The Wilderness
Immersion Experience
Mountain Track offers a wilderness immersion program set in the rugged Strzelecki Ranges on Gunaikurnai Country. During the wilderness immersion stage of the Mountain Track program our adventurers begin to build strong, positive relationships with the Mountain Track Mentors and their other mountain adventurers.
A strong sense of belonging begins to form as participants and mentors work together to build their camp and survive the mountain elements. As physical structures start to take shape and the young adventurers start to ease into their natural environment, they are already reaping the benefits of being an important part of a cohesive team.
A huge sense of achievement and confidence comes from building a life for yourself and your mates out in the wilds of nature and away from the hustle and challenges of every day life.
Being immersed in nature and away from the clatter of everyday life allows our young people an improved relationship with self and others and an increased empathy and patience for oneself and others. Being reliant on each other to make it work out there in the forest means looking after each other when times get tough.
Forest time brings clarity and allows young people to take stock of where their lives are at, where they want to head and how they might get there.
Building a temporary life out in the forest gives our young people real-life opportunities to learn and practice new life skills and adopt healthy coping strategies for times of adversity. Out there they’ll try new things and learn positive things from their mistakes and start to master their new skills. All designed to serve them well as they head towards greater independence.
Many of the daily activities are self-driven. It’s up to our adventurers to decide which camp improvement is the next priority, which activity they want to do and with whom they do it with. What food will the next young chefs make on the campfire that night and what adventures do they want to embark on together? It’s about the young people taking charge and building independence.
The camp is completely voluntary and the young person is free to leave at any stage. We endeavour to create an environment engrained in fun and one in which the young people love being there. Being out in nature in a close knit team provides serious opportunity for fun and group adventures. The activities are based on creating many daily joy filled moments that bring the group tighter each day.
