The 39th Queensland Agoonoree was held over the first week of the September school holidays, 2019 at Baden-Powell Park, Samford, approx 40min from Brisbane in Australia. I was fortunate enough to attend for the first time this year!

“Agoonoree is a Scouting term to describe a camp for young people with special needs. The Queensland Agoonoree is a camp that gives special needs children from outside of Scouting / Guiding the chance to experience our great movements. Scouting and Guiding members who are not able to self care and deliver the youth program are unfortunately ineligible to attend the camp. 

Each year Scouts Queensland and Guides Queensland invite about 80 children from outside the Movement to join us for a Scout Camp as a ‘guest’ in a week long camp at Baden-Powell Park, Samford. This years camp will be held from the 21st to 27th of September 2019. 

Some guests may not be able to walk or move freely. Some cannot communicate as well as we can or think as easily as we do. Some may be disadvantaged and not have an opportunity to participate in regular scout activities and meetings.

The camp is organised into seven troops of 24 Scouts or Guides. A Troop Leader leads a trained and dedicated team of adult leaders.Twelve guests are allocated to the troop and join a patrol who become the guest’s carers and buddies for the week.

Venturer Scouts, Guides, Olaves and Rover Scouts in the troop-lines give guidance and support for the patrols and provide assistance with personal hygiene, dressing and eating.We even have our own Mobile Agoonoree Scout Hospital providing first aid and medical assistance when needed.”

The theme for this year’s Agoonoree (Goonie) was ‘Movie Set Agoonoree” and hence a lot of activities and the structure of the camp was set up to look like part of certain movies, characters etc. I was placed as a troop line Venturer in Orange Troop, themed from The Lion King, and helped support Goanna patrol, a patrol of four scouts and two guests. We were all first years except for our Patrol Leader and one of our guests! It was a great challenge as we all had to make sure to listen to each other’s ideas, be compassionate and patient, and got to have fun getting to know each other as we spent the week together camping and doing our activities each day!

We did everything, from abseiling to water fights, swimming in free time to crafts, discos and much more! Every morning when the whole camp had parade we would dance to the song “Shotgun”, a recent popular pop song, and learnt a dance to it that we couldn’t forget no matter how much we tried. We had a movie night where everyone brought sleeping bags and chairs in front of our stage and we screened the Aladdin remake. We were delivered our food supplied by Rovers and Leaders from our Leader Catering, and all of our activities were run by Venturers and Rovers from Venturer Central (VC) and Rover Central (RC). Each day we’d also be delivered a camp newsletter, which everyone in our troop could read, and included photos and articles from specific troops or activity bases letting people know what had been happening the day before. It also included things like hygiene reminders (sunscreen, wash hands etc), merchandise and canteen prices, and jokes we could submit for everyone to read. 

I am so so glad I got to go on this brilliant camp, and cannot thank the organisers and everyone who helped run it for doing so, I felt very supported and gave it my all to do my best as a Troop Line Venturer. I would recommend to EVERYONE to start up and run an Agoonoree event camp, and whether you have experience caring for people or not, it doesn’t matter! It’s all about keeping an open mind, being compassionate and giving it a good go!