Camp was held from Dec. 23 until Jan. 1. The campers were served by 18 staff members, including Evan Manning from Canada and Ricardo Villanueva from Mexico.

Most felt that the open spaces and being away from suburbia was a plus for this camp. It was a friendly camp with everyone "waving" to each other (well, some call it the Aussie salute) because of the very friendly and sticky flies.

Relationships and Activities

The typical camp day began with breakfast and a 35-minute Christian Living class. This year's theme was relationships, including with God as our personal Father and with Jesus as our older Brother. Other classes showed that a righteous man chooses friends carefully and showed what it means to be your brother's keeper. We also had three dating seminars for the older campers.

Campers were divided into four teams of mixed ages to do activities during the day. The day was divided up into four periods with an hour and a half break in the middle of the day to eat lunch, play pool or foosball (table soccer) or just hang out with friends.

Activities included a low ropes course, volleyball, touch rugby football, public speaking workshop, dance classes, canoeing, orienteering, crafts (where the campers made toys for disabled children) and archery.

The campers also attended four personal leadership classes where they were taught about the problem of binge drinking and given information on drugs, body image and relaxation exercises as they visualized their goals for the future.

On Wednesday and Thursday the Outbreak Adventure staff came in to supervise the challenge activities. This was tiring and challenging, especially for those who were not very good with heights. All the campers did very well, and there were some great examples of perseverance and trying things that were hard and scary.

Campers rode on a 150-meter (almost 500-foot) flying fox, scrambled up a vertical climbing playpen, worked around a series of challenges on the high ropes and, the favorite of all, experienced the giant swing. The campers were pulled up by their team, and then they released a type of rip cord and swung through the air. You could hear the screams all over camp. The "girliest" scream was by our oldest boy camper from Mackay... we know who you were.

Several of the teams also attempted the milk crate building challenge. Each camper tried to build a tower straight up made of milk crates. As they went higher, another camper would throw up the next milk crate. The Wambaroo Camp's record is 21 crates high and two girls, Penny McQueen, from Victoria and Denielle Tearle, from Queensland, both climbed to18 crates.

We had a special sports challenge this year. The New Zealand campers and some from New South Wales who had New Zealand parents challenged the rest of the world to a "serious" game of touch rugby. The game began with a haka (a war cry New Zealand teams use to put fear in the other team) led by Pau Marshall, from Sydney. The game was close but "unfortunately" the New Zealand team won... again.

Evening Activities

After the evening meal we had activities that included seminars, dancing, spotlighting and games in the bush.

On Wednesday evening we had our annual speech banquet. The dining room was decorated and the campers dressed up for an evening of speeches that were only prepared in between activities a day or two before.

A highlight this year was Australian Idol with video clips and judges similar to Australian Idol —Holden, Marcia and Dicko. It was a great show with the winning act being Joshua Barton from Queensland playing guitar with Ricardo Villanueva, a staff member from Mexico. They sang "La Bamba."

On the last Friday evening campers made cards to send to members who had made a donation to contribute to the camp. This was followed by hymn singing, with a number of campers leading songs.

Of course the last evening is always a highlight. The four activity teams had added dance steps to a progressive salsa, called a rueda, and had a dance off to see which team had created the best steps.

Camper Comments

We asked some of the younger campers what they learned from camp. Here are a few of the responses:

•"I learned how to communicate with guys more, I learned how to push myself on and step out of my comfort zone and I learned how to plan my goals."

•"I learned to be encouraging and have a go at anything. I also learned to trust my team with the harnesses."

•"I learned who a true friend is and what one can do to improve a relationship."

•"I learned about relationships, to avoid drugs and how God sees us."

We received the following comments from a couple of older campers who have been to a number of camps at different locations:

•"I have heard that you have booked the same site for next year. That's great; it was definitely the best out of the three areas I've been to. Even the flies weren't that bad."

•"Once again it was absolutely fantastic and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Why did I miss all those years?! I hear you've booked the same camp for next year. It was a great setting there, and the activities were the best I've ever had."

Finally, thanks to all the campers who came to camp for being such a fine group to serve and have fun with.