On Sunday the 23rd of November 2008, 5 cyclists crossed the finish line of an exhausting and exhilarating journey at Gleneagle Picnic Area. Richard Pilgrim, Rebecca Clarke, Stephen Phillips, Nikki Horan and Stephen Cocks had all completed an off road cycle on the Munda Biddi trail, totalling over 61km long taking over 12 hours of cycling over 2 full days. This was for their Expedition 1 award for the Adventurous Activites section. The weekend was enjoyed by all and the trail should be tried out by anybody as it is something that is a lot of fun and can be a great adrenaline rush.

A photo of the pack. (Click photo to view album):

Another group camp is over for the year and all our Venturers had another great time! We had 90% attendance the whole camp, and if you include those who linked then we had 94% attendance. We did sandboarding, canoeing, fun in the river, some fishing, paddling with scouts, soccer and games, we also went to the gravity centre in Gingin and a lot more! At the end of the camp we had 6 scouts come up to be apart of our unit who will be invested next week Friday. One highlight of the camp was Magnus getting run over by some fo our other venturers on sandboards. Watch it here.

Tenting it!! WBVU style. (Click photo to view album):

JOTI is called Jamboree Over The Internet and is when scouts all over the world get together on Scoutlink IRC and talk to loads of different scouts from all over the world on the internet to find out about what they do for camps and activities and what groups they are from etc. They had to make 10 contacts to get a certificate and badge and had great fun doing so, many filled out 2 or 3 sheets full.

Austin Computers was this years major sponsor along with SpiderWeb Computer Solutions. Austin provided 2x 16 port switches which were of great help and the event would not have run without them. SpiderWeb provided some computer hardware and other small networking equipment along with service to run the event.

The whole group (Click photo to view album):

Rottnest Invasion was held once again this year and was a great time for all. We headed over on the Rottnest Express at 6pm on the Friday night and then found ourselves in our nice cabins. On the Saturday morning we went and did our service work from 9.30am planting trees to help the environment and wildlife. Once we had this done, we had the rest of Saturday and Sunday to ourselves. We did lots of different things and had a great time then came back on the ferry at 4pm on Sunday.

WBVU Tag (Click photo to view album):

This weekend was a Venturing Skills hike which was conducted by several different groups around Perth. This allowed a few of our unit members and also some of the scouts which will be linking up to us in October to achieve their Venturing Skills badge which will enable them all to go to Venture in 2009. Some of the groups involved were: 1st Waylen Bay, 1st Bibra Lake, 1st Scarborough, 1st Mirrabooka, 1st Pelican Point. The hike took place from the start of the Bibbulmun track to the Hills Forest Discovery Centre. The total distance for the night and day was 18.2km. Everyone had a great time and enjoyed themselves

Tonight we had our CPR Night where Wendy came down and taught us all CPR. We used the Annie Dolls to practice on and also revisted the DRABCD procedure with all the new information and new types of procedures which have been introduced into it. Everyone had a great time and Ollie had some fun time making out with the doll... :P

Here's a photo of 3 doing their assessment (Click photo to view album):

An Inside Charge Course was held again this year featuring 14 participants who delightadly all received their Inside Charge. The only 2 who didn't was because they were just a little under the age gap. Capsize drills, solo rowing, sailing, crew rowing, navigation, written tests and exams along with letting off a flare one night and much more were some of the highlights of the weekend.

A Capsize! (Click photo to view album):

Well we just got back from a Senior First Aid Course which 2 of our unit members attended. This was help up at Toodyay (81km from Perth) but was a great course with loads of fun and lots of new friendships were made. The Toodyay scouts were most accomodating and we all had a great time at night also! We learnt a lot and are now qualified First Aiders which in Venturers gets us the First Aid tape and the First Aid badge. Everyone should try to do this course because the more people out there that know First Aid, the more lives that can be saved.

This was the scouting group:

Well the Venturer Ball and afters is finally over for this year. Our unit had three people attend with their dates, Ollie, Matt and Magnus. We had a great time there when it all started off at 7pm with a speech from Callum (BVC Chair) and then food time. After this people socialised and went to get photos until desert came on later on in the night. After this everyone just went to the dance floor and party'd out Night Club style for the rest of the night to the tunes which the DJ was pumping out. Everyone had a great time.

Check out the photos by clicking on the photo below:

SVU Movie Night just finished up and was a blast for all that went. We found ourselves dancing to music and socialising with food and fun until about 9pm when the movies started. We had several movies run through and also had Wii games going in another room. About 40 people turned up which was more than expected and everybody stayed up quite a while. Most people were found to just doze for a little while as the night progrssed and morning came and I think most people got around 1hrs sleep all up :).

Check out the photos by clicking on the photo below:

We just got back from the Pioneering weekend that we did and proved very successful. Basically, the pioneering stuff we did was built a rope way with extremely thick rope but somehow it snapper. Must have been old but anyhow that's for all the pioneering we did. We thought it was going to be a quiet weekend but found every single scout group up at Manjedal enjoying a cooking weekend. The other things that we did was mainly collect firewood and build the fire, see other groups, play around and also take down a couple of trees with a lot of effort. Check out the photos.

One of the trees we took down (sitting on):

Unearth Perth was a weekend full of fun and excitement as teams gathered to compete in a city wide event starting on Saturday morning and ending Sunday night. Us venturers got down there on Friday night to set up, went home and came back on Saturday at 7:30 to start the registration and get going. We were off on a train to Fremantle by 8:30 and before we knew it we were in the event competing for the big title. Evactuations took place and the rain caused disasters but the event finished with everyone enjoying themselves. Unfortunately we didn't win and here is our team:

Master Mariners this year was another great event. With a variety of teams from different sections including Scouts, Venturers and Rovers the event went well. The winners for the Venturing section, following the Orienteering win is WAYLEN BAY VENTURERS! With a great performace the team won the Venturing section and took out the trophe to be crowned the Winning Venturer Crew of Master Mariners 2008.

The crew was:
Coxswain: Daniel Lucas
Crew:
Magnus Uren
Ollie Buckland
Matt Hare
Alistair Housley
Richard Pilgrim

And a photo of the winning team:

This years Venturer section winners are... Waylen Bay!!! Congratulations to Magnus Uren, Paris Denny and Ethan Cole for taking out 1st Place in the Venturer section of Orienteering 2008. Winning by close to 100 points the team did excellent to complete the whole first map and over 10 points on the second map. Here are our winners below:

That marks the end of a great sailing weekend which was mainly for enjoyment and also to teach others new skills and expand on those which we already have. The weekend was great to refresh us on sailing for Master Mariners 2008 which is an upcoming event we have a team entered for and also allowed other land scout groups such as Bibra Lake, Scarborough and Kwinana to enjoy themselves doing water activites as well. We all went out for a night sail on Saturday night heading off towards Mosman Bay and then returned later that night at about 11pm to prepare and get ready for bed. Eventually most went to sleep about 1am in the morning and then we got up at about 8am to have breakfast and head off for another sail before lunch. We returned Madge home and after lunch we packed up and returned Starwitch to Canning.

Well we have just finished another successful Swanabout for the year which was what we all thought a great one. The Venturers who attended Waylen Bay used Madge, Nick Loades and the Gordon Johnson mainly as well as a few other boats that came and went. Other Venturer groups joined us on this weekend such as Scarborough and Bibra Lake for some fun. The whole weekend went smoothly and I don't think anyone got any sleep but it was well worth it.

We went for a Night Hike this weekend which involved in us originally setting off from the petrol station on the Cnr of Nettleton and South West Highway towards Manjedal. We were planning to bush bash/follow tracks and end up at Manjedal on Saturday afternoon but instead we could not find suitable tracks and had to camp the night at Manjedal. The next day we head off from inside Manjedal on a random bearing to find ourselves out in the pure Australian bush completing a proper hike. We did this for most the day and then came back at lunchtime to enjoy lunch, pack up the tents and head home.

Alright we had the Christmas Windup today and we got to see Ollie and Paris get their Scout Medallions presented to them. Everyone had a great time at the breakfast and it was very enjoyable. There were sausages, burgers, hash browns, tomatoes, salad and lots of other stuff including champagne.

We also had the Unit Elections for the 1st Sememster of 2008. The new council is as follows:
Treasurer: Ollie Buckland
Secretary: Magnus Uren
Chairperson: Matt Hare
Asst Chairperson: Richard Pilgrim

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Movie night was last night and this morning where everyone had a great time. Not to mention the fact that no one got to sleep until 5am this morning, everyone had fun and we managed to watch about 5 movies along with some funny videos and also funny pictures. We all got around 1 hours sleep but that didn't stop us from still having a great time in the morning. Sadly we didn't take any pictures but who needs pictures of people watching movies? Quote: Ollie.

We had the annual Bikers Breakfast this morning to fundraise for the 1st Waylen Bay Group. We served breakfast to a crowd of over five thousand bikers who wer eon a charity run to Joondalup to raise money. As Waylen Bay are the only group allowed to cook breakfast for the Bikers, they loved it and everyone had a great time. The pictures can be viewed here and this is a picture of them leaving:

Big Brother camp was this weekend where we set up a big brother like scenario where the scouts were crammed into a small space with their kitchen tents, sleeping tents and play area. There was a reward room for the most organised patrol each part of the day and also many fun activities including a lot of swimming. The pictures can be viewed here and this is a picture of the egg cooking activity where you only were allowed to use sheets of newspaper, 3 matches and some sticks to hard boil it:

The Venturer Leadership Course was this weekend where we went and we learnt a whole lot more skills to improve on from those that we learnt at the Ventuer Unit Management Course. We had a great time doing all the activities, especially the activity at the end which included many different scenarios and a lot of fun. The pictures can be viewed here and here is a picture of the bomb which looks pretty real:

Well this weekend we had the Venturer Unit Management Course which was run by the Branch training council. 4 of our Ventuers attended them being:

Richard
Magnus
Ollie
Matt

We all had a great time apart from the fact of someone putting the snib on the Venturer Den lock (grr) and having to sleep on the floor. We learnt lots and also have lots of pictures to share here. Here is one of the pictures:

Hi all,

Another successful JOTI I think. And as it should be TOTALLY organised and run by the youth members. I bet everyone slept well on Sunday night. Many thanks Matt - you were awesome! Such composure under pressure too! Next time we are going to have to work harder to get you to crack!

Thanks also to Alistair for providing leadership for the event (from afar sometimes :-)) and Skip for driving us around. And thanks to all participants who joined in to make this a great 26 hours for all.

By my count we had 24 scouts & venturers; 11 cubs (including the Byford ones); 7 leaders and few parents.

Yours in Scouting,
Grumpy

Photos are located here and this is a picture of the computers we used:

Well, we went off to construction camp on Friday night to set up a fence and then stay as security until saturday morning. We got there and did all this and had fun doing other things. Lot's of people went and it's going to be a fun weekend!

Here's a picture of the materials:

Yesterday marked the end of Term 2 2007 for us where we celebrated with an overnight camp in the vent den. We got pizzas, drinks, garlic bread and had a fire on Friday night. On Saturday we went and delivered potplants for a real estate company to fundraise some money.

This was our fire:

Group Camp finished today and the 185 photos that were taken have been uploaded to the photos database. The Venturers (V Unit) went along to show the scouts what not to do on camp. We created a tradition and brought back the first venturer camp souvenir which we will keep in the den.

This is where we stayed: