SJW Group Activity Night

SJW Rovers to run 2010 Urban Challenge

Visit by Shaun Sandilands

Thursday 16/07/2009 - Sam discusses Crew Logs from 70s and music from 80s.

This night was somewhat impromptu, with only squires Jon Wilson, Sam Ludinski, and Rover Advisor - Chris Goninon attending.

At 7:45pm, Sam Ludinski arrived at the Den, only to find departing Joeys in the carpark, and Sue Barker in the upper Den (the Joey Scout leader). For 10 minutes, Sam read the Rover Crew Log from 1974-1977 while waiting for fellow squire Jon Wilson to arrrive on bike. At which point, a casual game of cards occured between the two for approximately half an hour before Rover Advisor Chris Goninon arrived.

At this point in the night, the card game was halted and discussion of various eras of music occured, prompted by Chris turning the radio on, showing off the speakers Emile had installed since the latest flood, when our previous speakers had apparently been destroyed. Sam mistook Simple Minds for INXS (what a rookie error!), and proceeded to blab on about the history of Guns N' Roses, Faster Pussycat, Hollywood Rose, and L.A. Guns. Which decade are we living in again?!

After realising that they were quite off track, talking about music from Chris' youth, Chris and Sam proceeded to discuss the Crew Log. Topics were discussed such as the Charity Concert in '74, and the erection of the gate at the end of the carpark in '77. Though Sam successfully regurgitated events from '74, and '77, there seemed to be a blank spot between the two that was paid little attention to. Therefore Sam has only partially completed this part of his Squire Training.

Talk alternated between Crew History and Musical History for the remainder of the night, as well as discussion about fundraising ideas. Jon chimed in that Cadbury were holding a competition for every client that had fundraised between the start of the year and a month from now, so he is now looking at another round of chocolates being ordered (These will be sold, like the last round, at $1.20 a chocolate, and the Crew will gain half of the money earnt - the other half being returned to Cadbury).

At around 10:00pm all had had enough of the night and decided to depart.

A Reallocation of the Squires

With the investiture of Matt and Stephen, we now have two Rovers to sponsor the 8 squires in the crew.

The new allocations are

Chris (RA) - Emile, Bill
Matt - Kerry, Sam, Chris
Stephen - Jono, Iain and Jordon

Chris (RA) will remain as squiremaster until we have a few more invested Rovers.

Chris "RA" Goninon

Rover Night at Gang Show

Investiture

Investiture of Matt and Stephen

Stephen Endicott Squire’s Hike

This squire’s hike was under taken in two separate parts: The actual hike took place from Tuesday night the 23^rd of June, until Thursday night the 25^th of June. The Discussion and camp with sponsor took place on Friday night the 26^th of June into the following Saturday morning.

The hike took place in Lamington National park, in the McPherson ranges and went from O’Rielly’s, to Echo Point, along the border track (a small not very well defined trail) to Point Lookout, down to the Stinson then down to Christmas Creek. There were three people who did the walk, myself (Stephen), my sister Lucy (a venture) and a Girl Guide Jess. We arrived at the Green Mountains camping area late on Tuesday night and quickly set up camp and went to sleep. On Wednesday morning we rose early and were ready to leave at 8am, but then promptly saw the sign for the tree top walk and took an hour detour to investigate. By 9am we were back on track and blasting towards Echo Point along the graded track system. We arrived at Echo Point too magnificent views and a half hour morning tea stop at 11am.

After leaving Echo point we left the graded track system and went on to the bush trail. This is a very loosely defined track that disappears in places. After climbing many peaks we descended into thick rain forest. At 3:30pm we came to the Rat-a-Tat hut camp site where we were booked in to camp the night. Because we knew that the next day would be very long and arduous we kept going and instead set up camp at 5pm on the ridge after leaving the rain forest. We set up camp on a little clearing on the track, ate our dehydrated food and were in bed asleep by 7pm (even though I was technically in NSW that night, I was still supporting Queensland in the Origin). The Thursday morning we were up and walking by 7:30am. We climbed to the top of Mt Throakban (the highest point on out trek). On our decent we lost the track and it took us over 45 minutes to travel less than 300m. We kept following the track up and down hills all Thursday until we arrived at Pt Lookout at 2pm. It was then that we had to make an important decision; to descend, and risk getting caught on the cliffs in the dark, or to camp out another night and make sure that we could descend in light.

We chose to walk on. We left the border rangers at Pt Lookout and headed down a side ridge that would take us out to Christmas Creek and our ride home. At 3:30pm we came to the turnoff to the Stinson wreck, but could not go down due to time constraints. By 4pm we had reached the top of the cliffs, and found that they really were cliffs! For the first section we had to lower our packs down the cliff, then navigate our way down. While we were descending the cliffs night fell, and we had to start using torches to get by. After 2 hours of rock climbing and sliding down steep hills we arrived at Christmas creek. After a small break we head off along the side of the creek, but soon realized we were in the wrong stop, because the creek we were following was flowing the wrong way! After an hour of map reading and compass baring taking, and lots of frustration, we realized that we needed to cross that creek and follow the one it flowed in to. After finding the correct creek we followed the rough track along the creek for 3 hours, stopping along the way for a quick dinner. At 10pm we came to national parks signs facing away from us warning of the dangers of walking off track, it was here that we celebrated the finish of our walk…. Too soon. We soon realized that we needed to cross the creek, and after 30 minutes of walking up and down the creek looking for a place to cross and a track on the opposite bank, we gave in and waded through the waist deep water. From there it was less than 5 minutes back to where the car was parked and waiting for us with clean dry cloths and warm drinks. This was near the location the VenMX2009 was hosted, which the crew attended earlier in the year.

The Squire camp took place on the following Friday night at BP park Samford. After arriving at BP park in the dark and while it was raining Chris (Rover Advisor and Squire Master) and myself quickly set up tents and left to go to the Samford Tavern. Although Squire talks are normally done around a fire whilst on the hike, an exception was made because of the difficulty of the hike done in this case. During the Squire talk everything from the meaning of life, crew organization and what it meant to be a rover were discussed. After over two hours of discussion, we returned to camp and slept, leaving early the next morning (7am) to head home.