Celta and Narra proudly display our 2011 Scouthike Activity Base's award for 'Technical Excellence'

Every year about 200 leaders from Sydney North Region (extending from the Harbour to the Hawkesbury) spend days to create activities for the Scouts (about 800 of them this year) to enjoy as they hike around the forest.  Each year there's an enormous bloom of creativity, with over 50 bases created in the bush.

Each activity base has a theme.  In our case 'Food Storage and Water Purification' ... hardly the most inspiring of subjects, but turned into interesting and educational fun for the scouts by the effort of 11 leaders from Yanagin District.

Our Kilkie created a great active display and exercise in water filtration, showing field expedient water distillation (a billy, some foil and a PET bottle condenser) to turn salt into fresh water, a solar still, and the bits and pieces (and expertise) to make field expedient water filtration - to turn turbid mucky water into something suitable for purification.  She also set out for display the various methods we use to purify water on hikes - iodine/chlorine tablets, boiling, the activated carbon filter 1st Roselea's committee and your fund-raising bought for us.  This was the star turn in our little theatre, with patrols queuing to experience the fun of making water safe to drink.

Dave McIntosh from Brush Park troop made some Coolgardie safes to demonstrate low-tech meat storage (ingenious devices, really.)

Scouts had some fun, and may have accidentally learned something useful.  I think we're all really pleased to get the award, and I'd like to thank Kilkie for her creative work in constructing the most interesting and engaging part of it.