Why our Geography Club took us on real field trips and what we learned

Long before GPS apps could trace every bend of a river, the Geography Club at Baranagore Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama High School insisted that a textbook map was only half a lesson. The supervising teachers would gather permission slips, pack chalk and notebooks, and herd us onto local trains or rented buses to study landforms, settlements and industries with our own eyes. Those Saturday excursions were not optional add-ons; they were treated as practicals that carried as much weight as any written exam.

For many of us now scattered across continents, the memory of standing on the bank of the Hooghly or counting barges beneath the Vidyasagar Setu is intertwined with the friendships we still cherish. Alumni who settled in Melbourne find themselves chasing that same feeling when they join weekend walks along the Yarra, and Sydney-siders talk fondly of harbour cruises that remind them of those school trips. The instinct to learn by walking the ground, rather than reading about it, travels well.

Lessons written in chalk dust and river silt

The Geography Club met every Wednesday in a small room that smelled of old paper and camphor, but the real classroom was always outside. Our teacher, whom we called Masterda, believed that contour lines drawn on a board were a guess until a student had actually traced them with a boot on wet grass. He would draw up a route on the blackboard, mark the stops with chalk, and then ask us to predict what we would see at each one.

When we arrived at the riverbank or the brick kiln, the predictions were almost always wrong. The river ran faster than the map suggested, the kiln smoke drifted in a direction we had not anticipated, and the soil underfoot refused to match the colour in the textbook. Those small failures taught us more than any correct answer ever could. They taught us that geography is a living subject, full of variables that no diagram can fully capture.

The club also kept a strict field notebook. Each student recorded the time, the weather, the smell of the air, the sound of traffic, and a small sketch of the horizon. Decades later, those notebooks are still pulled out at alumni gatherings, passed from hand to hand with the kind of care usually reserved for family photographs.

Trains, ferries and the Hooghly: how we travelled to learn

Most trips began at Baranagore station, where we would queue for the suburban train with our brown-paper lunch packets and our clipboards. The Geography Club was one of the few groups allowed to take the local ferry across the Hooghly, and that crossing alone was worth the journey. From the deck, we could see how the river divided the city, how the jute mills hugged one bank while the railway workshops hugged the other, and how bridges tied the two halves together.

For senior students, the club organised longer journeys to the Sundarbans in the south and the Rajmahal hills in the west. Permission was a longer process than the journey itself: the headmaster's signature, a list of emergency contacts, a declaration that no student would swim unsupervised, and a note promising that the group would be back before the Ashram bell rang for evening prayers. The ritual of getting that paperwork right was, in hindsight, a lesson in civic responsibility.

The committee also used these trips to teach us public etiquette. We were told to stand in queues, to offer seats to elders, to speak softly in public spaces, and to thank the ticket collector. Looking back, those small reminders shaped how many of us behave in shared Australian spaces, where the unspoken rule of giving up your seat on a crowded Melbourne tram still catches tourists by surprise.

Carrying the compass into adult life

The skills the club taught were quietly practical. Reading a topographic sheet became second nature, which made it easier to navigate hiking trails in places like Tasmania's Overland Track or the Larapinta Trail in the Northern Territory. Estimating distance by pacing, judging direction by the angle of the sun, and reading cloud patterns for incoming weather were habits that translated directly into weekend bushwalking culture.

Many alumni say the club also taught them how to work in a team. Each trip had a leader, a navigator, a note-taker, and a "tail" student responsible for making sure no one was left behind. The roles rotated, so the quiet kid who never spoke in class often found himself as the leader for a day, and discovered a voice he had not known he had. That taste of responsibility showed up later in careers, in community organising, and in the running of small businesses.

The discipline of writing things down, of recording small details before they faded, has proved surprisingly useful in a country where working with children checks and excursion risk assessments are routine for any volunteer who helps with school outings. The forms may look different, but the habit of careful preparation is identical.

Alumni echoes from Sydney to Perth

When the BRKM Reunion committee started planning its 2026 gathering, the Geography Club was one of the first groups to be invited to contribute. Alumni in Australia, many of whom had never revisited Baranagore, began sharing their own "field trip" memories: a Brisbane alumna described mapping storm drains after the 2022 floods, a Perth-based geologist talked about working in the Pilbara and seeing red earth that reminded him of the brick kilns of his childhood.

There was also a softer memory that kept recurring. Several classmates recalled how the club had helped them overcome a quiet fear of getting lost. Standing at a crossroad in a strange part of the city, with a map in hand and a friend beside them, gave them a confidence that later helped them settle into new suburbs of Adelaide, navigate the sprawl of western Sydney, or find their way to a job interview in an unfamiliar part of Melbourne.

These shared memories have turned into a quiet project: an oral history archive where older alumni record their stories for younger ones, and where the Geography Club's field notebooks are being digitised so they can be read by grandchildren who have never seen the Hooghly. The project borrows its tone from school debating traditions, and a few alumni have even written reflective pieces drawing on public speaking lessons learned in their student days.

Lessons still relevant for today's reunion committee

The Geography Club's approach carries a simple message for anyone planning alumni activities: people remember what their bodies did, not just what their eyes saw. A slideshow of old photographs is pleasant, but a Saturday morning walk along a section of coastline, ending with a shared breakfast, leaves a much deeper mark.

The reunion committee has begun to weave this idea into its programme. Smaller "geo walks" are being planned for alumni in different Australian cities, with local geographers or naturalists invited to lead the route. Sydney's coastal walk from Coogee to Bondi is on the list, as is a heritage walk through Melbourne's laneways that traces the city's creek systems, now mostly hidden beneath streets.

There is also appetite for a return trip to Baranagore itself, with current students of the school joining alumni on visits to the same landmarks the Geography Club once mapped. Logistics will be complex, and Australian-based organisers will need to be familiar with local excursion regulations in both New South Wales and Victoria before booking venues. The effort, however, feels worthwhile.

Reimagining field trips for the next generation

The Geography Club's field trips were not elaborate. They did not require helicopters or high-end equipment, just a willingness to step outside, to look carefully, and to write down what was seen. That modesty is part of their lasting appeal, and it is a model that alumni communities anywhere can borrow.

A new generation of students is growing up with satellite imagery on their phones and street view in their browsers. The argument for real-world field work is, if anything, stronger now. Screens flatten distance and erase texture; a walk through a market, a ferry crossing, or a climb up a small hill restores the layers that make a place real.

For alumni who want to keep this spirit alive, the path forward is practical and friendly. There is no need for grand gestures, only small, well-planned outings that bring people together outdoors. Those who wish to be part of the next reunion can already register for reunions through the BRKM Reunion website and add their name to the field-trip interest list.

Practical ideas for alumni-led field outings

• Choose a location within an hour of public transport, so older alumni and those without cars can join without fuss.
• Recruit a local expert, perhaps a university geographer, a parks ranger, or a heritage officer, who can answer questions on the spot.
• Keep groups to around fifteen people, mirroring the school club's size, so conversation stays possible.
• Provide a simple printed handout with a sketch map, a few questions, and space for notes, just like the old clipboards.
• Build in a shared meal afterwards, since food has always been part of how BRKM gatherings end.
• Adapt the vintage hazards checklist from old trips to current Australian work health and safety expectations.
• Collect stories and small drawings from participants, and send them to the reunion archive for the next generation to read.