2002 Regional Camp - Queenstown

We arrived to see majestic snow covered mountains from a relatively tropical Dunedin as it had been snowing all day in Queenstown. After unpacking and downing many biscuits and multiple cups of Milo we retired to bed. Mr. Evans and the others from Christchurch had still not arrived; after 5 hours and many stops for V, they arrived at 12:30 in the morning.

Mrs Kettings was two steps ahead of everyone and we woke and dressed long before the instructors were up at 6:30 – no running in our p.j.’s for us! Then we heard we needed togs. Togs?! Hmm… After a run and fun warm-up in the crisp Queenstown air, we sure found out what the togs were for, BRRRRRRRrrrr. A quick dip in Lake Wakatipu would be enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, let alone us mere mortals! Two seconds under the water was enough to numb my hands and feet for a good half hour and make putting on my shoes a tricky feat.

We stumbled to breakfast just in time to see the sun rise over the mountains. Breakfast was awesome with about five different cereals, fruit, yoghurt, toast and spreads; a wide variety and an enormous amount that was to become a trend at every meal, breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and supper! Mrs Herbison, Nicola and Nikki did an amazing job in the kitchen; I have never been so well fed in my life!

Training started out with punches and upper body pad work before moving on to legs and then patterns after morning tea. Mr. Patterson had many words of wisdom on offer, tips we all tried to soak up and memorise. Each session was about an hour and a half, not hard out, but using enough strength to make us ravenously hungry and our muscles ache.

In the afternoon, we utilised everyone’s amazing natural talent and good looks to make the greatest B grade martial arts movie ever! (Seriously!!). A classical good versus evil Taekwon-Do love story - with the beautiful and skilled Thu Thach starring as Juliet and the brave and handsome Nick Eley as Romeo it was bound to be a success. To make a short film even shorter it all ended in a massive fight scene with a big finale involving Mr. Evans causing Mr. Patterson to take another swim in the lake. Everyone died except for Danzebar/Tibolt who died twice and the Good Instructor (Mr. Evans) who didn’t even die once. Saturday training finished with board breaking skills. Natalie, Kanhchana and I broke our first real boards and Mr. Patterson broke an impressive seven board turning kick. We sure ended up with plenty of firewood!

After a ginormous meal of lasagne and chocolate pudding we had a nice nutrition talk from Nikki where everyone discovered their food pyramids were upside down. This turned out to be great for Mr Evans as he had already drunk plenty of V. Then Mr Evans and Mr Patterson proceeded to turn themselves upside down in an instalment of their ongoing handstand competition. After a fun quiz where some smarty-pants knew all the answers, I won’t mention any names: THU; some of the less tired and some of the more inebriated hit Queenstown with a bang. The more tired fell first and retired after the third pub while the hard (or silly) stayed out until 3.30am.

Natalie Filer, Carolyn Faithfull, Thu Thach and Lucy Langston

This meant a later start on Sunday with patterns before breakfast making a great start to the day. As we all struggled out of bed with aching muscles, where did those come from? Tash was heard to say, “Mum I feel very fragile”, which sums up exactly how everyone felt. The morning was spent doing fun stuff with knives and other weapons like baseball bats, involving self-defence. The take-home message was RUN if anyone attacks you with a knife; and don’t ever attack Mr. Patterson with a knife because he will stab you over 50 times!!

To sum up the camp was really awesome, we had a great instructor, learnt heaps and even starred in a movie. The company was good and everyone felt they had improved a huge amount. Mr Patterson, Mrs Herbison, Nicola, Nikki and Mr Herbison deserve a massive thank-you for their invaluable contributions to the camp, making it an amazing weekend.

The End....
Or is there a sequel? Maybe the evil instructor didn't die after all....