Scouts Celebrate 65th Jamboree

The Hibiscus Coast Scout District (HCD) held their annual district Jamboree weekend on October 15 and 16 at Rowallan Scout Park.

This was a District run event with all Scout and Guide sections invited for the 65th Jamboree-On-The-Air (JOTA) and the 26th Jamboree-On-The-Internet (JOTI) as a joint event.

This is the world’s largest digital Scout weekend taking place on the Internet, in person and over the airwaves.

Held every year in October, the event connects millions of young people around the world for a full weekend that promotes communication, friendship, and global citizenship.

This year there was an amazing youth committee containing Joey Scouts, Cub Scouts, Scouts, Venturer Scouts, and Rover Scouts deciding on the activities along with an enthusiastic team of leaders, rovers, and adult helpers planning, supporting and running the activities at the event.

Youth members from Sarina, Proserpine, Mackay City Central and Banksia Scout Groups attended with youth from five years and older participating in a host of fun activities.

These included a Scoutlink IRC chat base, a Minecraft challenge base, an electronics construction base, an amateur radio base, and a challenging communication scavenger hunt that took the youth all over the park.

The chat base saw members talk to other Scouts over the internet from Germany, Spain, Scotland, Indonesia, Siberia, India, New Zealand and many other places.

The Minecraft base saw the youth, and even the Activity Leaders, complete challenges together using communication, creativity and teamwork in the video game.

The communication scavenger hunt activity contained four messages, each in a different style of communication, that the youth members transcribed to give them the location of the next message and part of a larger second message.

The electronic base had the Scout and older sections soldering and making little 9V ‘Head or Tail’ electronic kits and the Joey Scouts and Cub Scouts using insulating and conductive play dough to create electronic circuits where they could light up several LED lights as part of their creations.

Lastly, the Amateur Radio Base was where youth members talked to other Scouts over the airwaves and had them navigating each other around the park with GPS trackers and walkie talkies.

At the end of the day a traditional district scout campfire was held with songs, skits and story telling with lots of fun and frivolity.

Coordinator, Jim McIntyre said he was happy to see each group and youth section running their own communication and scout knowledge activities over the weekend.

“When they weren’t doing the District activities, I saw some making solar powered miniature cars and learning about solar energy among other activities,” he said.

During the weekend, a formal parade along with award presentations took place.

Contributed with thanks to Jim Mcintyre

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