Joeys brought 48 rowing students to the dam on Sunday for the five-day camp and booked out the cabins on the waterfront, allowing them to maximise their time spent on the water.

St Joseph’s head of rowing Bob Shirlaw said the school has been extremely happy with their time spent in Bathurst and believes they could be back again soon.

“We’ve been going to different places, we’ve been to Grafton and places like that to try camps and we wanted to try somewhere different, a little bit closer to Sydney, where we could get some good water. We were thinking about somewhere on the Central Coast but here had been recommended to us so we came up in December and checked it out,” Mr Shirlaw said.

“There was a bit more water here last time we came but it looked really good and the facilities are fantastic, with the buildings here, it has been great. We booked the whole camp site. We’ve got 48 boys here and it’s worked extremely well. We had one of the locals from town doing the catering, lunches and dinners for us.

“We’ve been very pleased and we will be very keen to rebook again for our next camp later in the year.”

The school is in the middle of its racing season and is using the camp as an opportunity to make sure its athletes are in shape after the Christmas holidays  for a gruelling schedule of events which include five regattas and national championships.

Mr Shirlaw said the opportunity to train in fresh water and in a much calmer environment than usual would really help.

“We train on Sydney Harbour which always has high-speed ferries going past and big cruisers that create washes. There are only really two bays in Sydney Harbour that have speed restrictions that we can train on so this is a rare treat for us and a huge improvement. Coming here for a week is probably as good as a month of training in Sydney,” he said.

After being forced to endure temperatures of more than 40 degrees in Sydney last week, teachers and students were concerned about the possibility of similar temperatures this week but, instead, they have had a few thunderstorms they have had to work around.

“The weather has been pretty good. The wind blew up a bit yesterday [Wednesday] and we’ve been dodging thunderstorms,” Mr Shirlaw said. 

“We had one the day before yesterday [Tuesday] before lunch. We’d just got back off the water and it came through then blew up again later. Once it was gone, the water was just like a milk pond.

“We’re flexible with times so it hasn’t worried us.”