EV 05: Dawn of the Living Dead

Anstey at EV
EV this year was held around the Blanchtown area; flat, dry, dusty and generally nothing visually stimulating. Rover camp for Theme team was at Armstrong, the scout Gliding Campsite near Roonka, so for once we were in bunks for the weekend and we had pretty good facilities compared to previous years.

Anstey was once again an Activity Crew and six of us went up; Michael, Brendan, Simon, Ash, Marc and myself. We ran four activities the first the cube of death; a giant cube of fridge boxes filled with dog bone biscuits and 2 glow in the dark skeletons in bits. Venturers were blindfolded and needed to get as many bits as possible and the construct the skeletons. Apparently dog biscuits taste like a cross between Nutrigrain and Vitabrits. We had two giant dot to dots, one was a bat and there was some debate to the other one, what started as a cat was also found to be a werewolf or a rabbit. The unlocking the dead involved a tree covered in keys and 2 locked boxes, this proved to be incredibly simple for some teams or so hard for other teams that they couldn’t unlock either box. Our last activity was coffin racing, with the coffins made up by Simon and venturers having to race around as pallbearers, unfortunately this was on the Sunday when everything was at Roonka so there were less teams doing activities.

Venturers also got stuck into collecting the set of 60 trading cards from Rovers and other leaders with the most sought after being the signed Michael Woodward card. Although ash signed a whole stack of Ash from army of Darkness with different colour pens and pancake mix for extra points for the team. Aside from activities we also has teams sculling milk, eating flour, snorting tang and I even managed to get myself some 2 minute noodles for a trading card.

There were more crews than usual, Crew 64, TARC, Aesir and Grovers were also there, but besides running our activity checkpoints, we also helped with venturer camps and the set up of themed locations. The locations were based around horror and included the Sunnydale Cemetery, the Laboratory, a Sacred Burial Ground, the Temple of Doom, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Devils Playground. Anstey Helped with the Set up of the Cemetery, which was a bush camp, for which Simon had made the very impressive Iron Gate. Along with the gate there were a stack of tombstones, Michael Woodward seemed to appreciate his very own grave, and even a pet semetary.

Back at camp we had candle lit dinners and reasonable food, at least we didn’t have the salad sandwiches that theme team had. Simon even fixed the Armstrong water tank on the Friday night. We helped set up some of the disco on the Sunday night, most importantly we set up the bubbleator, which venturers were asking about during the weekend. after a few repairs and makeshif parts it was good to go and once again looked great. unfortunately there was an injury when a venturer was pushed in and cut her leg on the metal holding down the hose.

Venturer feedback about the activities was good and the compliments from other EV departments regarding the assistance provided by the Rovers were outstanding. Despite the amount of work, I’m sure most people had a lot of fun and the outstanding efforts of the Rovers really promoted the section to both Venturers and other Leaders.
Photos can be found Here

Plaster Fun House

Sunday Afternoon on the 20th of March, Brendan, Daniel and Myself went to the Plaster fun house for the Afternoon. We all picked out something to paint up, Brendan had a grumpy dragon and both Daniel and I picked really big things to paint, one a horoscope thingy and the other was an Aztec type patter in a big disc. Brendan finished with a very nice looking dragon in the end, Daniel painted his black then realised what a pain in the ass it was to paint over it and didn’t quite get it finished by closing time and after working forever on the horoscope all of us worked on getting it finished just before closing. Definitely worth doing again as a group!

Afterwards we did a bit of Prep for our EV activities and had tea and a movie at my place (once the DVD was sorted out) when Simon and Barg came round.

Advanced Rover Training

On the 11th-13th of March Barg and myself attended the Advance Rover Training Course at the Lones hut at Woodhouse. The Rover training team ran the weekend and there were seven Rovers on the course in total. The weekend covers topics such as communication, conflict resolution, adventurous activities, event planning, service and we also went on a hike and a GPS activity (the clue of “leaf” of “stick” at woodhouse is not particularly helpful!!). Tea was at the Crafers pub, which was fantastic, though the rocky road mud cake was a bit of a let down. A couple of the things from the course have been trialed or put into the “management of the crew” such as trying to include short team activities at the end of crew meetings.

Nont 2005

This years NONT was all Aussie adNONTures run by Lones Rovers, starting at Hollywood plaza in sailsbury and featuring the area around Gawler, Mallala, Port Gawler, Riverton and Angle Vale. There were a total of 9 cars in the event; Aesir, Anstey, Blackburn, two from Crew 64 and four from Pine Forest.

Anstey originally was going to have 2 cars but this dwindled down to one car with Michael driving, myself and two prospective members, Matt Sawyers and Zaho – a Chinese exchange student. Although we didn’t put much effort into going in theme we did manage to get all of the bonus items on the list including modified condoms as quandongs and a cutout of Russell Coight as big as the word life, making it life size.

For some suspect reason we started second rather than first as we were drawn and Matt soon showed his value as an expert Morse code decoder to work out the first section of the course. All of the mapping was more or less straight forward, there were a couple of tricky bits but we sorted them all out eventually. Unfortunately however we did get a little bit lost on the second stage and once we found ourselves back on track we realized we’d been off the map which is why it was so hard to workout where we were.

The activities in the first half included sheaf tossing for which Zhao threw a phenomenal 18 meters, fishing with Peter Hann for magnetic fish for which we got 27 out of a possible 60, campcraft gadget construction for which we build a kickass cow which held a dryzabone and hat and was so well trained it demonstrated how it could sit, a first aid activity (with an indepth discussion on breeding programs of the threatened yellow flashing whatsit…) and lastly a Morse code activity with Brownie. The halfway point wasn’t too bad, at least the food was much better than last year’s and everyone kept trying to feed us and it was also pretty cozy (despite being told I looked like a drunk bum when I had my gaurana hit). The second half included a sheep collecting (herding) activity, a very poor effort at line dancing and being crammed into a very smelly outback dunny for a minute. We then finished off at Angle Vale Scout Hall being the second car back at 4am ish followed by Blackburn.
All in all we had a pretty good time, Michael and I both enjoyed this years one more that last years, there were more and possibly better activities, the observations and caution signs all had reflective tape on them making them really easy to spot and we had plenty of bribes for every checkpoint ranging from snickers bars, strawberry and creams, Chilli Tim Tams and sticky buns. Even though the puzzle bits we collected over the night said bribery gets you nowhere, I think it was still worth it. Lones did a really great job of organizing the night, now we just have to wait to see how we went….

Ted Whitworth Award Presentation 2005

The Ted Whitworth Award to scouting was presented on Thursday the 3rd of March 2005 by the BP Masonic lodge 222. The award recognizes outstanding service to the community by a rover crew and as such it is presented to the Rover Crew which has carried out the greatest amount of service over the year. The award not only recognizes the service preformed by a single crew but that all rovers and rover crews contribute a great deal of time to service activities which is why the award is given to a rover crew. The award is in honor of the late Reverend Ted Whitworth, a member of the BP lodge who is fondly remembered. Ted Whitworth was dedicated to serving others and the lodge members said he characterized the principles and strengths of both scouting and masonry.

The award (a pennant) is presented at a formal ceremony at the Masonic Lodge at an open ceremony with the BP lodge members, the grand lodge, scouting members, BP guild members, Rovers and guests in attendance. Along with the pennant, framed certificates are presented individually to all Crew members. Following the ceremony a reception is held in the main hall with food and drinks, a number of toasts and an address and a raffle.

Anstey Rover Crew was honoured to receive the Award this year for service over 2004 and we appreciate the BP lodge extending their hospitality to us once again.
Photos can be found Here