By Mrs Sue Hassall, Secondary School Teacher

Jack Heath, a Canberra novelist whose work includes 300 Minutes of Danger (for children), Kill Your Husbands (not for children) and 40 other books, translated into ten languages, accompanied 215 Year 7 students on a mystery tour around Canberra on Wednesday.

The purpose was for students to record notes about the features, objects and atmosphere of the various locations to help them craft a descriptive passage of one location that evokes an emotional response in the reader.

Church bells welcomed us to St John’s Churchyard, reverent silence blanketed us in the cool crypt where Bishop Radford was interred, a helicopter hovered noisily over the graffiti-covered wall near a stormwater drain in Woden, and a verse from Dorothy McKellar’s poem, I love a Sunburnt Country, was read to students as they scrambled over the poem’s word sculpture. Students were required to observe sounds, smells, images, textures, colours and their responses to the settings, and there was plenty to record.

The patience, competence and attentive care shown by Radford College Teachers Mr Cameron Brown, Ms Angelina Browning, Mrs Maddie Keogh, Mr Brett Lamson, Ms Megan Reed, Ms Kate Wales and Ms Maria Whiting ensured all students engaged with the task of recording information and ensured we had zero minutes of danger and instead just had focused engagement.