Googa is a four week outdoor education program for Year 10 students at Grace. Skills learnt at Googa assist students to grow academically and personally in the final two years of school and beyond. The aim of this journey is for the students to hone self-reliance and team work skills, and understand their spiritual path.
The Googa Outdoor Education Centre is owned and operated by three Lutheran Schools: Grace Lutheran College; Good Shepherd Lutheran College, Noosa; Grace Lutheran Primary School, Clontarf. The Centre is a former forestry camp set in the beautiful Blackbutt Ranges and is located nine kilometres from the township of Blackbutt which is on the Kilcoy-Yarraman Road. The Centre has a lease over six hectares of land adjacent to a further 120 hectares owned and managed by Googa. The centre also has access to large areas of State Forests and private land for hiking and camping.
Facilities at the camp are deliberately simple, giving visiting students a taste of yesteryear. There are six dormitories consisting of three cabins, a kitchen and a cookhouse in each. Each cabin sleeps four, giving a total of twelve per dorm.
Kitchens are fully equipped with the basics - crockery, cutlery, pots, pans and other utensils. Cooking takes place over an open fire in the cookhouse. Wood fired ovens are also operational in all cookhouses. The site has a central food preparation area equipped with a stainless steel kitchen and appliances. This area is the central food handling and distribution facility for our students.
Other facilities on the property include the high ropes course, pamper pole, dingaling, multi-purpose hall and maintenance workshops. The camp area and surrounding forest have been mapped for orienteering and many small group activities are scattered around the property.
The Centre has laying hens, cattle, sheep, a vegetable garden and an avocado plantation. Students are involved in working in these areas under the supervision of staff in addition to being rostered on the daily operation of a dairy. Googa is accredited with Safe Food Queensland as a dairy producer and processor enabling the centre to provide pasteurized milk to students.
As far as possible, the physical environment has been left as it was in the days of the forestry camp. No electrical appliances, apart from refrigerators, are used in the dormitories.
A major emphasis of the program is to experience a simple, old fashioned lifestyle sampling bush life, a sense of remote living and making your own entertainment. Part of the experience is gained by leaving behind many of modern life's facilities and by not allowing the use of radios, CD players, MP3 players, Ipods, magazines, mobile phones, computer games, digital cameras, hair dryers etc. or the consumption of soft drinks, sweets and chewing gum.
Life at Googa always includes daily chores and each participant is expected to look after both their own basic needs and their share of the groups responsibilities. There is an emphasis on both working as part of a group and on accepting individual responsibility. Each participant should expect to be extended physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.
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