I went to lunch with the state’s chief scout and, of course, he cooked a decent barbecue

On a sunny day with the harbour sparkling and the occasional passing of a timber sailing boat there are worse places to be than the campsite (or is it glampsite?) on Cockatoo Island. The sausages are sizzling (almost) atop the electric barbecue and, so far, it seems none of the essential ingredients or accoutrements of outdoor food preparation have been forgotten.

The new Scout NSW Chief Commissioner Lloyd Nurthen encourages the sausages to sizzle. Credit: Nick Moir

Perhaps not the usual venue for a “Lunch with” but an appropriate one given that our chef du jour is Lloyd Nurthen, recently made the Scouts NSW chief commissioner. The appointment was bestowed by NSW Governor Margaret Beazley at Government House.

A lot has changed since Lord Baden-Powell started the whole scouting thing off in the early years of the 20th century. He was accredited with the defence of Mafeking in the Boer War but also managed to find the time to write A Guide to Scouting published in 1908, which quickly became a bestseller.

Australia was quick off the mark and the same year six boys from Mosman joined the first patrol called The Kangaroos. In 1909, the first National Scout Rally at Crystal Palace in London was attended by 11,000 boys. Girls wanted a slice of the action as well and got to wear their own woggles a year later with the formation of the Girl Guides in 1910.

So is the Scouts, with its Scouts honour and heritage of sew-on badges for knots and tracking wild animals, holding its own in the digital age? Can khaki, compasses and campfires compete with the indoor distractions of telephones, turntables and tablets?

It seems it can. And they get to do some seriously good stuff. The NSW Scouts will be at the World Scout Jamboree to South Korea next month. This weekend, some 388 kids aged 13 to 18 begin flying out along with leaders and Rover Scouts (the most senior section of scouting for people ages 18 to 26). It’s not cheap at $5,800 per scout, including air fares, and they will be camping.

NSW Scouts have also been to Everest base camp and last year two explorers completed a trip across Antarctica dragging a sledge with 250 kilograms of supplies across the ice. Maybe they could have an Antarctica badge?

Nurthen joined the Scouts at the age of 12 and has been a part of it for the last 17 years. He rose through the ranks (the scouting hierarchy is almost as complicated as the army) to patrol leader, then Venturers where he gained the Queen Scout Award (the then highest peak award) then at 18 he transferred to Rover Scouts. You can be a leader to as old as you want. In Australia, the Scouts don’t really have a retirement age.

“We have had to adapt,” he says. “We have had to change to make sure we are relevant in the 21st century and that’s part of the program review that we have been doing over the last few years.

“The world organisation of the Scout movement, particularly around 2016 when they created a youth involvement policy, posed the question of how do you put youth at the front and centre of decision-making of everything we do?

Lloyd Nurthen (left) in his earlier scouting days.

“Since then youth have had a bigger voice, look at the Greta Thunberg for example, and Scouts in some way, shape or form, allows youth to be able to learn to lead.”

He is explaining all this while keeping an eye on the sizzle. We are eating not ordinary sausages but award-winning snags from Campbell’s Superior Meats in West Pymble. Nurthen is celiac but as any good butcher will tell you there’s no reason to add anything to a sausage recipe that would make it anything other than gluten-free.

Inevitably we have baked beans (obligatory for campers) and, for the adventurer cooking to a deadline (or clinging to a crevice on a cliff face), we have freeze-dried wild mushroom and lamb risotto from the Outdoor Gourmet Company and freeze-dried apple pie with shortbread biscuit from Back Country cuisine. Just add water. No cooking required.

Just add hot water: camping convenience with freeze-dried meals.Credit: Internet

The sausages were excellent but would have benefited from cooking on charcoal. The freeze-dried foods were surprisingly good, although our water wasn’t quite hot enough. We toasted the glittering harbour with Tim Adams Clare Valley Pinot Gris, which is always good, scouts honour.

Hard to imagine what Baden-Powell would make of air-dried food. In his definitive manual for Scouts he suggests in Camp Fire Yarn No. 10: “A bird is most easily plucked immediately after being killed. Meat can be wrapped in a coating of clay and put in the red-hot embers of the fire where it will cook by itself.” He also has a hint for instructors: “A visit to an abattoir and butcher’s shop to see the cutting up is useful for boys.”

Nurthen’s climb to the top continued unabated – he ran the State Youth Council in NSW then in 2017 was the first Youth Commissioner for Scouts NSW and in 2019 deputy contingent leader for the 24th World Scout Jamboree in West Virginia. He is in the same role for this year’s jamboree to South Korea.

The ethos of scouting is all about teaching leadership skills and the leaders know that attending a jamboree or an overseas event improves the chances of retaining the young scouts as part of the movement.

Do people have pre-conceived ideas about Scouts? “Absolutely. They say it is all about knots, but it’s not all about knots any more. It’s about the life skills, the leadership, the stuff that you can’t get at school. Scouting gives you that other perspective.

Camping fine dining: pork and fennel sausages, beans and freeze-dried wild mushroom and lamb risotto.Credit: Nick Moir

“I haven’t been to university. I was a young manager at Woolworths of five or six people and I learnt a lot of those leadership skills through scouts. Without scouts, I wouldn’t be where I am today in my professional career.” He is employed as the global customer experience manager at an aerial imagery technology company.

”To parents I would say that the Scouts offers what school doesn’t have. It’s about how do you make sure your kids are prepared for life? School doesn’t teach the life skills that our kids needs. We teach you stuff you need, like how to change a tyre. Our scouts get out and exercise, they aren’t stuck in front of a computer screen. I know a few people who have only hired people because they have been a scout.

“We do, however, embrace technology in the Scouts, sometimes when we go on hikes or adventures and there’s no reception so you have to teach those life skills that are not there. We will teach people to use a digital compass or Google Maps, but they still need to learn those foundational skills because, let’s say if someone turned off all our satellites, we are not going to have GPS so you still need to know how to navigate.“

There are, of course, other new challenges which threaten retention. Numbers dropped during COVID-19, there is competition from other after-school activities, and sometimes scout halls can be hard to find.

Wolf Cubs and Boy Scouts standing outside a hall, New South Wales, ca. 1930.Credit: Fairfax

After our camp lunch, Scouts NSW was back in the news in connection with a claim for compensation for child sexual abuse committed by one of its leaders. I asked Scouts NSW to comment. In response, it said its primary focus was “the safety and well-being of every child” in its care. “Our organisation has changed since the late 1970s,” it said. “And has put in place processes that educate our youth members to recognise and report inappropriate behaviour.”

On the less controversial challenges up for discussion, Nurthen told me: “We have some quite strong growth projectories. There’s a lot of growth corridors, new areas like Badgerys Creek. How do we start to look to put scouts into those areas if there’s not a dedicated scouts hall? How do you start to partner with some of those other community groups? Some halls have been sold off, a lot of them are on leases.

“Scouts is also good for the leaders, and we can always do with more volunteers, they also get away from their desks and are out having fun. Also, if you go canoeing or sailing you need a lot of gear, which we already have. Even when you go camping the only things you need to bring are your sleeping bag, sleeping mat and your mess kit. Scout groups have their own tents so as a parent the investment is not so high to start [something new].”

So why would a girl join scouts rather than Girl Guides? “I think scouting offers that next level of adventure,” he says. “Through scouts you can achieve your Duke of Edinburgh Award.”

Not just for boys: Kate Broekman, of Mirrabooka in Lake Macquarie, a NSW Venturer Scout at a scout gathering in Sri Lanka, 2013.

So what has been lost along the way? “The knots badge has gone, it is part of what is called camp craft these days. Then there’s camper awards for your number of nights under canvas. Some kids are really attached to those awards and want to collect them, but it is really about the skills that you learn. I would say I have spent 500 nights under canvas, if not more. South Korea will be another 15 nights.”

And disasters? “I’ve never set the tent on fire. The worst was flooding and rain. I remember being at the jamboree in 2010 when water just came through the tent at Cataract. It was an interesting experience, but you learn to live with it, and we had a stretcher so, we just put our bags up off the floor, and you get around it. We’ve never lost anyone. I’ve never broken a bone.”

There’s a joining fee, and you can sign up for six-month subscriptions to test it out. The annual fee for Scouts NSW is $270 which covers the provision of services such as youth safety, risk management and member services. There are currently about 17,000 members. The well-appointed tents at Cockatoo Island are available for booking.

The bill: Tim Adams Pinot Gris $19.99; Air dry risotto $19.99; Air dry apple pie $16.99; Campbell’s sausages $35.40 (for lots).

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