Blackwater State High School’s vision is: ‘We create excellent educational opportunities in an environment of success that inspires and supports students to achieve their full potential’. In partnership with EDU School Tours, we are excited to offer Blackwater State High School students the opportunity to participate in a USA Space Camp Tour biannually.
Taking place during the September/October school holidays, the journey began for 11 students from Years 9-12 in Orlando, Florida. Students embraced the iFly Wind Tunnel experience where they learned the physics behind the perfect way to fly and visited Boggy Creek Airboat Adventures where they learned about Native American culture and explored the Everglades via an Airboat ride. A full day was spent exploring the Kennedy Space Centre, students had lunch with Astronaut Ken Campbell and toured the launch pads on Cape Canaveral. The Orlando leg of the tour concluded with a whole day at Universal Studios where students were given a private tour of the attractions by park engineers.
The tour continued to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama where the students worked in teams with other schools from Australia to complete simulated space missions, scuba dived to model zero gravity, built model rockets and participated in activities designed to give an authentic, astronaut training experience. During the graduation ceremony where students officially became Space Camp Alumni, our students were the recipients of two of the three awards at graduation. The first of which, “The Right Stuff Award” is given to a Space Camper who is consistently contributing to their team’s success by showing excellent teamwork and leadership skills. This award was received by Year 12 student Brandon Whelan. This award was previously won by another Blackwater student on the 2016 tour – Mikaela King. The second award, “The Commander’s Cup” was given to a team of students who were outstanding in all simulated missions. The students who made up this team were Jordan Jackson, Jack Pidgeon, Tenille Rennie, Holly Green, Aiden Leishman and Dylan Trevethan. All of the Blackwater students showed outstanding behaviour, teamwork, leadership and respect and conducted themselves in a manner that would make their school and community very proud.
The last leg of the journey took the students to Nashville, Tennessee where they spent the day sightseeing before flying to San Diego, California. Students visited the U.S.S. Midway aircraft carrier, explored the famous San Diego Zoo and cheered on the San Diego Padres at a baseball game. In Pasadena our students toured NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home of the Mars Rovers and where future space missions are developed and monitored. They completed the tour with a stop at the iconic Santa Monica Pier.
Without the continued support of our community, opportunities like this one would not be possible for our students, the funds that we collectively raised made what might’ve only been a dream for some of our students, a reality.
We wish to thank our sponsors:
- BMA Blackwater Mine
- Blackwater Sports
- Breathesafe
- Central Highlands Regional Council
- CFMEU Blackwater #1 Lodge
- CFMEU Jellinbah Lodge
- Coffee Connect
- Coronado Curragh
- Country Co
- Cummins
- Davidson’s Electrical
- ETU Blackwater Mine
- G.T Hoses
- H.E.M.E
- Jellinbah Mining Pty Ltd
- Komatsu
- Laceys TJM
Our next tour TBA.