Log Book

Venturer Pitt Stop

We were teamed up with the mysteriously absent Nihotipu Rover crew to man the Obstacle Course base. The catch (invented by us) was that one member of the team was not allowed to set a foot on the ground for the whole course. The Venturer teams did pretty well at this, one team making it around the course 7 times in the allotted 15 minutes! The best part, as always, were the bribes (mmm chocolate).

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Onewa Domain Light Sticks

We sold light sticks for $4 at the Onewa Domain Fireworks. This was quite fun, but quite busy at times. The fireworks display was excellent. In case you were wondering, we volunteered to do this, we were not asked. We also helped the fire guys pack up the fireworks afterwards. In the rain. We were the only ones who helped! Brownie points, brownie points.

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Onewa Domain Rubbish

This is where we picked up rubbish the day after the fireworks. There was lots of rubbish. We picked it up and put it in rubbish bins. After that there wasn't so much rubbish any more. Brendan found $10. Raewyn and Trudy found 55c each. Darryn found a 2 for pass 1 for the movies. We also volunteered to do this.

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Santa Parade

Me & Brendan were on water stations, the only problem was we didn't have any. We were meant to be supplying water to the parade participants, but the water failed to be delivered until about 20 minutes before the parade started. Oh well, we did our best, and some of the participants actually got some water, and they appreciated it too. After that we went to help on the stage. We looked after some lost kiddies.

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St Pat's Parade

Me & Trudy (and Carmel, Ian's girlfriend too) gave out parade hats on Queen Street. This was surprisingly a very fun job. Trudy gave lots of people a hard time about not wanting a hat (in a nice, Trudy-ish type way). Most people did want hats though, in fact we had heaps of people actually come up to us to ask for them, which made it quite an easy job. We got to see the whole parade, then walked up to Aotea Square to see some of the entertainment, which was excellent, expecially the Irish Dancing.

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Kea Day

Our first duty was to man the road block at the top end of the road leading into Motumoana. We were made somewhat redudant by the leader who we were meant to be relieving, who just didn't want to let go of the job. He was a weird one that guy, you could tell he was a Kea leader. There was some excitement when a Police car was called out to a domestic indicent in the street and took a man away in handcuffs.

When the hoards of keas arrived our next job was to hang around at the Sasuage Sizzle (where the associates were) waiting for someone to assign us jobs. I got pulled away to help with the Fog Horn activity. Boy I didn't know what I was letting myself in for. About 500 keas were packed into a tiny room, all pushing and shoving and begging for fog horns. A fog horn is made up of a cardboard roll with a balloon with one end cut of stretched over the top, and a piece of pipe stuck into the top of the balloon - ok it's hard to describe, but it's a pretty simple concept, that makes a LOUD noise when you blow it right. Well Keas just love loud noises, and hence the 2 people on the activity were being absolutely overrun. So I helped them by chopping balloons and making fog horns for little kids - it was a bit of fun actually. I even made myself one when the demand died down, and wandered back down to the Sasuage Sizzle to show everyone my loud fog horn noise.

Meanwhile lunch time had come and the Sasuage Sizzle was packed. The associates and other Rovers were very busy pouring sauce, cooking sasuages, taking money, cutting onions etc.

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Ley's Venturer Tramping Competition

We arrived at the Wellsford farm (later than our 8.30am starting time - Darryn was late) we were immediately assigned bases to work at. I was on a maths base, and some Venturer Guys gave me a ride close to where it was, and were to point it out to me when I got there (theoretically). So we got to their base, and the Venturer guy said "Well I don't really know where it is - what number is it again? It think it's in that direction, just walk towards those trees, it won't take longer than 10 minutes". Ok, that's the last time I believe any Venturer guys. It was an interesting walk through farm land, around herds of cows and swamps, and about 45 minutes later I made it to the trees, and there was absolutely no one there. I made my way up to the road, and luckily I had my cellphone and was able to call for help (I wasn't going to walk all the way back, I can tell you). After being sent on another wild goose chase I was eventually rescued and eventually found my way to the actual base where I was meant to be, which was about 5 minutes walk from where I started. So that was the end of the exciting part of the day, and the start of the dull part of the day. It turns out the maths base wasn't terribly popular, and we (being me & another Venturer guy) didn't see sight nor sound of another person for about 3 hours straight (good book reading time). Then Lee & Gavin turned up with my lunch (2.30pm) and 4 teams, one after the other, turned up to do some maths, which made things a little more interesting. Venturers aren't very good at maths is one thing we discovered from the whole experience. 1 team managed to get the University question completely right though.

After the bases closed, it was time to go to camp, and we were requested to help with getting a car onto a trailor. With my supervision, the brute strength of 5 or 6 lads, and the grunty engines of John and Lee, the task was soon complete.

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