Scene 1 – The First Gesture

This scene is a first encounter. It is a meeting full of wariness and wonder. It introduces mark making and is a mysterious beginning.

Scene 2 – Blank Map Slapstick

This scene is about a blank map being perfect – because it is full of possibilities and you can’t get it wrong. It is a funny play on hierarchy and a group trying to get things done.

Scene 3 – Wheels Pathways

This scene is about moving faster and making pathways. It’s dynamic, exciting and energizing. It makes people laugh and it makes people think.

Scene 4 – Hoop Borders

This is a scene about creating boundaries that separate us one from the other as well as spaces that unite us as a community. It is thoughtful and playful and spatially beautiful.

Scene 6 – Rola Bola Boat Crossing

This scene is about boats bringing scary new ideas to new places. It creates an unsettling feeling about the way ships and maps have changed the world.

Scene 7 – Stilts Wayfarers

This is a scene about finding the way and that there is no one path. It is a beautiful and contemplative scene that lets the audience wonder.

Scene 8 – XY Dancers

This is a scene about navigating through a grid on a set path. It is about the limitations of binary (yes/no, north/south) thinking. It is a skillful and graceful scene about conforming to a group.

Scene 9 – Tumbling Grid

This is a scene about keeping inside your boundaries and keeping things in order. It is dynamic, spectacular and fun.

Scene 10 – Juggling Ants

It is a scene about building confidence and learning tricks in a cohesive and funny team. This scene brings joy and laughter, thrills and entertainment, pride and happiness and it inspires people.

Scene 11- Slackline Map Doubles

This scene is a cartographic scale shift of one to one – and it all falls down. It is the calm before the storm. It is delicate but striking.

Scene 12 – Cosmic Trapeze

This scene is dreaming about being able to map space. It shows a different medium up in the air. It is surprising, shocking and a different topographical perspective.

Scene 13 – Raw Energy Parkour

This scene is the spark emerging from a black hole, fizzing along unknown paths. This scene brings a raw and intense energy.

Scene 14 – Storm Dance and Destruction

This scene is the build up to action it is the whole group acting in concert as a big powerful chorus. It shows the power of a group and the energy required for change.

Scene 15 – Repair and The Cartographer’s Dream

This scene shows people focusing that energy; making decisions and making positive change. The song is an uplifting and lingering epilogue tracing the journey of the show.

Shaun Dennis filmed the performance the other night of The Cartographer's Dream, and it can now be viewed via Dropbox. If you don't have an account with Dropbox, you would need to take a few minutes to set that up, but it's not difficult. Just click on the button below.

CDSSA Athletics

Thursday, August 22nd. Bendigo, LaTrobe Athletics track. 12 schools, one goal, and it’s not to have fun. Win! Try to have fun, sure, but this isn’t an amusement park; we’re not sitting passively eating popcorn in front of a screen, watching untouchable heroes go about their business. This is your chance to be the hero, your shot at glory, this is your moment, and if you’ve come here to make friends and escape a class test, you’re in the wrong place. This is your story, and it’s live, and you don’t know how it will end until it’s over, and then the chapter is written in the book of your life, stored in your head for eternity, unchangeable, locked, part of you, forever. So what will it be? Regrets: I wish I’d just been a little more focussed; I wish I’d practiced a few more times; I wish I’d been more aggressive for just that moment? Or pride: I gave that everything; I pushed myself harder than ever before; there’s nothing more I could have done…

Bolinda, Lancefield, Trentham, Newham, Tylden, Woodend, Kyneton, St Ambrose, Romsey, St Marys and Our Lady of the Rosary all there. Giant names, in fact the only names, representing the very cream of the Cobaw District Schools crop.

Kids are only allowed to enter two individual events and a relay. The coaches had spent hours sifting through results, talking tactics and trying to work out the best fit. Amidst the circus, chess tournaments, Tournament of Minds and actual time in the classroom, there had been a small window of opportunity to see how the kids performed. Despite the sentiments of the opening paragraph, watching such a variety of kids stepping up during their Wednesday free time and having a go at inane events like discus, shotput or triple jump, and seeing their focus and effort and how they respond to the coaching, always reminds us of the value of athletics.

And so to the day. Around thirty-five worried, excited, anxious, hyped up, scared, confident and nervous kids set out to Bendigo. It’s quite amusing hearing which emotion the competitors interpret the butterflies in their tummies as, with little understanding of why they are there: as though the emotion causes the feeling, not the other way around.

Throughout the day the students have to listen carefully to the muffled speaker system to find out when their event is, and then pockets of kids wander off to watch and support their mates around the track and field. It’s quite a long day, especially for someone running the 1500, which is last. The 800m starts the day, followed by the sprints: 100 and 200, and then the relays. Throughout this, all the field events are competed, for the three age groups (9-10s, 11s and 12-13s).

The events call for power, coordination, skill, doggedness and ultimately, bravery. The athletes are putting themselves out there to be judged, and that takes guts. To see the high jumper float over the bar and scramble off the mat before it falls; the shot-putter explode and shove 2 or 3kg up and away before trying to remember to walk out the back of the circle; the 1500m runner flushed red and digging deep for the last lap, all of it in front of an audience of peers, parents and judges.

My favourite has always been the relay. Coordinating the bursting eagerness of four sprinters to get the baton around the 400m in four legs. There’s a 20m window to pass the baton in, so stronger teams can actually coordinate their strongest runner to run almost 140m if so inclined. We’re not that strong, yet! Hearing the signal to start running, over the screams of the schools’ support, hand stretched out behind, trusting the team mate will reach you and pass the baton on. Then it’s in your hand, and you pin your ears back and run, hard and fast, one part of the team, ready to signal the next runner. I won’t go through each race, but the first was the girls 12-13s. The strength and power of those four girls was inspiring and incredible, the handovers reasonable, the result an emphatic win, by almost 80 metres. They set the tone. We won four out of the six races, and came second by a hair’s breadth in one other.

With eight lanes available, the schools run two races, and so we await news of times, and whether we have qualified to go through to the next meet. Fingers crossed!

And so back to the start. All those kids, and the ones who didn’t quite make it, are heroes of their stories. They gave it a great go, there could be few regrets. And the story is written, and many will remember the day for quite a few more years than they’d think possible. And surely that’s the point.

- Written By Andy Moffat

Athletics Results

1st

• Lewis - High jump, Discus
• Maisy - Long Jump
• Sarah - 100m, 200m
• Basile - 100m, long jump
• Albert - 100m
• Sev - 200m
• Will - 100m
• Kate - 100m, Shot
• Lily 200m, 1500m
• 9/10 boys 4x100m relay
• 11 boys 4x100m relay
• 12/13 girls 4x100m relay
• 12/13 boys 4x100 relay

2nd

• Ned - 100m
• Tabitha - 200m
• 9/10 girls 4x100m relay

3rd

• Esther - 1500m
• Chae - 1500m
• Will - long jump
• Ebony - triple jump
• Eva - 100m
• Clementine - 800m

4th

• Esther - high jump
• Arlo - 800m
• Max - 200m
• 11 girls 4x100m relay

5th

• Cosi - 1500m
• Dylan - long jump
• Zayn - triple jump
• Bailey - shotput
• Erin - 800m
• Walter - high jump
• Esther - high jump

Kyneton Daffodil Parade

A group of Candlebark kids from Kyneton and Woodend brought their wonderful energy to the Kyneton Daffodil Parade on Sunday, 15th September.

They helped to represent the Kyneton Agricultural Show and hopped aboard the float, dressed in their pyjamas, holding teddy's and hot water bottles to fit with this years theme of 'Daffodil Dreaming'

They had been briefed to smile and wave at the on lookers and they did so with the usual Candlebark gusto. The float was a great success and undoubtably their positive energy and enthusiasm played a big role. The Kyneton Show Society had this to say about them; "Gorgeous kids, so mannerly and well behaved, so enthusiastic, they seemed to be having a great time" and it must have showed because they won BEST FLOAT in the parade!

Thanks to Banjo, Daisy, Scarlet& Ivy A, Seb, Kinti, Eli, Tilly, Basile, Jimmy and Albert for contributing to their community

Writing & Photograph by Raina Kilner

Kitchen Garden Term 4

Dear parents,

Come and cook with us! Every Friday, we need parents to help with running the cooking class.

Here is the roster for term 4: https://signup.zone/czDoAjDJFunE4wCTx

And here is a review from a Dad who cooked with us recently:

''It was really inspirational to see how the Year 4s are developing their cooking skills. Working with them to chop, fry and prepare the ingredients revealed just how capable they are. Usually, at home, it’s us doing everything, but here they were mini-chefs one and all taking control of proceedings (with Steve’s guiding hand!). It’s encouraged me to get my kids more involved in cooking - rather than just when we bake sweet things! ''

- Written By Steve Pollet

Division Athletics

More Athletic Success...

Wow, what a sporting year we are having at Candlebark.

On Monday the 16th September, six of our students who had qualified with great performances in the District competition went to Bendigo to compete in the Division Athletics. Lewis King competed in Discus and High Jump. Maisy Hayter and Basile Lazaro in Long jump, Henry Bourke and Lily James in the 1500m and Kate Turnbull in Shot put.

Thank you to the parents who took them up to Bendigo. The results were staggering. Every student placed! Congratulations! Basile achieved a 3rd. Lewis, Maisy, Kate, Henry and Lily won each of their events.