ACT Students found after night in the bush

Nyssa – “I have no respect for ACT Cops”

VG’s humour can be a little cutting and the bait you took was very obvious but that is no different to others posting responses here. Without kissing his arse, VG is very good at his job and a realist – in saying that I have no doubt he has thrown stones inside before too.

Cops are people too – sound familiar?

He is right when he identifies the amount of focus placed upon Police here or anywhere else. The “bad old days” are well and truly over so forget the ACT being anything like The Shield or anything else on TV. There are far too many people in the community that simply have no idea what is going on out there (insert spooky music).

If you don’t like VG I am sure it wont change his sleep pattern but to attempt to paint all ACT Police with the same brush is foolish.

Your lack of respect probably stems from the fact you appear to the kind of person who wont admit you are wrong and that somebody else might know better.

sorry for the spelling mistakes, in a hurry

More than happy for people to have a joke at the cops expense. I just get a bit antsy when people make ill-informed stabs at the Police. I enjoy a joke as much as anyone, but I am protective of my occupation when it comes in for what I consider unwarranted or unjustified criticism….or just plain lies.

Theres plenty in and about what the Police do that is funny and worthy of a joke, but I will always stand up for ill-informed comment about my job, just as I expect people to do the same for there’s.

For an organisation that is overseen by so many organisations (Ombudsman, Courts, Internal Investigation, State/Federal governments) I’m never ceased to be amazed by how many people think there’s an underlying element in policing. Trust me there isnt.

Have a joke all you like, if I think a line has been crossed then I may complain. My initial problem with Nyssa was her (?) evaluation of the accident in Amaroo. Completely baseless and wild accusations. How do I know so much of it was wrong? I was at the accident. I wont comment on the details for obvious reasons other than to say Nyssa was well off the mark. That is what got my goat so to speak.

Same in this thread. Ranting and screaming about the issue without knowing the facts.

I’ll leave it at that but honestly I do have a sense of humour……somewhere!!!

Just one question VG.. so it’s fine for people to have a joke at the expense of each other.. just so long as nobody has a joke at the cops expense?

My heart is broken

LG, it’s ok. I have no respect for ACT Cops…but that’s another story…here’s hoping he doesn’t work at Tuggers – too close to my house.

And before anyone asks, no I don’t tell my students what I think re: police, politics etc.

and further to this some people need to have the common sense and maturity to realise when they are being wound up just a little!

Theres no such creature as a Police equity adviser. The person you refer to was an ex-cop by their own admission, and the reasons for the ‘ex’ were never adequately explained.

16 years in the job under a more scrutinous regime then virtually any other occupation. Still going strong and lets just say I’m not at the lower end of the pecking order in the job. I dont have to worry about the glassiness of my surrounds.

I base my judgements on actual real life experriences. No ‘almosts’ or ‘maybes’ but fair dinkum stuff. If reality is a little hard for people to take then they should avert their eyes, but the world I live and work in is just dandy. Many who throw the barbs the Police’s way have no honest concept of what it takes to pursue the occupation on a day-to-day basis and what intense scrutiny we come under to ensure our job is done professionally and ethically.

I am more than comfortable with how and what I do

VG, every so often you’ve made statmenents that have made us doubt that you should have those kind of options available to you. If I recall correctly, a police equity adviser who posts on these boards said that yours was the kind of behaviour she was trying to eliminate. So I’d be careful about glass houses…

JB

Would you really want someone hysterical like Nyssa to have access to those possibilities?

i forgot to add: with cdma there is no imposed range. if the phone can receive a signal – it will work. cdma also has better voice processing technology (lacking in early gsm implementation hence the reason for the imposed limit) so even a weak signal will be OK.

True JB. I forgot about that! Fair enough.

caf & Maelinar – a gsm phone has a MAXIMUM range of 35km from a base station or cell. this is an imposed feature to ensure call quality. some network providers and freqs halve that max range in some areas. your phone figures this out in its regular handshakes with any network it detects.

in oz, go cdma. pack a small yagi antenna or if in a vehicle a car antenna on the roof which will act as a groundplane.

if you really want to be sure, get a satphone.

more easily available and at lower cost is an HF transceiver.

personally i wouldnt go to the fish and chip shop let alone bush with fifty teenagers. its a recipe for disaster.

On the other hand, in the last extreme, VG is allowed to put a 9mm bullet through people. He’s also allowed in various circumstances to spray them with burning chemicals and hit them with an extendable baton. Also he can charge them with crimes and put them in a cell until their lawyer turns up.

Sadly we deny teachers these possibilities.

I am loathe to enter this, but the pissing has gone on too long. Nyssa, VG is a cop. Whilst I admire your profession, and understand there is some risk, don’t get into this arguement about who faces the bigger risks. You won’t win this one and it does make you look a bit silly. Which I am sure you aren’t.

I ‘almost’ posted a reply.

Androyd, sorry to say but I actually didn’t start this shite. Even johnboy popped his head in after vg’s first post…and then it went from there.

I asked several times to get back on to the topic but some people like to think that they are “better” than everyone else.

vg, come see me when you’ve almost miscarried (at 32 weeks) from being assaulted by a student. Or almost go out a 3rd storey window trying to stop a suicidal student from going through with it, or having 150 students surge down to a fight and there is only you on duty in that area and you don’t have a walkie talkie for assistance. Or what about intervening in a fight between two students because it’s your job to protect them and have a knife held up to your throat? (That one didn’t make the papers).

Yes, let’s turn this into a pissing contest….

Oh come one, clearly they are enjoying the internet and it’s wordy fun. THink of it as a popcorn moment rather than a doona moment.

thanks for contributing to the story and discussion guys

Apparently the teachers had hiked around the area before and felt they ‘knew it’.

Evidently not.

But everything I’ve said is third hand from a kid who was there and his mother. Take that into context.

Sorry my friend, but Nyssa started it, I just finished it. He/she/it wanted to play the ‘my dad’s tougher than your dad’ argument and got slapped silly. I wont bore the rest of you any further

OK, OK we get the picture, clear mental images of big macho vg and little terrier nyssa. Anything substantive to add, or just a few more screens of abuse and point scoring?

Nyssa

When you have been shot at, stabbed, had front teeth smashed it, and broken bones as a result of the ‘2 hardest high schools in Canberra’ give me a call. Thats part of what I’ve worn in my job

Hard high schools? Please, give me a break. I deal with what those kids grow up into. You wouldnt have the guts or the brains to deal with 10% of it.

No hissy fits on my part. I’m the one who has been level headed, you are the one with the screaming rhetoric. People like you need people like me, because clearly you have no idea of how to cope with real conflict and stress. I’d hate to see how you’d react in a tough situation.

Do your job and stop whingeing like the kids you teach. I wont get personal, as you seem wanton to, but by goodness you do nothing but perpetuate a stereotype.

Hardest high schools in Canberra…………….still makes me laugh

DJ, people seem to think that teachers aren’t anything else but teachers and that they can’t be just people when they aren’t in schools.

I type what I like on here because it’s me, at home and on my computer. If I were typing to students or parents, I would write differently.

I have thick skin. I’ve worked in 2 of the hardest high schools in Canberra – and I’d like to see vg try it. I just have no time for idiots who can’t read and then throw hissy fits because they can’t decode the meaning.

Simple really.

nyssa76,

Not that I’m jumping on the stone throwing wagon but I have a stupid question – if “teachers can be people too” what are they normally?

Oh, also, do you need an apology in advance for my stupid question? “””””GROW THICKER SKIN!!!!!!!””””” (sorry VG)

VG,

The Duke thingy is good for those people who do it – I wonder what the acceptable fatality/casualty ratio is per group?

As a tax payer the SAR bill needs to be sent to the individual teachers who in my humble view were negligent. If you don’t know what you are doing cancel the trip – if I found out that my child was going on a trip and came back with a horror story like this one I’d be screaming out for blood.

Metaphorically speaking you have stamped your feet that small piece harder.

Don’t give up the game petal, we all enjoy your bleating rhetoric.

Suffice to say that you are one of those people that is incredibly hard and tough at the end of a computer. You keep up the personal barbs, they tend to be the haven of the intellectually weak.

Comedy without even trying, god bless you

P.S. !!!!!!??????””””””””AND SOMETHING IN CAPITALS

vg, I don’t think you could look as much of an arsehole if you tried.

Thanks for the laugh.

Now, do not direct any post towards me in the future. Can you understand that sentence?

Maelinar, that’s a myth about mobile phones being able to call emergency from anywhere in Australia – a downright dangerous myth in my view. What is true is that a GSM mobile phone can call the emergency number without a SIM card, and regardless of the mobile network – but it still has to have coverage from one of the three GSM networks to do it.

Outside of mobile coverage you need a real satellite phone, or an EPIRB.

i like the bit about leaving packs food and clothing in the bus.

numpties.

If you stamp your feet a little harder and cry some more eventually the adults will notice (????!!!””””) you sweetie.

I didn’t think you could look any sillier….I was wrong

vg, you stated: Did you get your teaching diploma from a Nutri Grain box?

I responded with this: FYI, diplomas don’t exist anymore.

Learn to follow an argument or better yet, don’t direct your posts to me again, seeing as you can’t remember what you asked me.

So please tell me how you couldn’t follow along?

“FYI, diplomas don’t exist anymore”

The prosecution rests your Honour.

This is hysterical

RG, yes the teachers were to blame. We’re always being told when camping to take food, water, extra clothing etc, but this time…well the mind boggles as to why they would leave all the stuff on the bus.

It’s obvious that they hadn’t been in the area before or they would have known to take those things and use the beacon.

Mael, I was talking about teaching diplomas. Sorry for the confusion.

vg, you identified a teaching diploma. Did you get your teaching diploma from a Nutri Grain box?

I stated that they no longer existed – the inference was made for teaching.

What’s your damage? Can’t you follow your own line of argument?

Thanks Mael, same could be said my the Diploma I am doing. They exist in many arenas, but once again Nyssa forays into something of which they know nothing

What a silly individual. Maybe if they had a pack of question marks, a shrieking/ranting beacon and a Duke of Edinburgh diploma they would have been safe.

I’ve also heard they had a beacon but didn’t activate it because noone was injured. It says so on the beacon.

They also had packs with food, drinks and clothing butmade the kids leave them behind on the bus.

I had a lot of friends that didn’t sleep that night out of worry.

Ultimately, the teachers were confident goons, pure and simple.

Well thanks for that.

I’ll stop my course at CIT immediately because I heard on RA that Diplomas don’t exist anymore. FYI I am doing a Diploma of systems analysis and design. They do exist.

Now carry on ranting.

vg, you’re a pathetic tool, face it.

You start attacking me because you can’t read a basic sentence and then get all “huffy” because you obviously have nothing better to do than to attack people.

FYI, diplomas don’t exist anymore. I thought even you would know that one.

roccon, you’re right. I still think that they should have gone there before the camp as well – to make certain of the terrain etc.

‘Nyssa is a whingeing bitch’…….99% of the readership

Read the contributions I wrote. Did you get your teaching diploma from a Nutri Grain box?

I know the area they were lost in quite well.

There is no mobile coverage, the terrain is rugged and forested and few people frequent it. The Cascades and Falls are really pretty and quite a nice place to visit, but you must be prepared. It can go from 32 degrees to 15 in the matter of an hour as the coastal mist comes over in the afternoon. This will kill visibility in the area. It can then get much colder at night.

They should have taken someone who knew the area ie. a Parks Ranger and or a Satellite Phone (why doesn’t the dept. of education have one to lend out on these trips).

Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

vg, offer something to the topic raised in the original post, or don’t post at all.

Pretty simple really.

Is it just me, or does Nyssa do nothing than advance a stereotype? Look at me, listen to me, I’m the one SCREAMING “””””?????? loudest

Or are they someone that doesn’t have the mental agility to realise when they’ve been drawn in hook, line and metaphorical sinker?

You have given us all a good laugh.

FYI, just because I teach DOESN’T mean I do it 24-7. Teachers DO have lives outside of school you know.

What I write on here (be it extra ????, “” or capitals etc) is my business. What I do in class is not what I do in here. You seriously need a realtity check – teachers can be people too.

One more thing, verbally indicates speaking. Which you have not done. Perhaps you need to remember that as well as the topic we are “meant” to be posting under.

Oh you are so “funny” 🙂

Got nothing better to do than to attack people huh?

“Glad your not teaching my kids.” Don’t you have a better comeback than that? *yawn*

Well here’s a thought vg, become a teacher and then see what you have to do when you run excursions or camps.

Here’s an infantile response to your pathetic attempt at a comeback:

I wouldn’t want to teach your children.

From what I have seen here from you, they would most likely be the kind of children who would 1) abuse their teachers, 2) refuse to comply with basic instructions and 3) throw hissy fits when they couldn’t get their own way.

Please…a poor attempt at throwing it back at me once you’ve been verbally and ‘textually’ destroyed.

Glad your not teaching my kids. They’d learn nothing but hysterical screaming and hissy fits (and excessive use of ?, “” and capitals)

Thanks for the laugh vg.

Clearly you need to learn to decode meaning from text or you wouldn’t have “attacked” me before.

Have a nice night.

Duty of care is a responsibility at large, not in lieu of parents.

Leave the ‘legalese’ to those that know what they’re talking about. You called me a tool before. You are the one looking decidedly spanner like.

A little bit less of the capitals, multiple question marks and histrionics might help make the point a little better.

I won’t bother trying to explain it any further. Clearly you can’t absorb it

Duty of care – IS legal responsibility of children in lieu of parents. You still need parental consent and are legally responsible for those children when they are on camp.

Failing to maintain duty of care will lead to litigation if a child is injured. Or have we forgotten the St Anthony’s case? Interestingly, that was on school grounds.

My experience with Duke of Edinburgh types is that most of them couldn’t find their bum with both their hands, with or without a map.

Thank you for the lecture on the law, something I have forgotten more about than you will ever know. And its not called being ‘legally responsible’, its called ‘duty of care’. Massive difference

And no JB, I wouldnt. Not even one who did an advanced scouting course…..and accident investigation

I forgot to add….

vg, as a part of my job, I take students on excursions etc. I MUST, by law, make sure AT ALL TIMES that the students are safe and that I have some clue as to where we are going and what we are doing.

I must also fill out the relevant documents and seek parental consent. If one student attends that is the opposite sex I must also have a teacher of the same sex accompany me i.e. female teacher running excursion/camp, female and male students attend, we must have a male teacher.

I would NEVER take a group of students camping WITHOUT going to the area myself first. Nor would I go without the ability to 1) read a map and 2) read a compass.

It’s called being legally responsible.

vg, MY POINT, and please read this carefully, was that I WAS TAUGHT HOW TO USE A COMPASS AND MAP BY MY TEACHER BEFORE I WENT INTO THE BUSH FOR DUKE OF EDINBURGH.

Get a clue tool.

Apologies for the caps johnboy, I just think vg missed the point completely.

play nice VG,

would you want your kids out abseiling with a teacher who could get lost on a trail?

“I did Duke of Edinburgh as a high school student”

That tells me everything I need to know. An expert on bushcraft as well courtesy of a scouts course.

You were such an expert on the car crash, whats your slant on this one? Surely you must know everything about this as well ? (or should I say ‘?????????????’)

I heard they had the emergency beacon, but chose not to use it as noone was injured. so they must have thought they were doing ok til morning.

MrX(orY) I’ll use more if I like, thanks.

Got anything to contribute to the discussion?

Single question marks are your friend, Nyssa

How in the hell did they get lost? Why didn’t one of the teachers know how to read a bloody map???

As a teacher, we have MANY forms to fill out re: excursion, more so for outdoor ed.

Again, what in the hell were they thinking??????
I did Duke of Edinburgh as a high school student. I still know how to use a compass and a map. FFS what in the hell were the teachers thinking by going into the bush without a clue?

Schools who do “outdoor ed” MUST have all relevant equipment i.e. if you are going in the bush you would need a map (for the teacher), compasses, extra food and water, jumper etc.

The mind boggles.

ABC news tonight said the students were from Gold Creek High and from the pictures it looked to me like the group was mostly girls — but they didn’ necessarily film all the students (note this is merely an observation; I could read a map and know which direction was home better than most people in my various outdoor ed classes).

I wonder how far outside mobile phone range they got before they realised they were lost.

Oh that’s right, mobile phones calling emergency numbers work everywhere in Australia (it goes straight to satellite I presume).

Imagine being the teacher, without the map, without the GPS, without the compass, without a mobile phone, and completely without a clue.

I think that pretty comprehensively breaks most of the rules to do with outdoor activities in one big hit.

That said, it’s very possible that they had all of the necessary equipment, but didn’t know how to use it, well that’s another rule broken…

If this was politics, Labour would be calling for resignations and the Liberals would be throwing any children who swear too much off boats by now.

exactly jey, makes you wonder a lot as to the competence of the teachers and the safety of the kids in their care.

fercrissakes.

stop walking, light a fire and sing kum bai ya.

i cant believe they are being heloed out.

what a generation of weaklings.

how on earth does spending a cold night in the bush become newsworthy ?

You think a teacher who can teach and supervise abseiling would have a bit of map and wilderness experiences

It wasn’t a high school. It was a primary school group of year 5 students. My daughter’s friend was on the camp.

Anybody think of a taking/using GPS they arent exactly rocket science nor expensive any more!

I’m surprised that excursions are allowed to occur without proper safety equipment such as an EBURP.

Does anyone know what the standards are for standard safety equipment for schools on excursions where they are not in an urban area?

I hope they get charged the SAR fees.

I wonder what school this was.

i’m more interested in how the teachers got lost.

Because a large proportion of high school aged students don’t know how to read a map. And if it was the kind of trip (as most of them are) where they get taken by the teacher and/or guide to the abseiling place, told to put their stuff here and that over there is how you get back up to the top, then they wouldn’t have had a map, let alone a compass.