Royal National Park-Learning in Outdoor Education in Australia

For my Learning in Outdoor Education class at the University of Sydney, we took an amazing day trip to the Royal National Park; a place that has no doubt been one of the major highlights of my time in Aussie!

Banana Muffins!

It was 8pm on Friday night and all of our roommates were getting ready to go out, when Niko and I headed to Woolworths to fetch some banana bread ingredients; the signature snack to bring on our outdoor field trips. After looking up some basic recipes online, we decided to add on our own touches (extra everything) which made the bread awesome! It was difficult to allow ourselves only one muffin when they came out of the oven!

Niko stirring up the batter.

As I pulled myself from bed at 7am on this cold, gloomy Sunday morning on August 17th, little did I know I was going to have one of the best days of my to-date experiences in Australia. City life is great; there are bars, beaches, great food, and always something to keep you busy right outside of your home. But the Royal National Park opened my eyes to a whole new world just an hour outside of where I live; a place that justifies the “Australian” image I pictured in my head before hopping on that 15 hour red-eye from the U.S. just over a month ago.

            Even though the wind and rain put a damper on our coastal hike, the weather couldn’t deny the beauty of the waves, the birds, the trees, the whales, the rocks, and every aspect that makes the park such a magical place.

Here are some pictures towards the beginning of the hike (when everyone was still dry):

At this point in time I was glad to have worn my waterproof hiking boots..little did I know that the puddles in everyone else's shoes would soon be inevitable.

One of the first plants we came across was the Banksia, an interesting bush that we learned relates to the aboriginals thousands of years ago. Wayne, our guide through the park, taught us that after the flowers died, they used what was left of them to transport fire.

This is an example of the erosion that has progressed on the park's path over the years. Australia now has a budget of over a million dollars to rebuild the paths. Wayne explained that of course this is great for hiking, however it will attract more people and possible disturb the peace of the park.

We had been told in class that a student had died on this cliff just over a month before our hike. Of course it was an awful story to hear about and made us all a little nervous about walking along the cliffs, but actually seeing the exact place where the student slipped and fell created a whole new feeling. Knowing that someone had died in this exact spot so little time ago was mind-blowing, and it goes to show how careful we all have to be in such amazing places because accidents can happen to any of us.

When we finally made it down to the beach, the rain showed no mercy. Puddles of water started forming in my shoes and there wasn't one inch of my clothing that wasn't drenched. Something interesting I found during my reflection was that when the sky opened up on our group and it started down pouring by the beach, nobody was physically or mentally comfortable. At the time, most of us wanted to get back to the bus, but what our minds don’t understand is that by existing ourselves in that condition, we were allowed to physically exercise our horizons and experience feelings that none of us would have if we were sitting in our living rooms watching the rain from indoors. Anxiety is not a pleasant feeling and makes us uncomfortable, but it also brings us to places we wouldn’t have been without it where we can face our fears and often get in touch with our inner selves.

We had to huddle under a rock to eat lunch in attempts to stay clear of the rain…didn't work too well.

While reading the article on John Dewey's theories of experiential education, I found it easy to relate some of the adventures and obstacles we faced in the park to his ideas. "Dewey argued that we learn something from every experience, whether positive or negative and ones accumulated learned experience influences the nature of ones future experiences. Thus, every experience in some way influences all potential future experiences for an individual." While I was having a blast the duration of the hike, many of my peers were wet and cold due to improper attire and/or exhaustion. Dewey's continuity theory proves that one carries experiences into the future and uses them as references because people always learn, wether they are enjoying something or not.

Another article used the analogy of learning through observing. It talked about experiential learning by going to a zoo, and learning through the observation and interaction with the zoo environment, and how different that is from just reading about animals in a text book. "One makes discoveries and experiments with knowledge firsthand, instead of hearing or reading about others experiences." Instead of reading about the RNP in our classroom, we had the opportunity to physically experience the nature of it, something that can't affect us the same through text. 

In addition to experiential learning, David Kolb contributed to the theory by touching upon the "direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it." Actually being at the park and experiencing the crashing of the ocean waves, the birds chirping, the whales breaching, is an experience that can't be fulfilled by reading about it or watching it in a film. The Royal National park gave us all an opportunity to experience the wilderness of Australia hands-on, and we left the park with an awesome learning experience!

 The BEST part of the day! One of my classmates spotted a few whales breaching about a kilometer off shore. The day was beautiful, but this made it spectacular. Definitely the highlight of my day.

   Works Cited

Niell, James. "John Dewey, the Modern Father of Experiential Education."John Dewey, the Modern  Father of Experiential Education. N.p., 26 Jan. 2005. Web. 26 Aug. 2014.

"David A. Kolb on Experiential Learning." Infedorg. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Aug. 2014.

"Experiential Learning." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 Aug. 2014.