The Westbourne House South African Cricket tour is a once-in-a-life-time experience. Twenty-two lucky pupils headed off with an experienced team of Westbourne staff led by Mr Smith.
Mr Smith summarised the trip perfectly, saying: ''It is an incredible experience and there were so many highlights and wonderful memories made. The children gain so much from a tour like this, including building confidence, developing interpersonal skills and learning about different cultures.''
The tour encountered initial setbacks with a delayed flight delay causing the first match to be missed and, unfortunately, a dramatic thunderstorm in the Drakensburg led to the cancellation of the second match. Despite this, the South Africa experience was off to an awesome start with a memorable trip to a reptile park, where the children challenged themselves to hold snakes, spiders and other reptiles, followed by a net session at the ever-friendly Winterton School.
Cultural experiences during the two weeks included watching and trying out Zulu dancing, visits to significant sites like Nelson Mandela's capture site and Howick falls, and the special opportunity to get to know children and teachers at a township school, Malandela Primary School. The cricket teams also were treated to visits to iconic locations like Moses Mabhida Stadium and Ushaka Marine World in Durban, and the tour concluding with a safari at Nambiti game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, where the children saw an incredible array of animals including elephants, zebras, cheetahs, buffalo, lions, rhino and giraffes.
Thank you so much to our wonderful host schools - Winterton School, Felixton College and Chelsea Prep. The kindness shown by the school teachers and pupils and the generous host families will never be forgotten by us and the children. Overall we played eight cricket matches winning three while the netballers won one of three. Again, the opportunity to stay with host families was most special and many fun evenings were had and close friendships were made.
"It was a cricket tour and I enjoyed the cricket, but really what I took away were all the other things: the people we met, the cultural parts, the sites we saw. It was awesome."
Logan
On the sports field the Year 8 enjoyed the competition against some strong schools. Everyone had the chance to pick up the bat and bowl in these exciting fast and furious matches. Two of their opponent teams will be touring at Westbourne House over the summer and we look forward to hosting them. In addition to cricket, three great games of netball were played.
We were lucky to stay with local families. They were really interesting people because they had a completely different lifestyle so it was really good to hear their stories and share how they live.
Xander R
When not playing sport the children had many exciting things to do: they had a thrilling day at the waterpark with one of the highest slides in Africa, which was followed the next day by a boat cruise to see and learn about hippos and crocodiles.
Other highlights were the visit to Nelson Mandela's capture site, seeing the beauty of Howick Falls and speeding through the beautiful South African landscape on a zip wire!
We went to a township school and they wanted to make it memorable experience. They did a dance for us and a couple of performances and we gave them pencil cases and football tops. We chatted with the kids and talked about the differences between our lives and found out about their day-to-day lives.
Oliver