Veteran Scout Visits Christchurch

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31081, 9 June 1966, Page 14

Veteran Scout Visits Christchurch

One of the oldest active members of the Boy Scout movement in the world is visiting Christchurch this week. He is Captain J. D. Campbell, who is district commissioner of the Cook Islands. Captain Campbell attended the annual meeting of the Council of the New Zealand Boy Scouts’ Association in Wellington, and will visit old friends in the movement before returning to his home at “Turoa”, in Rarotonga.

Captain Campbell has spent more than 40 years in the islands except for a time at the R.N.Z.A.F. Officers’ Training School at Omaka, Marlborough, during the Second World War. Before the war, he was a planter but now he says he is busier than ever with the work of scouting. Captain Campbell’s district extends in a northerly direction for 750 miles to the island of Pukapuka, and another 100 miles to the most southerly islands of the group. East and west, the district extends over 100 miles. Most of the islands receive visits only three or four times a year, and a good deal of the Commissioner’s time is taken up in corresponding with scout groups in these outlying islands. “I have been most impressed by the splendid scout dens I have seen during my visit to New Zealand,” Captain Campbell said yesterday. “I have never seen anything quite like the one at Leeston.”

Captain Campbell said that Canterbury people, by, contributing to funds raised all over New Zealand had been a tremendous help to scouting in the islands. The funds enabled 25 members of Cook Island groups to attend the jamboree in Wellington in January. After the jamhoree, four scouts were billeted in Christchurch homes for a time.

“These jamborees are the most valuable experience these young people can have," he said. “When they make their scout promise, it is very difficult for them, because of their isolation, to realise the significance of belonging to a world-wide brotherhood. For the first time they are able to meet sopie of their fellows from other lands, and it is a wonderful experience for them.” Captain Campbell is looking forward to meeting an old

friend who has spent almost as long in scouting as he has himself. He will stay with Mr J. H. R. Cooksey, who is known in scouting as Littlejohn, when he travels to Rissington in Hawke’s Bay at the end of the week. “The two of us must be the oldest members of the movement in the world,” he said. Mr Cooksey has been awarded the M.B.E. for his services to scouting, and Captain Campbell- holds the Silver Wolf, scouting’s highest award.