Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Fremantle Sea Scouts are beckoning

It's six o'clock on the rocket clock and all is dark outside. In the kitchen Max the tabby cat decided he wasn't going to wait for breakfast. He found an unopened packet of kitty kibbles and decided to help himself while the other two cats and Milly the pup looked on. It was a case of the older cat teaching the younger ones new tricks.

Milly is coming up for six months old and we'll have to make a decision about getting her 'doctored.' I suppose that will cost a couple of hundred dollars. She's become a bit yappy in the evenings after we eat. She doesn't want to watch TV, she wants to play. Worst part is when the kids bark back at her, then the noise really gets going. I've found that slapping a folded newspaper on my rump is effective in calming things down. As for whatever it was we were watching on TV, forget it. Hopeless!

Early last year my wife put our youngest daughter's name down at the local Brownie/Guide unit. Their list was full and they said they would get back to us. They never did. So this year our daughter became a Cub at 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts instead.

The entire group at 1st Fremantle is going through a particularly dynamic period. There's no shortage of good adult leaders, and so for most stages, (Cubs excepted) there is no waiting list to contend with. Every week there's a couple of new teenagers rocking up to join the ranks of the Sea Scouts section. The number is about 50 so far and the head honcho who is a very experienced Sea Scout leader and a deputy state Commissioner, recently confirmed again he'll have a non-waiting policy for as long as he's there. So if you know a son or daughter who wants more from life than dodging gang warfare in our increasingly rotten society, check out the 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts website.

My wife and I have had a parental association with the group since the late 1980s. All our nine kids have been in the Scouting movement over the years. My wife has now decided to take on a more formal role. She'll soon be a uniformed Cub leader. She'll work in partnership with another female Cub leader. There's been a lot of form filling, and of course in this modern age, a police check and the issue of a 'Working with Children' card. That was completed this week. There'll be some short courses too. There's no doubt she'll be a good leader after her Warrant is issued. In the meantime she's been assisting the other Cub leader.

My wife has a few other useful skills up her sleeve that I don't think anyone in the group actually knows about. Before we started having children, she and I used to build and sail wooden dinghies competitively on the Swan River, and then we built and raced a 30 ft Sparkman and Stevens designed ocean cruiser. So she knows quite a bit about nautical subjects. Furthermore, she was a Brownie with the English Girl Guides before she immigrated to here. Plus she is a very experienced bush camper. She takes rough camping in her stride better than most men I've met.

Here's a picture of Storm Petrel, one of the favourite sail-training boats at 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts:

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

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