Each semester, shortly after landing in Australia, NYU Sydney students retreat to a lesser-known corner of greater Sydney for a field trip. Most recently, these overnight excursions have been to idyllic Milson Island, on the Hawkesbury River.
“We stepped off the boat,” recalls student Lori Gao. “We walked up a steep, hilly path and split into cabins named after Australian birds. After settling into our lodges, we assembled on a large sunny field for a group introduction, and split into groups to perform various activities throughout the next two days. We built rafts, played cricket, shot bow and arrows.”
Field trips are an integral part of a semester at NYU Sydney, and Milson Island in particular is good fun. There are campfires and marshmallows, guitars and ghost stories. But there’s more than that.
“The Milson Island retreat was indeed one mentally and personally, allowing time to unwind, contemplate, connect, and culminate experiences,” wrote student Diptesh Tailor in a paper after his visit in spring 2015. In particular, Diptesh was impressed by the “tranquility and calm vibrancy of the environment.”
The start-of-semester retreat has two main aims. One is for NYU staff and newly-arrived students to get to know one another. It’s a bonding exercise. A second aim is for students to get a true taste of the Australian landscape: the curious wildlife; the grand sandstone; the sweeping waterways. The retreats forge connections in the great outdoors, among the kangaroos and kookaburras. They blend community and nature.
For many students, it is the wildness of the Australian landscape that leaves a lasting impression. As student Robert Leger wrote in a paper submitted for the Global Orientations course, “An impressive amount of this country has been left largely untouched and unaffected by civilization. One instance of this pristine environment was evident in the surroundings of Milson Island. Although the island itself is developed – to an extent – its surroundings, the forests and estuary encompassing the small island, appear as though they are lands that have never been trod on.”

During each semester, NYU Sydney students are offered an array of field trips. Some, such as the surfing trip to the northern beaches, are for all students. Others are for students of particular courses. For Global Media, for instance, students visit ABC TV to be in the studio audience for a live broadcast of the panel show Q&A.
“I couldn’t get enough of Q&A,” wrote student Kate Rowey after her visit. “I left with a much better understanding of Australian politics, not just conceptually but how Australians discuss their politics. I took a leap and decided to request to be in the live audience for the following week’s Q&A. To my excitement, not only was I invited back but I sat front and center.”
“The field trips are special,” says Professor Jennifer Hamilton. “It is rare to get field trips in undergraduate programs because the classes are so big. The size of the classes here in Sydney enable us to offer a range of learning experiences.”
During field trips to Earlwood Farm, Professor Hamilton has taught Eco-Criticism students about experimental, eco-friendly farming she and others are practising right in the heart of suburban Sydney. Hamilton loves it when students hold her chickens. “Do you live in a hippy commune?” one student asked. No, she answered – even though she had to admit hers is hardly an ordinary house in the ‘burbs.
Meanwhile, as an anthropology professor, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel is especially fond of field trips. “Participant observation is a hallmark of the anthropological method,” she says.
With students of Anthropology of Indigenous Australia, Professor Vaarzon-Morel has visited the Kur-ring-gai Chase National Park to see Aboriginal rock art sites.
“Learning about rock art from a photographic image is simply not as informative – nor exciting – as being culturally immersed in the environment in which the rock art was produced,” Vaarzon-Morel says. “In Kur-ring-gai Chase National Park students were able to walk around rock art designs depicting whales, dolphins and other animals, and with the smell of salt water and wind in their hair, experience the import of the site in a visceral way.”
On-site, the students were taught by Matt Poll, an Indigenous expert with immense knowledge of archeological sites. On these and other anthropology field trips, students are always particularly keen to learn about bush medicine and bush tucker.
The effects of the field trips can be profound. For some, the visit to Milson Island has prompted a philosophical redrafting of the relationship of human beings and nature. This insight is reached, in part, thanks to the dramatic contrast between the Aussie wilderness and Washington Square. If Milson Island is largely about community and nature, it encourages many students to reconsider their conceptions of both.
Milson Island led Diptesh Tailor to imagine green cities, which would be peopled by “proactive, globally-oriented citizens who challenge conventional boundaries and share their creative and intellectual insights.”
As he wrote after the retreat, “I hope to continue to develop my perspective on nature … and the prospects for the civilisations which will pioneer the evolving relationship with nature and self.”