of war’ who needed to retrieve parts of an escape kit hidden around the campsite while evading capture by the ‘guards’- the teachers and I. Chasing screaming teenagers through the bush basically!
During the day we did leadership training activities: small discussion groups, trust games and communication exercises to prepare them as mentors.
After dinner we played “The Money Game” a values clarification exercise where each kid put in a dollar and then they had to decide as a group what they wanted to do with the money through a process of consensus decision making. It was a time-consuming process as students argued the merits of various causes. Someone usually suggested the money be put to a party for everyone before more “worthy” causes won the day. In the first couple of years the money went to a charity of some kind which was fine but I decided we needed to up the ante. First, I increased the amount of money the kids put in, from $1 to $2 then to $5 and eventually $10. With somewhere close to a hundred kids on the camp in the last couple of years I ran it, the total amount in the kitty was close to a thousand dollars. Secondly I made the rule that it had to go to a student in the room rather than a charity and thirdly the money couldn’t be split or shared. I started the game by saying, “Who wants the money?” This changed the dynamics, especially when kids realised they had the chance to go home with several hundred dollars! It was great the way real and worthwhile requests were made and discussed as to why individual kids should get the money. Kids shared real needs and circumstances for which the money would be very helpful. Slowly 2-3 deserving recipients would emerge and gain support from the group. It then came down to consensus, it couldn’t be decided by a vote. The process was slow and challenging but respectful and ultimately satisfying. When an impasses arose I would say “The group seems to be leaning toward x. Even though you may prefer y or even z, can you live with x getting the money?” Eventually the group would come to consensus and someone would be given the money. A couple of times the group could not single out one recipient and insisted that I let them split the money. After a couple of hours of intense advocating and listening it seemed reasonable to do so. After one particularly intense version I heard some kids saying “This is not a game!” and I realised they were right so from then on I called it ‘The Money Challenge’. I always made a point of talking to the parents of the kid who got the money to assure them it had all been above board. I don’t remember all the kids or the causes but I do remember one year the money went to a boy who was a dancer for him to buy new ballet shoes, an impressively enlightened decision by the group at the time.
The second year of the camp my mate John Hackett told me about an idea he’d seen at another school and suggested we do it on the camp. It involved contacting all the parents before the camp and asking them to write a letter to their son or daughter to be given to them at the camp. The letter should affirm their child and talk about their character and attributes, the things they recognise, and admire, and the feelings they have for them. I loved the sound of it and we went for it, but there were some unintended consequences.
. After a long and tiring day culminating in the intensity of The Money Challenge, we gave the kids the letters before bedtime and encouraged them to find a quiet place to read them. They were reading the sincere and heartfelt thoughts and feelings of their parents who were expressing their love for their children and kids were deeply moved, to the point of tears. In fact, within a couple of minutes the campsite was awash with tears!! Kids were crying all over the place! I looked at John and said “You didn’t tell me this would happen!!”
The kids were very grateful for the letters but I learnt my lesson and in future years we did it after lunch instead of at night and not after The Money Challenge. Even under these more controlled conditions it was always a highly emotional exercise. Many kids thanked me and rated it as the best thing at the camp and it wasn’t just the kids who appreciated it, many parents thanked me for the opportunity to write the letter and for the closeness it had prompted in their relationship with their teenager.
Every year the camp was a huge hit and one year a group of year eleven students who’d been on it the previous year came to me asking for another camp. I was happy to accommodate them but I told them it would have to be something very different in style. Thus was born the Year 11 Leadership Camp which evolved into the Cool School Race Camp. It started small the first year, with 24 kids split into three groups, each with a staff member accompanying them on an urban orienteering exercise that lasted for three days. Born out of a simple exercise I’d seen on another program called SPYE and similar in style to the tv show The Amazing Race, the groups had to navigate their way around the city via public transport and find public art, statues and sculptures and all sorts of landmarks, and take pictures of them to prove they’d found them. Each picture was worth points according to how difficult they were to find. The staff were there only as supervisors not leaders and they were not allowed to tell the kids where to go or what to do, to answer questions or lead the groups. The students were responsible for all their own decisions- and consequences!
Each student had a strict budget of $30 for the camp, from which they had to pay for all their transport, food and expenses except for dinner on the second night when we bought pizzas for everyone. Managing their money was a challenge in budgeting and priorities. Watching groups argue about whether to spend 99c on a bottle of home brand lemonade or a loaf of bread was funny. Completing each challenge on the camp earned points and this included the teams that had the most money left at the end. Most groups worked out that it was better to pool their money and share their resources, usually choosing one person to be the holder of the group’s funds. The most memorable money incident happened one year when within an hour of the camp commencing I got a call from a student to say he had left his wallet on the first bus they’d caught and had lost all of the group’s money.
I said, “What do you want me to do about it?”
He asked where they would get replacement funds and was shocked when I said, there were no replacement funds, they were responsible for all of their actions and decisions and their consequences and they would have to work out what to do about it! To their great credit they rose to the challenge and survived for three days by begging, busking and bartering their way around the city. They discovered that shopkeepers could be quite sympathetic and supportive when they learned the students were on a leadership camp and ended up with an abundant supply of donated food.
To add to the challenge, students had to carry everything with them in backpacks, and, they didn’t know where they were going! By that I mean, they weren’t told where they were camping each night, they had to solve a series of puzzles and clues in order to work out their destination. The first year they camped at a traditional campsite but in subsequent years campsite one was usually a league football ground such as Perth Oval or Perry Lakes stadium with the kids sleeping in tents. There were lots of challenges on the camp but in another example of unintended consequences, late one night at Perry Lakes the sprinklers came on and started soaking kids’ gear, their tents and them. When I booked the stadium nobody had thought to tell the maintenance staff to turn off the sprinkler system for the night!
The teachers were certain I had done it on purpose and the fact that I was sleeping in the grandstand only heightened their suspicion, but, even though I had made the camp as challenging as I could, I had not gone to that length! Ironically, the next time we used Perry Lakes, a few years later I made sure to tell the booking agent that the sprinklers had to be turned off on the oval in the middle of the running track. I was sure I’d taken care of everything but to my dismay, late that night, the sprinklers came on again but this time, only on the grassed area surrounding the oval! They had turned off the main sprinklers but not the perimeter ones and sure enough, a few kids had set up their tents in the “wrong” place. John Hackett was now 100% certain I was guilty!
Year 11 campers at Perry Lakes, before the sprinkler incident.
For campsite two I arranged for the campers to stay the night at a school somewhere in Perth with the kids sleeping in the gym. Again they didn’t know where they were going and the clues were to be found on a puzzle on the internet. First they had to solve a cryptic puzzle to obtain a phone number which they rang to get the web address and password they needed. Each question on the puzzle had to be answered by surfing the internet to find information. The answers were the password to the next question. Once they had solved all the questions they were given addresses of places such as businesses from which they could obtain the location of campsite two. I enlisted people all over Perth to assist with the camp.
One year my friend Sally had the answer on her answering machine and she delighted in listening to the kids’ messages as they desperately sought the answer they needed. I should mention here that the kids were not allowed to use mobile phones and could only use phone booths to make calls (remember them?). Many business owners were very happy to be part of the adventure and to deliver the highly prized envelopes containing the campsite location to triumphant groups.
On the final day of the camp we relieved the kids of their backpacks as they set off on the final race segment of the camp. They received a series of clues revealing their next checkpoint and a set of challenges to complete at each one such as bowling two strikes at a tenpin bowling alley, hitting a hole-in-one at a mini golf course, paddling a kayak across the river or assembling a model made out of plumbing parts at Bunnings. It was a desperate race to the finish line at the end of an exhausting three days. Each year I tried to come up with new challenges and ideas for the camp. One year the location of campsite one was in a display ad in The West Australian newspaper but my finest moment was convincing Myf Warhurst to announce the clue on her radio show on Triple J. To ensure the groups tuned in I hired a plane to tow a banner behind it and fly up and down the Swan River at a set time. The banner read, “Listen to Myf on JJJ between 11-12.”
The camp grew in size and popularity every year and, as its reputation spread other schools wanted to get involved. By the time I last ran the camp there were over 200 students and 35 staff from 6 schools participating. The feedback from students was invariably positive with kids saying it was the most challenging and memorable experience of their school lives. The final validation came from parents who rang or wrote to me to say their son or daughter had not stopped talking about the camp for days.
There were many funny memories but my favourite was the day John called me to check whether the picture of the castle the kids were looking for was near Armadale? Remember, teachers were not allowed to give information, directions or answers, the kids were in charge whether they were right or wrong. I confided to John that , no, it wasn’t near Armadale. He said, I’m walking down the SW Highway, it’s 40 degrees, the kids are going the wrong way and I’m not allowed to tell them am I? “You know the rules John!” “You bastard” he replied before I hung up!
Bridge swinging on the Challenge Adventure Program prompted the police to ask what we were doing!
I was always open to opportunities at Carine. I initiated the Challenge Adventure Program, aimed at boosting the confidence of kids with low self-esteem by taking them on a series of adventure activities such as abseiling, mountain biking, hiking, camping and bridge swinging. One day we took the group canoeing on the upper Swan River. All seemed to be going well until a couple of hours into the paddle the river kept getting narrower which didn’t make sense. Eventually we pulled up on the narrow bank and I got out to investigate and discovered to my dismay that we had gone the wrong way on the river and were miles away from our intended destination! This was in the days of the brick mobile phones and I had the embarrassing task of ringing the school to say the kids would be late getting back! By the time I got a lift to where we had left the bus, drove it back to the kids and they had carried the canoes several hundred metres through a vineyard to load them on the trailer and then drove back to school we were nearly three hours late! The weirdest part was that neither the other teacher or I thought we were going the wrong way, the water seemed to be flowing in that direction and we were none-the-wiser until the river became a creek!
Laurie Haynes and his two boys, Travis and Beau.
My mate Laurie Haynes who was chaplain at Rockingham HS had been to America and experienced a 30-day wilderness hike with at-risk teenagers. He was keen to start something like it in Western Australia and enlisted my support along with Steve Gallagher from Como HS and thus the Wilderness Intervention Program was born. We did two reconnaissance hikes in the Stirling Ranges in preparation and then took six kids on a ten day hike, starting from the eastern end up the aptly named “Misery” then hiking along the ridge, over the Three Arrows before culminating at Bluff Knoll, the highest point in WA. The philosophy of the WIP was non-direct intervention, with natural consequences being allowed to shape the kids’ choices and responses. The participants were identified as being ‘at-risk’ and the hope was that the wilderness experience would challenge them and their models of behaviour and attitudes towards themselves and other people.
The WIP was memorable for two reasons. The first was that two of the kids rebelled because it was so hard and they were well out of their comfort zone. So much so in fact that they did a runner! We were forced to change plans and go in pursuit of them. Laurie was like a wilderness guru and anticipated their every move, deducing that they would descend the third Arrow track and head back to the place we were dropped off. The kids didn’t know we had a phone and he used it to contact the local police. Much to their horror the cops were waiting for the runaways at the bottom of the track! We caught up to them a couple of hours later, further souring their mood! Because they had taken off we were obliged to contact their parents to let them know what had happened and to seek their permission for the kids to stay on the program. The parents agreed that it would be better for them to continue than to “take the easy way out”. We didn’t tell the kids we had spoken to their parents and they breathed blue murder when we told them they weren’t going home and that they would have to continue to the end.
One was so incensed that he demanded we call his mother and that she would come down straight away and pick him up! (A four hour drive.)
I said I thought she would want him to complete the program and he swore that I had no idea what his mother would want.
I replied, “I think I know more about your Mum than you give me credit for!”.
When their anger finally subsided they had a change of heart and committed themselves to finishing the hike with a positive attitude.
Hiking and abseiling in the Stirling Ranges
The second thing to happen came at my expense. After a tough hike through dense scrub to the top of one of the peaks in the Stirlings the boys all sat down on the rocks for a drink. For reasons I can’t really explain, I chose that moment for what was supposed to be a little joke. Taking a few jogging steps and uttering the fateful words, “I’ve carried this parachute long enough” I pretended I was going to jump off the rocks and go papa-gliding! Unfortunately I under-estimated how much momentum I would reach with a heavy backpack on a slippery slope and suddenly I was falling and tumbling down the hill crashing through the scrub and coming to a rest several metres down the hill. Laurie and Steve were just as stunned as the boys at this sudden turn of events. Sadly for me I broke my arm in the fall along with several cuts and bruises and a fat lip. The boys saw this as their ticket home, believing we wouldn’t be able to continue with me being injured. It was with a certain amount of macho pride that I told them we weren’t finished and that I would carry on with my arm in a splint and a sling.
I needed help getting my pack on and off but other than that was able to continue and we duly finished the trip two days later.
I did another WIP the following year, hiking and canoeing on the Blackwood River near Walpole. Thankfully there were no mishaps or pranks gone awry on this one.
The WIP kids and staff at the end of the trip, me bearing the scars of my mishap.
During the school holidays I often organised activities for the kids. The most ambitious was a 24 hour challenge that started with a bike ride around the Swan River from Perth to Fremantle and back followed by dinner at Sizzler, the much-loved and sadly missed buffet restaurant. After dinner we went to a movie before heading off to Zone 3 to play laser tag from midnight to 6am! Onto Macca’s for breakfast before delivering the tired but happy kids back to school (and going home to bed!).
One last memory/confession about my time at Carine.
After one of our Grand Final victories in the Channel 7 Cup I took the footy team to Zone 3 for a 3 hour session ending at midnight. It was a very hot night and after I drove them back to school and parked the bus I felt like going for a swim in the school pool. The kids had all gone home and I had a key to the pool. It was after 1am and feeling daring I decided to become, what I felt fairly safe in saying, the only chaplain ever to go skinny dipping in their school pool! Remember those unintended consequences? There was no-one around, it was dark and late, it was safe surely? I stripped off and headed for the diving board when all of a sudden the floodlights came on! Unbeknownst to me there were trip light switches installed on the pool floodlights!!!! I quickly jumped in the pool and enjoyed a more modest cool off than planned!
My years at Carine were wonderful, all the more so because of the fantastic staff I worked with and the friendships I made.
The support of the churches and the district council enabled me to do my job and Barb, the council chairperson was invaluable both professionally and personally.
Taking Jim Selkirk abseiling off the top of Observation City on a staff PD Day.
The school principal, Cesare Digiulio was outstanding and a great supporter of the chaplaincy. I loved to joke that I was the only chaplain who could legitimately serve both God and Cesare! I still ring him occasionally for a chat and he has provided glowing commendations for me as a referee.
The office staff were brilliant and helped me out countless times when I was trying to beat a deadline or get something organised/typed/distributed.
I worked closely with Chris the school psych and Gina the YEO on student services programs including running Drugs in Perspective for parents and we made a great team.
I always needed staff support to run the camps and never had any trouble getting teachers to help out.
The Year Coordinators were among my closest allies, people like Tony Williamson, Paul Moore, Rob Tozer, John Hackett and Mike Denby were great to work with.
I found my closest friends in the Phys Ed dept. Scott Underwood was my main supporter with the footy teams and we became mates, playing beach volleyball together. I credit Undie with introducing me to the joys of fantasy football. He was part of a comp at another school and I immediately said we had to get one started at Carine. It ran for many years and built a great camaraderie between us all. In turn, that led to me instigating the CFFL- Chaplain’s Fantasy Football League- with a bunch of footy-loving fellow chaplains. I will write more about the CFFL in a future chapter but suffice to say here it is still going strong nearly 20 years later.
My closest mate at Carine was a larger-than-life character, Bruce Boelen, a phys edder and year coordinator. We did stacks of stuff together: abseiling instructing on the year 9 camp and outdoor ed, hiking and rafting camps on the Avon with SU, the year 10 and year 11 camps, the prefects camp, sport and student services programs. He’s a very funny man and we laughed so much when we worked together. Late nights on camps were memorable and because we had established so much trust he was very supportive of me and opened the floor for me to have an open forum around the campfire where kids could ask any questions they wanted in a safe and comfortable environment. After I moved to Busselton I often stayed at Bruce and Lisa’s place- in the Holt wing- when I came up to Perth, and I still enjoy catching up with him when I get over to WA. I was genuinely touched when he wrote on my farewell card, “What do you do when your best mate leaves?” I love Bruce, a truly great bloke.
There were also hundreds of great kids I met and worked with over my 11 years at the school.
John told me recently that he had run into a bunch of kids from the footy team at the pub a couple of nights before and they had asked after me and wanted to know how I was going. It was a huge privilege to serve the school in that capacity for over a decade and it was with a lot of sadness, and fabulous memories that I bid farewell to Carine in 2004.
Believe it or not, there is a lot more I could say about my time at Carine but I need to move on.
