Diary

Rotary Club of Port Pirie

Diary entries of Wales GSE Team

Thursday 24th of September 2009 - 01:11:48 AM
Day 7
September 24th Today I spent the whole day at Golden Grove School and loved being in classes with students. the school was fantastic and the head obviously very proud of his school with good reason to be! Some obvious differences were A woodlands outdoor learning area, Fly Start program for 2 year olds, 1/2 day sessions for 3 year olds and full days for 4 year olds. Onlhy up to 11 year olds attend primary school, the school was the result of an amalgamation 6 years ago so was a mix of old and new, every class had an Interactive Whiteboad and they had done so for several years (They are expensive to run due to high maintenance I was told). Lyn, my tour guide gave me her undivded attention fro the whole time I was there which I was extremely grateful of. In the afternoon I had an appointment with Lyn Herde a counsellor from the Pembrokeshire City Council however she couldn't make it and in a way I was a little relieved asI was feeling exhausted. One of the Learning Support Officers went home especially to get me some of her freshly made Welsh cakes which I had at afternoon tea with Pam and Denver. I also met Pam's lifetime friend Sue, who I immediately connected with too. I think I felt so at home there because Pam reminded me so much of Jill (Greg's mum), she loved dogs horses and making sure everything was nice for me. Our presentation went really well and I made a conscious effort to keep to my script after going on a bit last time! Our questions focussed on Aboriginal rights and injustices and I think we all did a good job answering them and explaining how we address the needs of Aboriginal people in Australia.



Wednesday 23rd of September 2009 - 01:10:22 AM
Day 6
September 23rd This morning we all sadly farewelled our hosts and after just 2 days we had become attached. I felt really sad to be saying goodbye to Colin and Janet, wondering if I would ever see them again as they aren’t coming to the conference. We took a coastal road South towards Pembroke and met our new hosts. My second hosts are just as lovely as my first. I have Pam, Denver and William (a black smooth coated retriever). Their home is on a country lane and is a beautiful old stone cottage that looks like it could be the setting of a fairytale. My vocational visit today made me feel right at home as I spent all afternoon in a school with a special unit which is almost identical to our school’s Special Class. I had a very captive audience of 7 students, telling me all they had learnt about Australia during their almost full year of work on Australia. They had lots of questions, mostly about the weather, deadly creatures and wanted to know if I had ever been attacked by a shark or knew any one who had been attacked! I was treated like royalty and they all loved the koalas I left for them. Dinner again was absolutely beautiful but I was so full from eating so much over the past few days I struggled to get through everything. I met David and Margaret (Pam and Denver’s good friends, and Adrian and Emma (their son and daughter-in-law) and of course not forgetting Marmite their gorgeous 10 week old Cocker Spaniel! I couldn’t have been better matched to my hosts with Pam collecting Teddies and Denver a great Harry Potter fan.



Tuesday 22nd of September 2009 - 01:08:02 AM
Day 5
September 22nd We saw our first Welsh rain this morning with a light mist falling until about 11:30am but by the end of the day we were once again bathed in sunshine… not at all what we were expecting of the weather. Today we all took part in our first vocational visits. I visited a Welsh medium secondary school and met with Barbara, a school counsellor. It was a good introduction to my visits as Barbara was able to explain the role of counsellors in secondary schools in Wales which is very much client based and quite different from my role as counsellor, which is more whole school and class program based. Following my visit I was lucky enough to have time to do some shopping in Aberystwyth and spent some time with a previous GSE team member, Richard. Richard’s recollections of his trip to New Zealand 17 years ago very much matched our experiences to date…. lots of food and much conversation and smiling. At lunch in the National Welsh Library cafeteria everyone seemed pleased with their first vocational visits with no one happier than Philip as he had been up to his knees in mud! Our tour guide at the library gave us an entertaining and informative insight into Welsh culture and history all laced with a quick witted humour that we have come to associate with the Welsh. The guide’s strong connection to Wales and his love of his country and heritage shone through. Our first club meeting was a great success with Tony the DG telling us we were right up there with the best of all the GSE presentations he had seen… what a relief! They didn’t seem to notice that Philip had a different tie to Ben and Mark. Mark had several uniform malfunctions with his tie no where to be found…it could be in Frankfurt, Paris or who knows where, and a button missing from his jacket. However, like a true professional he didn’t let anything phase him and got on with the show. It will be with sadness that we leave our first hosts. They have absolutely spoilt us and made us feel so welcome. Tomorrow we head south to Pembroke.



Monday 21st of September 2009 - 01:05:22 AM
Day 4
September 21st This morning started with another cooked breakfast, overlooking the ocean from the Atlantic Hotel at Porthcawl. We all packed up (some of us with fewer items to pack than others!) and were met by Mike Parry and Robert Elward to head off to meet the Rotary Club of Aberystwyth. The winding road towards Builth showed us some more of the magnificent green, rolling hills with a small stretch of Morseland along the way. We stopped for a photo opportunity with low cloud, snowy white sheep and a few wild ponies dotting the hillside. Having met our first hosts at the “Little Chef” in Builth we continued on towards Aberystwyth, stopping at an old stone pub for a buffet lunch. Ben tried his first Welsh pork pie. The view from the back of the pub was amazing, overlooking a valley with a small waterfall at the bottom. We continued on through more winding narrow roads to the Reidol Hydro Power Station to begin our tour. We watched a brief film on the building of the station in the late 1950s through to it’s opening in July 1964. The station uses a system of 3 reservoirs to run water through turbines to create electricity which is fed back into the national grid. The station itself blends into the environment and has been beautifully landscaped to have minimal visual impact on the natural environment. Environmentally friendly and with 1400mm of rainfall annually it is highly sustainable. Certainly in stark contrast to Port Augusta’s 200mm a year and brown coal power station.



Sunday 20th of September 2009 - 01:02:30 AM
Day 3
September 20th The day started with a fantastic full Welsh breakfast. It was enough to keep me full for the entire day! We spent the morning walking through the shops in Porthcawl, taking in the relaxed feel and chatting to friendly locals. Our biggest achievement for today, in my opinion, was organising our SIM cards for our phones….cheap, easy to install and best of all I got to talk to Greg and the kids. We had a “light” lunch on the seafront and then headed back to the hotel to meet Robert before walking down to Bob Lucas’s home. Robert gave us lots of background information on Wales and showed us on a map where we would be heading over the next four weeks. We also met four of the outgoing Welsh team who are heading to district 9500 on Friday. They were great, offering lots of advice and inside information on Wales. We spent the remainder of the afternoon at the Atlantic hotel chatting to the Welsh girls filling them in on what to expect in SA while the guys downed a few more beers and Philip Diet Pepsi’s. Robert tried his best to help us with our luggage woes and until 8:15pm we held out hope that all would be well… however it is not! My luggage has at least arrived in Wales but customs won’t clear it til the morning and the boys still have no idea where their stuff is. It really put a dampener on our evening meal with us now trying to plan for having no uniform for Tuesday and even discussing never seeing the boys gear again!



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