Fiji scouts in Australia for a jamboree in Bendigo

from w
Fiji scouts in Australia for a jamboree at Bendigo
The City of Greater Bendigo (in Australia) is busy preparing to host 12,000 scouts and leaders who are coming to town in January for the 21st Australian Scout Jamboree. They are from across Australia and the Pacific region, including Fiji.

About fifty girl and boy scouts from Suva are already in Melbourne and will travel to Bendigo tomorrow. They are from the Scout Troop from Gospel Primary School, Samabula, mostly eleven and twelve year olds. They are having a great time already in Melbourne being looked after mainly by a Motuku family.

Last Friday night the visiting scout group hosted a concert at Moreland Hall in Melbourne, all nicely decorated with masi. The concert was enjoyed with much enthusiasm and laughter from the audience of mainly Fiji migrant families. The scouts performed mekes (meke iri, meke ni veli, etc.)and skits and sang patriotic and religious songs, even dancing to a psalm and Bible reading. Their headmaster, who is from Kadavu, accompanied the group, and also some teachers, scout masters and some senior boys from RKS. The skits had the audience in fits of laughter as the visiting scouts acted out exaggerated scenes from life in Suva. Kids of eleven and twelve are long-limbed, some skinny, not yet fully grown, and so energetic.They certainly do like to dress up as characters from Suva's night life! One skit was about a faith-healer like Benny Hinn who fixed up people but caught their illnesses, including a pregnancy so everyone laughed at that. The fund-raising concert will help them a little bit with their tour expenses.

I’ll post some pictures from the concert when I get them.

Our boys were cubs and scouts when they were children and two attended jamborees in Fiji – at Lautoka and at QVS. Also, Peceli was a Scout chaplain in Geelong several years ago, so we are always happy to see that scout groups are still flourishing.