The pack shaped me
‘IPROMISE to do my best to do my duty to God and the King, to keep the law of the Wolf Cub pack and to do a good turn to somebody every day.” That’s the promise of the cubs of the scouting movement as I remember it when I became one as an eight-year-old.
It mightn’t be 100 per cent accurate, but I reckon it’s pretty close, and for some reason I’ve never forgotten it.
It came to mind again last Friday, when I attended the funeral of Ian Mills, a man I had not seen since my scouting days at the Otway Forester group, between 1946 and 1958, when I joined the Addy as a cadet reporter and had to give up all my sporting and other activities, scouting included, because of the hours and weekend work involved.
I had left Geelong Junior Technical School at 15 to take on a fitting and turning apprenticeship, which lasted about three months, then nine months as an invoice clerk and three years as a trainee industrial chemist before finding my way into journalism.
But I reckon scouting has had a huge influence on my life.
A couple of years younger than me, Ian also started off in the Otway Forester cubs and continued through scouts, also becoming a cubmaster and scoutmaster, according to eulogies that also acknowledged the influence scouting had on his life and family.
I think it is great scouting still exists, even if it is not as large a
“There is no doubt in my mind that it did a great deal to prepare me for life, to give me a sense of community service that has stayed with me and to help shape the values that have guided me through life.”
movement as it was when I was young.
There is no doubt in my mind that it did a great deal to prepare me for life, to give me a sense of community service that has stayed with me and to help shape the values that have guided me through life, even though I have made my share of mistakes.
Through scouts, I met people of many races and creeds at the two Pan Pacific jamborees I attended as a youngster.
I was also one of the second group of scouts to visit Nauru after World War II and reopen the scouting link between Geelong and the island people.
Yep, they were great days and Ian’s funeral this week got me thinking what a shame it was to lose contact with so many boyhood friends because of my job and the 11 years I spent away from Geelong in the 1960s and early 1970s.