Scouting, Volume 59, Number 2, March-April 1971 Page: 59
64 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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AUSTRALIA'S FIRST SCOUTS
THE ABORIGINES
THEIR origins are lost in antiq-
uity. Anthropologists say the
Aborigines arrived in Australia 12,000
to 35,000 years ago. Some believe they
migrated from Asia across a land
bridge; others say they came in ca-
noes and rafts.
On my trip into the tropical bush
country in the Northern Territory of
Australia, the man I most wanted to
meet was John Wilders, a former
Dutch social worker who brought
Scouting to aborigine boys in Arnhem
Land on the Arafura Sea, one of the
most primitive places in the world.
When I arrived in Sydney I learned
that he was traveling and that our
paths could not possibly cross. Later
in my flight across the continent to
Darwin, in Australia's "top-end," my
seat companion noticed the fleur de
lis in my lapel and asked me about
my work in Scouting. Unbelievably
this man was John Wilders, Group
Scoutmaster of the First Maningrida
Scout Troop in Arnhem Land. In a
world populated by three-and-a-half-
billion people, I chanced to sit next to
the man I most wanted to meet.
As a young man in Holland John
Wilders knew Scouting intimately.
Responding to the lure of Australia,
he became an aboriginal welfare
worker with the Northern Territory
Administration's Social Welfare De-
partment. He and several of his
friends were convinced that Scouting
could help bridge the gap between the
Stone Age and modern times.
Organizing the first troop in 1967
was terribly difficult, but the efforts
of John Wilders and other dedicated
government employees bore fruit. To-
day the Maningrida Aboriginal Re-
serve, reached only by traveling 200
air or sea miles from Darwin, boasts
a Cub Pack, a Scout Troop, a Sea
Scout unit and a Girl Guide troop.
When our plane stopped briefly at
Mt. Isa in North Queensland, John
Wilders introduced me to Bobby
Wunyimarra, a former Maningrida
Scout now learning pottery making in
an Aborigines trade school in Darwin.
Bobby and another boy, a bark
painter, had accompanied him to Syd-
ney, where they were demonstrating
aborigines' handicrafts.
For two hours, while our plane flew
north over Australia's arid plains,
Bobby Wunyimarra told me about his
first 16 years, and what Scouting
meant to a primitive boy growing up
in a never-never land in the back of
beyond.
His family had lived a tribal life,
hunting, fishing, and gathering food in
the jungle, in the same way his ances-
tors had done for at least the last 12,-
000 years. The family was a part of a
nomadic tribe that wandered over a
100,000-square-miIe area of Australia's
outback, much of it uncharted even
today. Bobby's close-knit family came
under the influence of Methodist mis-
sionaries who convinced his father
that Bobby should attend their mis-
sion school. After 6 years at the mis-
sion, Bobby moved to the Maningrida
Reserve where he met John Wilders
and became an Australian Boy Scout.
He explained that his people have
no written language and that he can-
not talk with members of most tribes
except in hand language, which is un-
derstood by all aborigines. There are
about 130,000 aborigines in Australia,
speaking 700 languages and thousands
of dialects.
Bobby spoke of his admiration for
Scouting's founder, Lord Baden-
Powell, but he told me that his ances-
tors were far ahead of B-P, because
they were practicing Scouting 20 cen-
turies ago. When I asked him to ex-
plain, he pointed out that aborigines
had always lived and worked in
patrols, and that tracking, hiking,
camping, signaling, outdoor cooking,
and other Scout skills had been their
way of life long before recorded his-
tory. "Weren't those the same things
that B-P taught his soldiers and
Scouts?" Bobby asked. They were in-
deed.
Later I talked to a group of Man-
ingrida Scouts, none of whom had
ever seen an American. Although their
comand of English was more limited
than Bobby's, they were able to con-
vey their feelings about Scouting and
life in the bush.
When I asked one, "What has Scout-
ing meant to you?" he said the most
important things were the Scout Oath
and Law, which, he assured me, would
be his way of life. Another explained
that he was learning to "show others
how to do things." This boy, like mil-
lions of others throughout the world,
has learned one of the most important
lessons Scouting teaches—leadership.
The Maningrida Scouts, like Scouts
everywhere, spend a lot of time eating
or preparing to eat. No food or uten-
sils are carried on their "walkabouts,"
or wanderings. As experts at living off
the land, they use only simple hunting
and digging sticks. Although they are
experts with the boomerang and
woomera, a spear-throwing device,
these Scouts, who hunt every weekend
for their families, rely mostly on their
hands.
All cooking is done directly over
coals. Meat, including wallaby, a small
kangaroo, and goanna lizard, is
cooked in the skin after the entrails
have been removed. This method
keeps the juices in and preserves the
flavor. Other aborigine foods that may
be cooked but are preferred raw are
shoots of the water lily and pandanus
palm, snails, crabs, oysters, and turtle
eggs. I would hesitate to try one 59
aborigine delicacy—the mangrove
worm, a footlong gourmet specialty
found in the trunks of mangrove
saplings. The Scouts hack this tidbit
into slices and eat it raw.
On camping trips, aborigine Scouts
work on advancement skills similar
to ours except that they are adapted
to their way of life. Maningrida Scouts
particularly enjoy tracking and they
probably are better at it than any
other Scouts in the world. They re-
cognize the footprints of every animal,
and they can tell if a human footprint
is that of an adult or child, male or
female. To a Maningrida Scout a foot-
print is a picture story.
In the dark of the tropical Austra-
lian night, aborigine Scouts gather
around the campfire for ceremonies
that may last several hours. While
they enjoy Kim's Game and other
Scout stunts and skits, they stress
secret and sacred music and dancing
drawn from tribal life. Their music is
provided by two of the world's oldest
instruments—clapsticks and the did-
jeridoo, a wind instrument 2 to 3 feet
long and 2 to 3 inches in diameter, that
is carved from a eucalyptus tree.
The player puts his mouth over the
end and makes different notes by
changing the position of the tongue.
Using these instruments, the boys
make their music and ^
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 59, Number 2, March-April 1971, periodical, March 1971; New Brunswick, NJ. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353705/m1/65/: accessed May 5, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.