September 2011 Queen’s Scout Award Presentation - september 2011 from left to right, standing with the newly presented queen’s scouts are: Terry Brooke, Deputy Chief Commissioner - major events; phil crawford, State commissioner - venturer scouts; her excellency, the governor of new south wales and chief scout, professor marie bashir AC Cvo; doug menzies, chief commissioner; jan goodall, deputy chief commissioner - youth programs; and elston hynd, deputy chief commissioner In this issue... List of Queen’s Scout Awardees . 2 Jambo .7 .15 .13 . 9 Operation DragneT . 15 Australian Contingent to Cooperation: Scouting and . 17 3 Hunting in the Great Sandy Desert . The Boy Scouts of America the Duke of edinburgh Award by Pat Lowe National Jamboree – July 2013 Farewell from the editor . 18 5 1st Caringbah Family Camp . 1 Look Wide advertising rates . NSW Venturer Unit . 19 by Darcie MacPherson Contact List Gone With the Wind . 7 State Venturer Scout Council . 12 Windsurfing with 1st Caringbah LOOk WIDe is a publication of the Contact List New South Wales State Venturer Council . The contents are derived 8 A New State Commissioner . A Change to Navigation . 13 from submissions by the regions, Phil Crawford Interview with Charles Watson OAM Districts, Venturers and Leaders . queen’s scout awards Queen’s Scout Awardees Saturday 17 September 2011 Caley Robyn Walls Stuart James McManis 1st Ballina normanhurst Robert James Slater Sushen Gupta 2nd Baulkham hills 1st north rocks Christopher Evan Hvass Mitchell Robert Hayes Belrose 1st north rocks Rick John Warneke Paul Leslie Thompson 1st Berowra Peel valley Thomas Stephen Rusbatch Cassandra Emma Lee GeorGes river 1st sailors Bay Richard Mark Hodge Hugo Michael Lee 1st hornsBy heiGhts/ 1st sailors Bay normanhurst Bronte Vorn Wilson Michael Vincent John Foley west Pennant hills 1st lilli Pilli Ciara Holder Bowe Alan James Blunt 1st willouGhBy lones Melody Rochelle van Bergen Luke Angus Robertson 1st woollahra/ lower hunter PaddinGton Andrew Christopher Andrews 1st narellan 2 Building a Better Future Today. Look Wide • September 2011 Hunting in the great sandy desert The toughest country Pat Lowe is an Englishwoman who migrated to for human beings Australia in 1972. After spending several years in Perth, was surely the hot, arid she moved to the small town of Broome in the north deserts, where my partner Jimmy Pike grew up. With no of Western Australia, where she met Aboriginal artist surface water for most of the Jimmy Pike. Best known nowadays for his paintings, year and a short, unreliable rainy which are hung in galleries across the world, Jimmy season, the deserts had relatively started life in the Great Sandy Desert of Western low populations of animals as Australia where he learnt to hunt and gather food as well as of human beings. During the late dry season, they had to his ancestors had done for millennia. Pat and Jimmy concentrate in large groups near joined forces and went to live for three years at a camp known supplies of permanent in the desert, where Jimmy taught Pat about desert life. subterranean water, which they Besides exploring Jimmy’s childhood homelands and had to dig for, and walk over increasing distances to find going hunting nearly every day, the pair collaborated plant food and animals to hunt, on a number of books about desert life. carrying water for the journey in wooden coolamons. After Pat spoke to Look Wide to describe some of her good rains, when rock-holes and experiences of hunting in the Great Sandy Desert. other ephemeral waterholes had filled up, people could disperse through their country in small For many thousands of years before Europeans set family groups, seeking out sources of food they foot on the great southern land, later to be called couldn’t get to during the dry season. Australia, the people who lived here were hunters and gatherers. Over the vast continent there were Desert people knew their country, vast as it was, hundreds of different language groups and many intimately. There was no such place as ‘indoors’ different cultures. Coastal people, living close to for them, unless you count oceans alive with turtles, fish and other seafood, the hastily constructed led relatively settled lives. They varied their w o o d - a n d - g r a s s T h e saltwater diet with animals from the hinterland – mangkaja where t o“ u g h e s t emus, goannas, snakes and marsupial mammals they sheltered c o u n t r y f o r – but theirs was a land of plenty, from which they o n t h e r a r e h u m a n b e i n g s didn’t have to travel far to feed themselves. They occasions when w a s s u r e l y t h e h o t , got their vegetable food from trees, bushes and heavy rain set smaller plants, or dug them up from the ground. in. Their lives a r i d d e s e r t s , were outward where my partner Riverside people also depended partly on fish l o o k i n g . T h e y J i m m y P i k e for their diet, partly on dry-land mammals and could find their way grew up reptiles, seeds, fruit and the roots of plants. easily over hundreds of ” Forest people ate different foods again and long, rolling sandhills that, to developed their own ways of getting and European eyes, all look alike, to reach a waterhole processing them. People lived off whatever was that was no more than a tiny dry depression in the available in their particular country, and they sand. They learnt to do this from childhood; by adapted their lifestyles accordingly. the time they reached adulthood, both men and 3 rt Building a Better Future Today. Look Wide • September 2011 Hunting in the great sandy desert ...continued women had to be competent hunters who could a den of kittens or puppies. follow game wherever it led and, once they had caught it, head straight back to camp. Once when, with the help of our dog, Kilu, we had killed a female cat for dinner, When I went to live in the desert with Jimmy squeezed her Jimmy, I was a failure at finding my way. nipples and found that At first, my incompetence was a source they contained milk. of amusement to Jimmy and his family, Concerned that she must but when I showed little improvement have left kittens behind, they would shake their heads and say, he followed her tracks to ‘Ah, poorfella.’ Once, I brought out find her den. Kilu, ahead my compass and showed Jimmy how of us, suddenly dived it worked, the needle always pointing into a clump of spinifex north, thinking he would be interested. and emerged with a tiny He examined it briefly then handed black kitten, spitting and it back, with the remark: ‘All right for scratching, in his jaws. you. Blackfellas know which way we’re Jimmy retrieved it unhurt, going.’ named him Karnka (Crow), and adopted him. On another occasion, after a couple of Kilu learnt to tolerate hours following tracks on foot, we got Karnka, but they never jimmy pike in the back to our car and I realized I had lost great sandy desert got on. the key. I remembered having taken some dried fruit out of my pocket, and thought the key must In the eons before have fallen out then. ‘You’ll have to follow your Europeans arrived with their foxes and cats, which tracks back and look for it,’ Jimmy said. We both multiplied and spread throughout the continent, knew this would take me ages, as I tried to retrace the desert supported many species of native our steps over all the twists and turns we had animals. Stories from old people describe a land made, so he soon relented. Taking a direct route of surprising variety, but once cattle and sheep and ignoring our earlier tracks, he led me straight stations were established along the rivers and in across country. Suddenly, he gave a nod towards the hill country, they were like a magnet to desert the ground. ‘There’s your key,’ he said, leaving me people, who gradually drifted towards them and to pick it up. were put to work. Most of them never came back. Jimmy left in the 1950s and lived for a time as Hunting for desert people required a whole array a fringe-dweller before being sent off to stock of skills, besides a faultless sense of direction. camp to learn to ride a horse and muster cattle, Being able to read tracks was vital, as was a good a job he became good at. The last small groups understanding of animal behaviour; there would of his relations were ‘brought in’ during the 1960s be little point in following the day-old tracks of and 1970s, a few stragglers even later. a dingo, an animal that ranges far and fast. On the other hand, last night’s tracks of a cat might When some of these people first returned to the lead you to fresher ones, since cats hunt mainly desert in the mid-1980s, driving the seismic lines at night, rest in the daytime and tend to range and mining tracks in their own cars, they looked around the same area for several days. A well- in vain for the tracks of animals they once knew; used trail of a cat or a dingo during the breeding the Burrowing Bettong, the Mulgara, the Golden season could be counted on to lead the hunter to Bandicoot and many others have vanished from 4 rt Building a Better Future Today.