A few weeks ago, I travelled north for two days to spend time with a Year 9 group at Eungai Creek, half an hour north of Kempsey. The property is working brilliantly so far, and my visit confirmed so many of the reasons why we were so keen to establish this campus. 

I started at Dalaigur pre-school in Kempsey itself. It is a place of high needs, but not as high as the exuberance and positivity of so many of the children there. Our boys spent time with a group of four-year-olds, kicking balls, playing chasings or cars, and giving the pre-schoolers invaluable one-on-one attention. I sat with a Newington boy and a three-year-old for quite a while in the sandpit as we buried and rediscovered coloured beads. This is the sort of service we hope to have in this community.

Ours won’t just be a fly-in and out visit, but a sustained, positive and reliable presence at the pre-schools month in month out, year in year out.  

Head of Campus Mark Morrison tells the boys he wants them to be out of their comfort zone and, indeed, ‘uncomfortable’ but by that he means something very different to the more traditional ‘endurance’ model of some camps where you run marathons with a backpack full of rocks. He means situations like looking after four-year-olds and sharing in a community that is very different to their own.  

Another example of this is the gratitude ritual around the evening campfire, which required everyone to be open and honest. Mark didn’t let kids get away with a cascade of superficial answers such as ‘I’m grateful for the food’ (although the food was excellent). Their answers had to be thoughtful, and everyone was expected to be a part of it.  As it was happening, I could feel the answers like sinews connecting this group of 20 disparate boys in open and honest ways. What I was grateful for was seeing the Eungai project, which we planned for years, finally come to life with actual boys sitting around an actual campfire.  

Then there was the ‘Father Sun’ sunrise practice. First thing in the morning, we walked for a couple of minutes up a hill to see the sun rise and were taken through a breathing/mindfulness routine as the orange light spread across the sky. For the boys, and for me too, it strengthened a sense of centredness and calm as we were about to start the day. If the kids could try to import that sense of steadiness as they started their days at Stanmore, they would be set up pretty well each morning.  

I got to be a bit uncomfortable too. From talking personally around the campfire, to joining in the camp expectation that all staff members were to be called by their first names (which I made sure would not continue when the kids got back to Stanmore) I too got to be challenged, no more so than the second day’s ‘learn to surf’ lesson. It was made clear I was expected to be a full participant. I am well into my 50s and although I have always enjoyed bodysurfing, I have never got up on a board in my life.  

But I did the preliminary ‘run/swim/run’ test and passed the water safety tests. Then I was taught the technique for standing on the board. Incredibly, it involves going from lying to standing on the board in one single, fluid motion. I can’t do that on land, which quickly became clear as we all practiced in a line. I was given the special ‘late middle-aged guy’ version, which involved an intermediate, get on your knees, effort. And then we were in the water.  

Trying to get up on a board for the first time ever in front of 30 14-year-old boys was the very epitome of uncomfortable. Hopefully most of them were too busy trying to get up on the board themselves to pay too much attention to me. But my regular flailing and falling into the water was certainly not solitary or done in the privacy of my own beach. I did manage to get up one and a half times – well, maybe 1.1 times. But at least on that one time I stood on the board all the way to the shore and got to step off the board onto the sand. I might now retire from surf school with this success to hold on to.  

The opportunities for learning and character growth came in the gaps and small places as well.

I bumped into Neville John Donovan, a local Ngambaa man who works on the property. He told me the moving story of his involvement in the reburial last year of an ancestor whose bones had been in a British museum for generations. He also showed me a nulla-nulla he was carving. I walked across with him to where about five boys were having lunch and introduced him to them. Before long they were all talking, passing the nulla nulla around and hearing this most incredible story of reburial. These are the sort of experiences that are caught, not taught.  

My most pure example of this, though, was a tiny incident that means a lot. One morning a boy came to breakfast with a small amount of toothpaste foam on the side of his mouth. Another boy gave him a tissue to wipe it off. A third boy said: ‘Why have you brushed your teeth before breakfast’, then two others jumped on, saying ‘Yeah … what’s the point of that?’  The boy could have shrugged, laughed and the entire incident would have been forgotten in 20 seconds, apart from the first boy’s obscure sense that he had been a bit picked on out of the blue. Instead, Mark Morrison jumped straight onto it.  

‘Don’t judge!’ he said, very firmly. ‘What does it matter to you whether someone brushes their teeth before or after breakfast? What are you going on about it for?’ Then another boy said, slightly abashed, ‘Yeah, I brush my teeth before breakfast’. And a second boy chimed in with ‘Yeah, me too’. And then I had to say: ‘I brush my teeth hours before I have breakfast’. On one hand, the incident was so small I have no recollection who any of the boys were, apart from the one with the toothpaste. But if kids can have a sense of ‘live and let live’ for the small things, it means they can be more inclusive and accepting of larger things too. As Luke says at 6: 36-37: ‘Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven’. We are in the business of making good humans here at Newington and I am convinced that with its hundreds of learning opportunities Eungai Creek will increasingly become a part of that project.  

Anyway, just about all the kids loved it. I have heard stories of boys approaching the experience with real trepidation but wanting to go straight back when they were finished. The eight-week experience next year will be a dimensionally different experience again, with not only tailored, site-specific, academic work, but plenty of opportunities to widen their horizons, contribute to communities, learn how to act with integrity, and reaffirm that facing this world with a combination of kindness and courage is the best way to set yourself up for a life well lived. And all while having a great time and choosing freely when to brush their teeth.