I wasn’t sure what to expect at the Logan District Scout Camp. It’s yet another step in my introduction to the Unique, Special and Peculiar of Scouting. I was only able to go to the camp for the Friday night and Saturday during the day because I had an adventure race on Sunday. All I can say is that I had a lot of fun.
I rode my mountain bike the 9km to the camp with all my camping and racing gear on my back. It was a challenging ride with more uphills than down. When I arrived, I realised that I had left my dilli bag (bag containing my personal crockery and cutlery) at home. Fortunately, one of the other Leaders in my Scout group is a practical man so he made me a ‘mug’ out of an empty juice container. It turned out that he’d forgotten his dilli bag too, so he also made himself a similar mug. In solidarity, the third leader from our Group decided to also make himself a juice container mug. It was a good source of laughter during the camp.
One of the checkpoints I hung
Our Scout Troop was organising the camp this year. We have four leaders and two of them did a magnificent job setting everything up. As part of my leadership training, I was asked to set up an orienteering base activity and wide game. The base activity was a 90 minute orienteering refresher session. The wide game (game that takes place over a wide area) was an orienteering game. I hung coloured paddle pop sticks in trees with words relating to the ocean (the camp theme) written on them. We don’t have a topographic map of the camp area so in this activity the Scouts had to take bearings and walk a certain distance to the next checkpoint. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be at the camp on Saturday night to see how the game unfolded.
Dawn on Saturday
The Scout camp we frequent, which is quite close to my home, is beautiful. And the sunrise on Saturday morning was no exception.
The Leaders’ camp
One of the things I like about Scouts is that the youth members (10.5-14.5 years old) are allowed a lot of freedom and independence. For this camp, we had about 48 Scouts in attendance from five different Scout Troops (i.e. from Scout Troops based in five different suburbs in our District). The Scouts camped at the top of the hill while us Leaders camped down near the camp HQ; about 200m away from the Scouts. Each patrol of 5-7 Scouts had to set up their own campsites, including tents, kitchens, dining tents and ocean-themed decorations. They had prepared their own menus, bought their own food an had to cook their own meals. No one was walking around making sure they did anything; they were responsible for managing their own campsites. I think this is an important opportunity for personal growth for the youth members.
The camp itself was fantastic. There were bases set up that the Scouts rotated through. There was an obstacle course, my orienteering base, a photography base run by a professional photographer, a GPS base run by a person who works in national parks, a no-matches fire lighting base and a scuba diving (introduction to the equipment) base run by professional divers. There was a campfire, campfire skits and the night orienteering game.
Total: Cycle 9km with full pack to Scout camp
