When they got out of the bus they could see lots of buildings and some had work being done on them. On the far side of the camp was the ocean with the surf rolling into the beach and on the other side there was Tallebudgera Creek.
As they looked across the creek they could see the scrub rolling up to the top of Burleigh Heads National Park.
One of the teachers, Mrs Foxcraft, said, "Students, welcome to Tallebudgera Camp. In a minute I'm going to be introducing you to one of the camp instructors. While you are at Tallebudgera, one of the rules is - anytime one of the instructors asks you to do something, you do what they say. Is that clear?"
"Yes Mrs Foxcraft."
"Good now your luggage is off the bus so I want you to grab your bags and file past me. I will give you a cabin tag. That is the cabin you'll be sleeping in. So take your luggage to your cabin and make up your bunk. I would like everyone back here in 10 minutes to meet Bob."
So that's what they did, grabbed their suitcases, grabbed their tags and off they went. The cabins held up to seven students. There were three double bunks and one single bunk. Most of the cabins worked it out quite peacefully but in one of the girls cabins, a fight broke out.
Mrs Foxcraft heard a scream. She went running down to the cabin and when she arrived there were two girls screaming at each other.
"I'm not going on the top bunk!"
"Yes, you are!"
"Girls. Stop fighting please. We've only been here 10 minutes." She closed her eyes, spun around three times and the girl she was pointing at got to sleep on the top bunk. She left the cabin to check on the rest of them.
When the students got up to the assembly area though, the instructors were there but the teacher wasn't. Everyone was looking around but they couldn't see her anywhere so they sat down and waited. After a few minutes, one of the instructors came over and said, "Your teacher did say, she would be back here didn't she?"
One girl said, "Yes. She said she was going to introduce you. Oh my name's Carla by the way."
The instructor said, "Oh my name's Bob. You can call me Mr Singer."
Bob said, "Look can one of you volunteer to go down to the teachers' cabin and see if she is there?"
The school captain said, "I'll do that."
He jumped up and ran down to the teachers' cabin and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked again but there was no answer. He was just about to go back when he saw something at the foot of the steps. He bent over and picked up the teacher's name tag and realised that it was partly cracked.
He ran back and said to the instructor, "She's not there but I found her name tag at the bottom of the steps."
Bob said, "Ah, that sounds a bit serious. Everyone wait here. I'll go and make an announcement over the PA system. She might be in hearing. She might have just lost her tag and someone stood on it."
Bob walked into the hall and into the office and they heard over the PA. "Attention, attention, we're looking for Mrs Foxcraft. If Mrs Foxcraft can hear this can you come to assembly please. We're outside near the main hall."
The students listened but there was just silence apart from the traffic on the main road. They could hear the waves crashing onto the beach.
Bob tried again, "Mrs Foxcraft are you within the camp area? If anyone sees Mrs Foxcraft ask her to come to the assembly area please."
He walked back out and said, "No sign of her eh?"
Students and teachers said, "No."
Bob said, 'We'd better organise a search and I think I'll call the police just in case."
Well pretty soon the students were organised into search parties with a teacher or an instructor with each group of students. First of all they looked around the camp area.
Just then the two girls that had been fighting came out of a cabin and said, "What's happening?"
"We're looking for Mrs Foxcraft. She's disappeared. We've found her badge."
They said, "That's strange. We were just getting over our fight and we didn't come up to assembly but we did hear something."
"What did it sound like?"
"It was like glass breaking or something."
Bob said, "Oh, we'd better check all the windows. Can everyone run around all the windows and see if any are broken. Come straight back here."
"There's no windows broken anywhere."
Bob scratched his head and looked down at his feet and realised that there was broken pieces of glass on the grass. He bent down and picked some up.
One of the students said, "That looks like it could be from Mrs Foxcraft's glasses."
Five steps away they found the broken frames of her glasses and some scuff marks on the ground.
"She must have been grabbed and swung around and her glasses fell off. I think she was dragged away. They went that way," said a student pointing towards Tallebudgera Creek.
They stood looking but the silence was broken by the strident shreak of a police siren and they turned and looked as two police vehicles pulled up in the car park.
Four police officers were quickly out of the cars and one opened up the back of the ute and let out a big, black labrador police dog. They walked over and the instructor said, "It's a bit suspicious. One of the teachers is missing after she said she would be here at assembly. When we organised a search we found these."
He held up the broken glasses and pointed to the scuff marks.
One of the police officers said, "Right we'll see what we can find."
They brought the dog over so he could sniff at the broken glasses. The dog sniffed, barked and went bounding over the sand towards Tallebudgera Creek. The police officer called out, "Burlo. Burlo."
But the dog just jumped into Tallebudgera Creek and started swimming towards the other side.
One of the students said, "Hey, he's swimming towards Burleigh Heads."
"Come back you stupid dog." But the dog kept swimming.
Everyone started to run along the creek and across the bridge to the other side of the creek. They ran along the track towards where the dog had disappeared.
"Burlo, Burlo, Here boy."
"Oh where's that dog gone?"
They heard him barking in the scrub and went running along the track towards the sounds. Past the scrub turkey's mound and around the corner towards the big, black basalt columns.
Well that's as far as we completed the story in our story creation session. The year sevens have agreed to finish it off for us. Come back next week to read the rest of the story.
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