Thread: Australian Boy Scouts?

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

Akela...........leader of a cub troop.
Bageehra .......means black panther and is a leader.
The uniforms are a bit like our old ones of many years ago.
My first plane flight was as a cub at Camden airport in the back of a Cessna 172.
The leaders names all tie in with a story of dog pack.....I think it is called jungle book story ?

Bageehra ... black panther from jungle book.
Akela breed of sled dog... movie call of the wild.
Always thought Akela was a sled dog and it was also a jungle book character .
Hope to get my eldest boy into cubs soon and both my girls will be doing guides....

Originally Posted by 101 Ron

The uniforms are a bit like our old ones of many years ago.

Glenbawn Dam 1974

Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Jungle_Book_characters"]List of The Jungle Book characters - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


Bushie

Originally Posted by Binford

They're not half bad, actually. They only made very minor changes.

Maybe in America, but Australia has always had a different uniform.

Ours was drasticly changed a few years ago. None of the changes were practical or inovative (nor were they intended to be) they were purely style changes which 99.99% of people disagreed with...

Old uniform was Khaki button up cotton shirt with traditional regalia/patches etc, brown shorts or drill trousers, long socks, boots, leather belt and akubra style hat. Smart, instantly recognisable and a source of pride.

New uniform is a blue shirt with ugly shoulder colours to denote cubs/scouts etc etc etc... A lot of the badges were done away with. Pants were no longer supplied - the kids wear jeans of whatever variety they like and sneakers. Hat is of the type your wheelchair-bound grandfather is made to wear when on a picnic. Sloppy, motley and no standardisation means no uniform inspections means noone has pride in their uniform.

Originally Posted by Binford

Interesting. I've never heard of Scouting Names here. The boys are generally called by their first names and we adult leaders are referred to as "Mr. Taylor" and such, even among ourselves in the presence of the boys.

The kids are called by their names or nicknames, but leaders up until Scouts have "scouting names". Cub Leaders are named after the characters from the Jungle Book, with the cheif leader taking on the name "Akela" (the wolf). Scout Leaders generally choose or have bestowed on them a name of cryptic significance, as per the example above. Some are a bit more obvious - we had a leader called smiley. It was because he was, well... smiley.

Once you hit venturers your leaders are called by their first name, or depending on the dynamic, all manner of other names...

Originally Posted by Binford

Were they trying to make a radical change to it then?

In Australia, yes.

Interesting information on the uniforms. new to Scouting so not so intune with the older traditions.

On saying this, i was Bagheera for our cub pack and am now GL for Boxhill 9th, Victoria. Still stand in with the cub scouts when they are short of leaders tho.

Is excellent fun and loving it. I am hoping to start Joeys soon.... hardest thing is recruiting leaders tho

Chris

Originally Posted by Shonky

Old uniform was Khaki button up cotton shirt with traditional regalia/patches etc, brown shorts or drill trousers, long socks, boots, leather belt and akubra style hat. Smart, instantly recognisable and a source of pride.

New uniform is a blue shirt with ugly shoulder colours to denote cubs/scouts etc etc etc... A lot of the badges were done away with. Pants were no longer supplied - the kids wear jeans of whatever variety they like and sneakers. Hat is of the type your wheelchair-bound grandfather is made to wear when on a picnic. Sloppy, motley and no standardisation means no uniform inspections means noone has pride in their uniform.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I read that! "The type your wheelchair-bound grandfather is made to wear when on a picnic..." Beautifully descriptive!

Well, yeah, I saw some of the pictures of the Aussie Scouts in uniforms with different shoulder colors and thought it unique, but I wasn't exactly attracted to it. Perhaps because it's just so different. I'm just a traditionalist, I guess. I like a classic style.

Here in the States, we can wear any uniform we want so long as it was at one time or another an official BSA uniform. Is that the case with you too? My younger son could wear my old 1973 Cub Scout uniform (if I could find the darn thing!) It's quite a bit different from the current ones.

As for the hats here, most here wear an olive or khaki BSA baseball-style cap such as my son is wearing in the previous picture, but he also has a dark brown official BSA Stetson/Akubra type (sort of like my Akubra only with the sides rolled up a bit and made of a much more flexible and thicker felt).

I actually did get thrown out,although it wasnt for eating a Brownie.
We had an all day beach hike we had to do to get a badge.
It involved our pack and a few others,probably 100 kids on the hike.
What me and 2 mates did,both banished for the same crime as we were quite cocky about what we did,was to take a massive shortcut and spend the day body surfing.
We looked at the map,it was a long peninsular,we took a shortcut wich amounted to 500m across sandhills to end up at the finish point.What we didnt realise was there were 3 checkpoints which we didnt make.
Whilst they called in emergency services to search for us 3 we blissfully spent most of the day bodysurfing at the finish line.
They just didnt see it our way that we thought it was smart to cross country to get the hike over and done with.
We even made the news over it.
Andrew