Cruising the Obi

The toughest part of the trip - shooting a farm causeway.

It’s been a huge year across QCCC.  Mapleton alone has hosted nearly 300 different groups of guests through the course of the year.  Brookfield has had its busiest year ever and Tamborine has also hosted hundreds of groups and played a part in some major events on Tamborine Mountain.

As the schools head into their Summer holidays the whole of QCCC gets just a few weeks of hiatus.  Australia’s camping industry is the opposite to the American model, where the prime-time for their camping programs is over the northern hemisphere summer.  In Australia the summer period leading into Christmas is the quietest time of year.  On Boxing Day Mapleton kicks off its Summer Holiday Family Program and shortly after QCCC Tamborine’s accommodation gets used for the Tamborine Summer Convention.  Brookfield has several church, youth group and craft camps in January. 

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Geocaching – Orienteering on a grand scale

Travelbug-GPSr
Image via Wikipedia

Recently quite a few of the QCCC Outdoor Education staff team has become hooked on Geocaching. 

Geocachers are an underground network of people living in your community and every other community in Australia, a network of people from all walks of life who are connected through a common interest.  They often behave suspiciously and you may even have seen some and wondered, but they are essentially safe and you need not fear them. 

This hidden network of people are engaging in what can best be described as a giant, worldwide game of hide and seek.  Here’s a Wiki explanation:

Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook.

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QCCC Tamborine hosts first Fathering Adventure

A South East Queensland pilot of the successful Fathering Adventures 2-night Father/Son adventure weekends will be held at QCCC Tamborine in January 2011.  The first pilot is a pre-cursor to this style of weekend become a regular part of QCCC’s services at its three sites. 

Sea kayaking is one of the many adventures to be enjoyed at a Father/son weekend.

Fathering Adventures have been successfully conducting Father/Son weekends and expeditions for several years in North Queensland

QCCC and Fathering Adventures share a similar heart to energise the father/son relationship and have been working together for several months to bring the successful North Queensland Father/Son format closer to the large population base of Brisbane and surrounding Coasts.

The pilot caters to twelve father/son pairs at the modern QCCC accommodation on breathtaking Tamborine Mountain.  The weekend will include a half-day Dolphin and Straddie sea-kayaking expedition to complement the usual well-balanced combination of group activities, and intentional one-on-one time to better explore relationships between father and son.

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Job vacancies at Mapleton

It’s not uncommon for a camper leaving one of our sites to tearfully express their resolve to return one day – to work.  If you’ve been in that category, here’s your chance! 

QCCC Mapleton has an extensive range of outdoor education focussed adventure activities for guests to enjoy.

An opportunity exists for enthusiastic people to be involved in a Christian workplace (QCCC Mapleton) providing outdoor education programs to school groups.  The casual positions involve supervising and facilitating students, from grade 3 to grade 12.

Activities such as initiative games and team building, canoeing, archery, raft building, climbing, abseiling, high ropes and bushwalking are used to teach and promote a Christian values-based program. To a lesser extent, rostered Kitchen and Maintenance work forms part of the role.

Applicants need to be self motivated team players, willing to work rostered weekends, possible early mornings and public holidays. Experience in teaching, outdoor education or youth work is essential.

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Drop some pilots

In a recent magazine article our Director of Camping, Andrew Grant, wrote “one thing that has fascinated and challenged me recently is that the deep and continued goodwill towards camping from people across generations is somewhat dampened by a sense that life has crowded in and made camping less achievable’.

The rainforest walk at Mapleton

He went on to say ‘I’m confident that camping retains a great relevance to modern life. Our role is to make camping accessible to ensure the potential of camping is unleashed in the lives of people.’

Over the last year we’ve spent a lot of time and made a lot of progress in assessing what we have in QCCC, and how we can grow and expand our services, and more importantly grow our ability to service camping and conferencing in our State.

Some of these involve some left-of-field thinking, where we’ve taken an innovative approach to push the envelope and broaden horizons, delivering camps with a difference.

Over the next few weeks we’ll throw out some ideas ideas we have for the future in an attempt to find churches, schools and groups to consider partnering with us in some pilots.  We’d like to soft-start some of these ideas with innovative partners to make sure they can work. After review and trouble-shooting we can then offer them to a wider audience.

Outdoor Education the Mapleton Way

Queensland Conference and Camping Centres (QCCC) Mapleton proudly takes an holistic approach to its outdoor education programs. 
QCCC Mapleton has an extensive range of outdoor education focussed adventure activities for guests to enjoy.

We have a team of highly qualified, full-time, outdoor educators whose sole purpose is to provide programs of excellence that build into the lives and programs of our guests. Because of this QCCC Mapleton cannot always match the monetary price of the other options but we will always back our safety record and the quality of our product and experience.

Mapleton Centre’s programmed activities are perfect for school, corporate, youth and family groups whose goals are to have fun while challenging themselves by stepping out of their everyday environment.

Built within our spectacular rainforest setting, high on the Blackall Range, our guests enjoy a wide range of challenges and activities that promote teamwork, communication and build self confidence. Our activities are a great opportunity for people of all ages to embark on a uniquely different series of mental and physical activities that will challenge you as an individual and groups as a whole.  Our guests choose from the following activities:

Activities on camp at QCCC

 

Climbing Wall Sunshine Coast
The climbing wall at QCCC Mapleton

 

Anyone who has visited QCCC Mapleton will know it has an amazing range of outdoor education activities to choose from – a massive climbing wall, abseil tower, canoeing, flying foxes, giant swings and archery, to mention a few. 

Each of our sites cater to different guest needs and event styles.  QCCC Tamborine is a wonderful location for retreats, conferences and has close proximity to the major Gold Coast attractions.  QCCC Brookfield is conveniently located near the heart of Brisbane and is a great destination for schools doing Brisbane camps.  Its up-market facilities also make it highly sought after for conferences and corporate retreats.

Youtube fun

We were posting our videos up to YouTube the other day and were pleasantly surprised to find that there were already a few contributions to YouTube featuring some of our activities and sites.  We’ll share a few of the best of them in coming weeks.

First cab off the rank is this video with footage of the larger flying fox at QCCC Mapleton.

We have two flying foxes at Mapleton. The first is a smaller one we use for younger groups, generally Year 5 and below. It runs from a height of 12 metres and has a length of thirty metres.

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Our Director

Queensland Conference and Camping Centre’s newly appointed Director of Camping is 39 year-old Andrew Grant.

QCCC's new Director of Camping, Andrew Grant

Andrew was appointed to the position in late 2009 response to the growing success of QCCC’s three main sites.  His role is to oversee operations at its three South East Queensland facilities, ensure that QCCC maintains its high standards and take responsibility for the development of new programs and services.

Andrew and his family, wife Anne and three boys Joseph, Timothy and Elijah moved to Mapleton from Dubbo, NSW, where Andrew was the Director of Business and Finance with Cornerstone Community.  Andrew’s previous role included being a franchisee of two outlets of Domino’s Pizza and provided a thorough grounding in the business and youth work roles essential to a successful camping operation. 

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