On Sunday morning, Sam, Emily, and I were at the hall bright and early to pack. We arrived at Keurboom Park at about 8:45 and started unloading the equipment. There were lots of dogs. Soon …
This year’s Doc Trophy was held at Appleton scout base on signal hill. The morning started with packing all the equipment into the trailers. It was my first time being a PL for a competition …
For Emily’s Springbok Community Service we painted murals at the SPCA facility in Grassy Park to make the space look fun and funky. When we arrived at the SPCA, we were given green volunteering shirts, …
The theme of my widegame was The Very Hungry Caterpillar , based on the very well known children’s book. All of the bases and STAs were somehow linked to the story itself, or caterpillars in …
Matthew’s First Class hike was super fun. It started off with a trip to the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve where we hiked the mountain range and reached a peak. The incline was quite hard but …
On Sunday morning, Sam, Emily, and I were at the hall bright and early to pack. We arrived at Keurboom Park at about 8:45 and started unloading the equipment. There were lots of dogs. Soon Michaela arrived to help. We started the construction by tying 2 very tight sheer lashings. Throughout the day various other scouts came and went but me, Sam and Emily were there the whole time. The construction went really well, lots of people, who were walking past, stopped by to see what we were doing. At one point, we had to move some pickets out of the ground. I had the bright idea of pulling all 6 pickets out of the ground at once using a leverspar. Surprisingly, the stave snapped… It was all Seb and Andy’s fault (definitely not ours). We ran a little (cough cough) behind schedule, but once the bridge was up, it was really cool. We all got to walk across the bridge. It was really stable. Deconstruction was super speedy. We finished packing the cars just as the sun had set.
Overall it was a really amazing project and was lots of fun
Well done Emily!
Saskia Berry
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/advancement/springbok/emilys-springbok-pioneering-project/
This year’s Doc Trophy was held at Appleton scout base on signal hill. The morning started with packing all the equipment into the trailers. It was my first time being a PL for a competition so I was determined to take everything that we needed. Upon arrival at Appleton, me and Sam realised that while we had brought the required water barrels, we hadn’t filled them with water! Luckily Michelle was able to go take two scouts to find somewhere to fill them up (You’re a lifesaver Michelle). After registering we started setting up camp and had lunch. I had got us burgers so we had to cook them, all the other patrols looked at us like we were crazy, but personally I just think they were jealous of our delicious lunch. Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening we were busy with bases and campsite development.
For one of the STAs we had to make scones using sprite, and remarkably, it worked. We also had some cream to whip but we mixed it too much so we ended up with butter. When me and Sam were walking to a base, I suddenly realised that we had forgotten table slats for our table. After some panic (and a phone call with Simon) we were left with the unideal situation of having to put our metal prep table onto our pioneering table. The weather had been nice and hot all afternoon, with clear skies and the ocean taunting us from below. For dinner we had risotto and bread. Our meal with the judges was quite entertaining.
When we were cleaning up after dinner, there was some commotion at the other 1st Claremont campsite next door. We ran over to discover that they had put a hot Dutch oven onto a plastic chopping board and the two were now firmly stuck together. Next we had night bases, which I think we had too much fun at because we got in trouble for being too loud. We managed to get a decent amount of sleep and woke up early the next morning for campsite inspection. Packing up was not very fun, partly because we didn’t want to go to school on Monday, but mainly because of the combination of juniors and not enough sleep. Eventually the closing parade came around and I was really proud that my patrol managed to come 5th. The prize we got was a nice big bottle of Coke. Which we were very grateful for.
Saskia Berry
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/1stclaremont-scouts/doc-trophy/
For Emily’s Springbok Community Service we painted murals at the SPCA facility in Grassy Park to make the space look fun and funky.
When we arrived at the SPCA, we were given green volunteering shirts, then we went to the first wall and started painting dogs. Emily sketched a few dogs on the wall in chalk and then we painted them in lots of different colours. There are some blue ones and some green ones. After the first mural, we painted a second slightly smaller mural, which was also in blue and green. These 2 murals were outside. Our 3rd mural was in the dog adoption centre. There was a green band along the wall at waist height and we painted dogs on top of the green band so it looked like the dogs were sitting on the wall. It looked very cool and we painted a lot of dogs of different kinds and sizes – all in blue and green. Every now and then we went to look at the dogs (even though we weren’t supposed to), and they were very cute.
The next area that we painted was in the cattery and we painted some cats in a mural on the walls (we saw lots of kittens which were so cute). We finished at the cat mural which was painted in red and orange.
At the end of our 4 days at SPCA our volunteering shirts were mostly blue with only a little bit of green visible!!!
On the last day we got some material to build a dog kennel and then we took it back to the Scout hall and built it there. We bent a lot of nails (!!!!), but Sam George somehow managed to hammer all of his nails in straight .
Christopher du Toit
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/advancement/springbok/community-service-springbok/emilys-springbok-community-service/
The theme of my widegame was The Very Hungry Caterpillar , based on the very well known children’s book. All of the bases and STAs were somehow linked to the story itself, or caterpillars in general. One of the most important STAs asked the patrols to plot all the bases of the widegame on a map, disguised as a butterfly, as Baden Powell supposedly did himself during his time in the army. This is important as Springbok Widegames are centered around orienteering (mapwork). The bases ranged from important Scout skills, to complete nonsense, all of course relating to caterpillars. Some of my favourite bases were the First Aid base which involved the Itsy Bitsy Spider falling from a water spout and gaining various injuries, Identifying Smells because caterpillars have a very good sense of smell, and Paper Chain Caterpillars where a paper strip could be earned by completing a silly task from a list of very silly tasks. Overall I had an amazing time planning and running the widegame, and I hope everyone who attended did too. Thanks to everyone for making this widegame possible, to Scouters for enthusiastically bringing my vision to life, and to the Scouts for being the whole reason to run the widegame.
Julia Webb
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/advancement/springbok/julias-springbok-widegame/
Matthew’s First Class hike was super fun. It started off with a trip to the Hottentots Holland Nature Reserve where we hiked the mountain range and reached a peak. The incline was quite hard but the descent wasn’t too bad. The view from the top was amazing because you could see the whole of Stellenbosch. We ended our hike right where we started and Matthew’s dad drove us to a nearby scout hall where we slept for the night. We made a campfire and had a jolly time. The next day Matthew’s dad drove us to the Franschhoek area where we did a loop around the dam. At one point it started raining and hailing which was actually fun to hike through. By the end of it though everyone was cold and glad to be heading back home.
Oliver Ringrose
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/advancement/first-class/matthew-first-class-hike/
We are excited to present you with our first proper edition of Smoke Signals since last year! (Although we did publish Smoke Signals “Lite” in June.) Enjoy reading it, as it is such an amazing way to reflect on the past term.
Thank you to all the Scouts who contributed, and a special shoutout to Seb for co-ordinating and collecting the troop articles featured here, and Ethan, who worked extra hard editing the PDF version while working at Kandersteg International Scout Centre in Switzerland: “producing this edition from KISC has really made me realise how busy the troop has been lately. I hope this collection of reports will emphasise all the planning and effort that it takes for scouts to run these impactful activities. Well done to the scouts who have been working hard on their advancements, and a special mention to everyone that has attended their events! I hope you enjoy seeing what the different patrols and Springbok candidates have been up to over the last little bit!“
Now for the recruitment call: If you enjoy this issue, please consider joining the team! We are in need of parents or Scouters to collect articles and pictures from the Meerkat Den or Cub Pack (who unfortunately aren’t represented in this issue). And Scouts and Cubs remember to continue writing articles, taking photos and sending them in!
In 2025 we announced our plan to purchase our property – and now we are pleased to announce our fundraising target, and the amount raised so far!
Our target is R1 million, based on the estimated value of the property and similar properties bought by other non-profit organisations.
At the launch of June 2026, our hall fundraising total stands at R372 000, thanks to fundraising and parent donations over the last several years. The quiz in late June added R10 767 to that total.
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/fundraising/hall-fundraising-target/
It’s time for our annual “Rugby on the Big Screen” at the hall! On Saturday 22 August, it will be Boks vs All Blacks, and we are hoping to fill the hall with families and supporters. We really hope to see you there!
Of course, an event like this needs a team to run it, so we are looking for assistance – please follow the WhatsApp groups for details of what is needed. At present we are especially in need of more people for the braaiing and catering team. We have run several similar events recently and have a great formula, so we feel it’s in a great shape to be taken on by a new team each time. If you would like to be involved, please let us know or speak to one of the previous organisers for more info. Thanks!
Permanent link to this article: https://1stclaremont.org.za/fundraising/rugby-evening-coming-up-on-22-august/
