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
