Jamborette Update #2

Hi everyone,

A second update for your information.

Weather forecast for the weekend is mostly fine.  As such the Jamborette will proceed as planned.

Vehicle Fees

As many are aware that vehicles in National Parks are required to pay to be in the park.  A special patrol goes around each day, at least once, to check that every vehicle in the park has one of their parking ticket vending machine tickets displayed in the window.

We have a special arrangement with National Parks for all of us camping this weekend to be exempt from the normal vehicle parking fee.  The patrol that goes around does not necessarily know which vehicles are associated with us and which ones are not.  As such I have prepared our own numbered exemption tag to be displayed in the window of our vehicles.  As soon as you can on Saturday morning, please come to the Administration and advise them of your vehicle Rego number and collect a ticket to display in your vehicle window.

Any visitors that come in need to pay the National Parks vehicle fee of $7.00.  They need to either purchase a ticket from the vending machines up in the car park or come to the Administration and purchase one of our tickets which also have to be displayed in the window.  We will then include that fee to National Parks when we pay the fees for the whole weekend.

Any vehicles not displaying one of our tags must have a National Parks ticket shown instead.  Any vehicle that does not display any tag or ticket will be subject to National Parks normal fines that are applicable. Of course if you have a National Parks annual pass or similar, you have already paid your National Parks vehicle fee.

Phone Coverage

No normal telephone service exists in the Park and mobile phone coverage is extremely poor.  Scouts are requested not to take their personal phones as they are useless, can get damaged or lost and there are no charging facilities for them.

In the event of any kind of emergency, leaders are reminded that they or anyone else are not to call relatives of the injured person or anyone else outside of the camp this weekend.  The responsibility to make these calls rest with the HQ team only, which includes the First Aid team.  Talk to us and let us manage the communication to others so that they do not get half the story.  This is the same as the arrangements we had at the Jamboree.

For the weekend, we have hired a Satellite Telephone for emergency calls due to the poor reception we experience with Mobile phones.  Seeing that we do have this phone available for the weekend, we will make the number available for anyone to call us for emergencies or camping updates in the event of bad weather.  As it is a Satellite phone, calls to this phone are at international rates.  The number to call is +8816-514-30864.  The “8816” is a country code for this service.  You would have to dial 0011 in front of that number.  Please do not use this phone for parents to call up their child just to see how they are going.  It is for emergencies only and to get a status for the weekend.  The status should not be needed as the weekend is going to be mostly fine.

At this stage I do not plan to send out any more Information emails unless something unforseen comes up.  I will be heading out to the Basin around lunch time tomorrow.

See you all on the weekend.

Robin Garrett  "Batman"
Region Commissioner (Scouts)
Greater Western Sydney Region
Ph 02-4577-2662 | Mobile 0405-103-331