Monday, January 25, 2010

Kay's Springbok Camp, Arrow Park



This past weekend, 22 - 24 January, Kay did her Springbok Camp at a VERY wet Arrow Park in Benoni. Over all it was lots of fun and a great learning experience as this also doubled as the troop's Kontiki Prep camp.


The majority of the camp was spent building structures needed for the campsite at Kontiki but there was also an inter-patrol cooking competition and all the girls completed Water Biologist badge which included crab fishing (and yes, we did catch a crab).


As I stated earlier this camp was very wet and by Sunday 75% of the land was under a thin layer of water and as a result we were walking around barefoot on Sunday as shoes (other than wellington boots) were a bit pointless.


Preparations for Kontiki are looking good as all the girls are clued up as far as pioneering goes - we are also excited for Kontiki as we will be building and decorating an octopod in our campsite.

Well done to all the girls on a sucessful Prep camp and achieving their Water Biologist badge and well done to Kay for planning an excellent troop camp.

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Friday, January 15, 2010

Kay's Springbok Hike


On the 5th-7th January Kay took a patrol of three on her Springbok Hike in the Waterberg near Ficksberg in the Free State. She took 2 girls from our troop and a guy from 1st Greenside

Day 1
On the first day there was also a lot of flat farmland with haybales but then the terrain became very hilly with lots of small rivers. There were lots of cliffs and attached to these cliffs were poles with ladder rungs attached so that you can climb up the ladder and reach further up the cliff. They were interesting to climb up but seemed to have no other purpose. While we were in a ravine with cliffs on both sides in began to pour with rain and even with our raincoats on we still got sopping wet. That night we slept in a cave and dried our clothes by the campfire.

Day 2
The terrain this day was also very hilly with lots of small rivers to walk through and next to. That night we slept in a hut which was very different to the previous nights adventures. In the hut were triple bunk beds with three matresses on each bed - needless to say much sleep was had by all.

Day 3
This was the last day of hiking and so it was a bit shorter than the rest but we did find a small rock pool carved out of rocks so that the river ran through it. This water was very cold but we swam nonetheless.

In general it was a very good and rewarding hike and we went to Wimpy afterwards to celebrate and eat proper non-hike food.
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Saturday, January 9, 2010

Kay's Service Project

From the 28th November to 3 December Kay ran her Springbok Service Project by collecting old and new toys to give to children's homes in Eldorado Park. She went around to Randpark Ridge Group to the 3 cub packs and 2 troops to ask people to donate their old toys and tins of food. She also created a stall at Bright Water Commons to ask people to help by donating toys and food.


These were collected and on 21st December all these toys were packed and wrapped for distribution to the homes the next day. There were so many toys that they almost covered Kay's lounge floor.

Thank you to all the girls who participated in the wrapping all these toys and helped at the children's home - you made some little kids very happy. Thank you to all who donated food and toys to this great cause.

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