Dear Diary,

In September we went to The Butterfly House for Diarology Camp. It was in Dromana. There were no butterflies so the butterfly bit is a lie but it is because this house has three names. These are Larrakeyeah, The Butterfly House and McCraith House. There were lots of lovely things in the house including soda siphons and a beautiful view. We arrived on Friday. Some of us ate all the Cheezels. Sian brought her van, and also brought Sophie. Also in Sian’s van was her dog, Jazzy. Jazzy is a black cavoodle.

We took it in turns to do some cooking. Stayci made her famous kiwi dip. We ate too much, but we did some serious (!!!!) work too. On Friday night we read from our diaries. These made us laugh, cry and cringe. We also sent out a message about DBK in Arizona and got one reply straight away. We hope we will get more replies before we head to America. (Jazzy is not going and Sian is not going but Sophie and Kim and Stayci and Peta are ALL going and it will be fun. We are going on planes. There are cactuses there.)

On Saturday morning we worked so hard that we were very tired and one of us needed a nap in the afternoon and some of us went for a walk on the beach. Also we explored other ways of reading from our diaries at random, and looked at ways of using their contents as materials and not simply as texts. We played lots of different “rounds”. We made up a cunning plan for Arizona but we can’t tell you what it is, dear Diary, because it is a secret.

On Saturday night we had curry, dhal, rice and raita but no pappadums because we couldn’t work out how to work the microwave to make them puff up. This didn’t matter as we were full and also we had apple crumble. We listened to some podcast memoirs and talked about how to make a good podcast and how to make a bad podcast. One day soon we will make a (good?) podcast. We are allowed to do this because we have ethics approval!!!!

On Sunday morning we had breakfast and then we cleaned up and then we packed up and then some of us went on another walk and then we went home. It was a good weekend and we were all very happy, even though Melbourne lost and Richmond lost in the footy.