SCOUT NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 23512, 19 May 1938, Page 16

SCOUT NOTES

By

PATHFINDER

The scouters’ meeting last Monday evening was well attended and the business was dealt with in short time. The proceeds from the rally held in the show grounds on April 9 were £l9 and of this the groups received onehalf after the annual levy had been deducted. The meeting considered these results very satisfactory. The proposed visit by Dunedin scouters had been postponed it was reported. Three scouters and two scouts were definitely going to the Australasian Jamboree at Sydney this Christmas, the district secretary reported, as their applications had been received. As a district badge was required for the Southland district it was decided to hold a competition for the design. During the long week-end at the King’s Birthday a district cycle ride and camp will be held if suggestions made can be carried out by the committee appointed. At the meeting of the Gladstone Scout Troop last Thursday, the scouters, scouts and committee members presented Assistant Scoutmaster G. C. Alington with a useful gift to show their appreciation of his services in the troop for the last six years. Scouter Alington joined the troop in 1932 (after two years as’a wolf cub in another district) and had his second-class badge in six months, and his first-class badge a year later, obtaining the King’s Scout Badge in 1935. During these years he rose from scout to patrol leader, troop leader and assistant scoutmaster. The Invercargill scouters took the opportunity at their meeting on Monday to express their appreciation of Scouter Alington’s service for the last two years and they presented him with a suitcase. GOVERNOR OF CEYLON Sir Andrew Caldecott, Governor of Ceylon,' and Chief Scout for the island, recently donned scout uniform for the first time, and paid a visit to the now famous scout colony at Kalutara. The scout colony was established in November 1931, and covers 30 acres. The purpose is to further the application of scout methods in training boys, to indicate lines on which general problems of education, character training, food production, colonization and unemployment may be tackled. Three main sections aim at training in practical agriculture; to produce teachers; and a boys’ school for wolf cubs. All colonists do community work in the paddy fields, in planting, unbuilding, or in constructing roads, wells, and so on, and all are trained in ccoking, t sewing and other crafts. Educationalists from various countries have visited the colony, and one said that he would send fin educational expert to study the scheme in full. Sir Andrew Caldecott was very pleased with what he saw at the colony and said: “I am pretty certain that the scouts of the Kalutara colony are doing not only quite practical work, but very good work in the cause of rural reconstruction of this island.” The Governor was accompanied by Mr Justice Whitley, the new Chief Justice of Uganda. At a’meeting in the evening, at which he presided as the Chief Scout for Ceylon, Sir Andrew said that when he went down to the scout colony that morning he wore his Chief Scout’s uniform for the first time and he was trying every inch to feel a scout; but ■ he could not prevent another person travelling with him to the colony—and that was the Governor of Ceylon. The pleasure that visit had afforded him he had enjoyed as the Governor. If the work at the colony was allowed to dwindle, he feared that it would be a disaster of the greatest ■ magnitude. During his visit Sir Andrew planted a Jak tree, and declared open “Stubbs Road,” which had been constructed by the students. The first sod of earth for the road had been cut by Sir Edward Stubbs during his visit to the colony last year.