16,000 Scouts To Gather In Aust.

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30635, 29 December 1964, Page 10

16,000 Scouts To Gather In Aust.

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

SYDNEY, December 28.

Ten special trains will leave New South Wales today, tomorrow and Wednesday with more than 5000 boy scouts for the seventh Australian jamboree near Melbourne.

The jamboree, to be held at Churchill National Park, Dandenong. from December 31 to January 8, will be attended by more than 16,000 scouts from 21 countries, including New Zealand.

On Thursday, the Chief Scout of Australia, the Gov-ernor-General, Lord de L’lsle, will open the jamboree. Already, many of the scouts are living under canvas at the 700-acre camp site. The scouts are coming from Canada, the United States, Japan, other Far East countries and the Pacific Islands.

Until the jamboree breaks up on January 8, the camp site will become a small city with a 100-bed hospital, telephones, sealed roads, shopping centres, a central administration area, banks—and even a branch of the Victorian Tourist Bureau.

Already 145 marquees have been pitched, and as the scouts arrive they will pitch another 3200 tents. Throughout the nine days of the jamboree, the 16,000 scouts will entertain the public, demonstrate their crafts and skills, give displays featuring the life of their own countries, undergo a commando course, distribute food and mail, guard lost property, and publish 26,000 copies of an eight-page pictorial newspaper each day.