As you will know from previous posts, we have been recently enduring a painful series of strikes, in the name of a fairer pay deal. As I may have summarised, Queensland Catholic teachers are the lowest paid in the country (outside of Tasmania - but that's not really Australia anyway!), and we are trying to narrow the 'inequality' margin in this respect. We have been doing this through a series of one-day strikes, which culminated recently in an indefinite ban on extra-curricular activities. As a result of this ban, I have been really in a bit of an emotional quandary, as although I agree with industrial action, I disagree with this form of it - but have been supporting it anyway. It came a bit to a head in the last week of term, when the Head asked for teachers who had volunteered to go on Yr 12 retreat, to confirm their intention to attend. After a great deal of struggle, I decided that if I was supporting the industrial action by not rehearsing my choir, then I couldn't in good faith continue to go on retreat. So I was one of only 2 teachers who withdrew their support for the retreat. I must admit, I was quite distressed to see that hardly anyone was supporting this action.
Anyway, all this happened in the last week of school before the Easter holidays. So, as it stood at the start of the holidays, I was no longer conducting Chorale rehearsals, and no longer attending retreat. Sorted.
However, half-way through the holidays I received an email stating that in good faith, with the promise of further developments with the Employers within the Enterprise Bargaining unit, the indefinite ban on extra-curricular action was being called off for a time. Great, I can do my choir again. But what of retreat?
Well, as they had already made new arrangements, I naturally assumed I still wasn't going, and made arrangements to house-sit and mind Beck and Damo's dogs whilst they were on holidays. However, within 1 hour of being back at school on Monday, the Head of RE approached me with a situation. It seemed that one of the teachers was now unable to attend retreat due to health issues with her mother, so would I mind going again?
Me, being a person for whom the word 'no', alas, doesn't exist, immediately agreed - and immediately regretted it. However, I am nothing if not a person of my word, so there it was. I was now going on retreat again.
Unfortunately (or as it turned out, fortunately) for me I couldn't go on the one I originally was supposed to go on, so I ended up at Ewen Maddock Dam, Landsborough. I have to say, this place was such a dive! If you check out the website, it actually looks quite nice - but it was just disgusting! Soooo dirty, soooo old, and soooo poorly kept!
Put it this way, the girls complained within a few minutes of arrival of seeing huge rats in their rooms. Now whilst I suspect this was an exaggeration, I don't now doubt that there was some form of creepy crawly in there. The reason for my conviction is, that on the first night, I accidentally left a muesli bar in my bag, and accidentally left the bag unzipped. When I awoke the next morning, there were teeth marks and a big bite taken out of my bar! Ugggg!
The retreat itself was ok - but on a spiritual level, just bollocks. Absolutely nothing of a Christian commitment at all, their version of a 'relationship with God' basically consists of a lump of plasticine modelled into a tree, or a boat, or something stupid. Just rubbish. But I knew that already from last year's retreat... where I had stupidly shared my 'testimony' in full on Salvation Army style to a bunch of people for whom God is just a vapid spirit (if they even believe that) floating out there in the ether, of absolutely no consequence to them. Soooo wrong.
Anyway, it was still nice to get to know the girls a bit better - and certainly nice not to have to go to school. Even with the mice...! but I will never go back to Ewen Maddock dam again...
With the other teachers at the Campfire - Susan, Cheryl, Jenny K, Me, Kate and Jenny S
