Congratulations to Forster Public School Year 5 student, Lucas Guiney, who received an excellence award in the Great Lakes Advocate’s inaugural Tell Me A Story competition.
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Over the coming weeks the GLA will publish a range of outstanding stories entered in the competition.
This is Lucas’s story.
My head was pounding as a voice inside told me to jump. I didn’t want to, but my life depended on it! Finally, I snapped back to reality just before the countdown.
3...2...1...Jump! Suddenly, I was whisked along the unstable cable at an extraordinary speed as I raced along to the end. Screech!!! No readers, that is not the sound of some bank robbers driving away, that is the sound of me smashing the brakes at high speed.
“Next two people up!” shouted the leader. I watched gravely as my two friends, Harry and James stepped up to the top. What was the reason I was so grave? Well that was because my pesky mathematics brain had gone into overdrive and calculated the chances of being spooked, 100%. As James stepped up to go, he winked at me which meant that he and Harry had something up their sleeves. Whoosh! Had they survived the frightening trip? I couldn’t tell because the cable was over one kilometre long!
This event happened on Wednesday morning. The leaders, of which there were 6, would try and make you conquer your fears, even if you didn’t want to. Some examples of the activities were: Acid World, Gargantuan Swing and the Dual Flying Fox. Do you have any guess why I listed these activities? That’s because they were the worst activities! Sometimes the leaders would joke about this place being an ‘Amusement Park’. Well if it was, then the only people coming here would be soldiers because it is more like a boot camp!
Every single person at my school had to go to the place that trained people for a living. Now why would everyone in my school have to go there? Well this was because my school was called SPFL. (Strengthening People for Living). The School loved to strengthen people. They had crafty ways of challenging people, mainly physically like attaching someone to a rock at the world’s most extreme beach. Or making them join the army.
Camp was not everyone’s favourite place. After the kids had been subjected to all this each year, they were always a lot stronger. Right, “Surely, they’d have to keep us here because they wouldn’t have anyone to teach?” I thought. I was wrong. We still went. And of course, the teachers made it as deadly as possible. Out of the whole trip, the bus trip was one of the scariest parts.
When we got there, they put us into ‘cabins’. The cabins were as stinky as a skunk, as secure as a high security prison and had a wonderful atmosphere! (I think Not!) The leaders wasted no time getting us on to our activities.
First Acid World, next Gargantuan Swing and then finally Bush Commando where the teachers had tasers! One after another we were hurt and disabled via the activities we did. It was the daredevils and the smart people who survived.
Finally, the sought-after day but at the same time the dreaded day, had come. The day where we survivors would go on the biggest scare... The Dual Flying Fox! On this ride you go down a very steep slope. As we waited for our guaranteed pain I knew we couldn’t escape this time. There were only two options. Either jump and try to survive the drop of 1000 metres or try and survive the Dual Flying Fox. Suddenly, I had an idea. I gave all the survivors my harness’s. At this point I knew that everyone, including the ones that were back at school, relied on me.
As the hours passed, the pain-o-meter went higher and higher until it was at its pinnacle. There were only 4 people that hadn’t gone. As Jesse and I stepped up to the zipline, we clicked our harnesses onto the cable. It had been a nice time while I wasn’t in pain. We jumped!
“Woah!” I screamed, breath-taken, “That was the worst nightmare ever!” All that, and the Dual Flying Fox, was only a dream?! I couldn’t believe my eyes. But what I did know what was going on, wasn’t right. I checked my clock. It was six o clock. “Ugh!” I sighed. Today was school camp. But one little thing nagged in the back of my head.
Was this really going to happen today or was it just a figure in my twisted little mind... Who knows!
