27^th Feb – Investiture Ceremony & Lightweight cooking Mt Gravatt

Tonight was a very special evening. We went up to the Mt Gravatt lookout to have a combined cub linking and scout investiture ceremony.

It was really beautiful and memorable with the sun setting over the cityscape.

Appointment Ceremony on opening parade. Our three new Patrol Leaders (Elliot – Penguin, Joseph – Panther and Koala’s PL) all took their Patrol Leader Oath and were presented with stripes, whistles and patrol staves. Two of our three Assistant Patrol Leaders (Panther – Michael and Laura – Koala) were able to be there and to be appointed.

Our linking ceremony was for Declan and Annie. Some of their cub leaders were able to come along and share some special stories with the cubs about Declan and Annie’s journeys through cubs and their achievements – both of whom have earned their Grey Wolf Award.

One of our new traditions is that anyone who is invested into the scout section (be it from cubs or new) writes their name and the date of their investiture onto the gateway crossbar. We use the same bar every time so over the years we will have a fantastic record of everyone joining Victor scouts!

We also invested a new scout all the way from the UK – Michael.

It was great to be able to share this ceremony with lots of parents who stayed and many people in our community who were at the lookout. It was also a great night to do a first link night for two of our linking cubs Austin and Adam. We are happy they are joining us and looking forward to when they too will have a special investiture ceremony. In the mean time they are starting to get to know what scouts is like.

As it happens everyone in the section received a badge of some sort tonight too; that doesn’t happen very often! Either for award work they had completed, a new patrol patch, investiture or linking badges.

For our activity tonight we also learned about light hike cooking methods using solid fuel (hexamine), liquid fuel (metho) and gas fuel (butane). Each patrol chose two of these methods and then cooked themselves some supper. Koala and Penguin patrol made s’mores (short for some more!) and Panther patrol made chocolate dipping sauce.

A huge thank you to all the parents and leaders who were able to stay for the investiture ceremony and also to Komodo for his brilliant orchestration of the tea/coffee/hot chocolate for supper.

1^st March – Postponed Founder’s Day Ceremony and Clean Up Australia Day

Due to Cyclone Marcia Founder’s Day was postponed to this date.

Some of our section were able to join the ceremony to celebrate Baden Powell’s birthday which is the date we use to remember the fabulous opportunities and experiences we all have through scouting that wouldn’t be possible without BP.

6^th March – Kitchen Fly Construction

An important scouting skill is learning how to set up a camp site. Tonight we learnt and practiced a few different knots and then used them to learn about teamwork and constructing a kitchen fly. The kitchen fly keeps the rain and sun off our camp kitchen and uses wooden spars, rope, pegs and a tarp. It also covers both Pioneer knots (clove hitch, rolling hitch, sheet bend) and Explorer knots (bow line) so opportunity for everyone to learn together. Even basic skills like how to bang a peg into the ground safely and how to look after gear. We didn’t quite get them completely up but that’s OK and we gave it a really good go!

 

7-8^th March – Family Camp

Most of our scouts were able to join in the fun of family camp. As a section we were able to do some sewing of badges onto uniforms and to also get award work signed off. Camps are often an excellent opportunity to do these sorts of activities. Our patrol leaders taught everyone how to sing “Road Kill Stew” and some of our scouts either organised and performed skits or helped to lead songs. We also held a special ceremony at sunset on the Burleigh Heads Beach to invest Ellie into the troop and to appoint Tadgh as an APL. Congratulations to both. Well done everyone – camp was so much fun and you all helped to make it happen!

See the separate blog post of all the things that happened at family camp.

13^th March – Operation Butterfly Preparation

In a couple of weeks some of our scouts are headed off to Operation Butterfly – this is a lightweight hiking camp over a 24hr period. Scouts navigate through bushland to reach different bases. At each base there are activities to complete as a patrol. This is a competition camp where points are awarded based on navigation skill execution, teamwork and completion of base activities. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter about points, it’s a great opportunity for scouts to meet other scouts in the South East corner of Qld. There are generally about 400-500 scouts that participate.

To prepare for this camp we had three bases – Navigation (run by Komodo), Teamwork skills – Walking on Mars (run by Falcon) and Menu planning (run by Echidna). Even for scouts not attending Butterfly these are all general scouting skills that are part of award work but also just having fun doing scouting things.

We also played some new games that were a hit – Evolution with almost everyone turning from an egg into a Butterfly and the Anti-gravity tent pole!