page_title: Eprapah
section_title: Scouting heritage
hierarchical_section_title: Eprapah / Scouting heritage
caption_attribution_description: English: Newspaper clipping. Scout flagpole area, at Victoria Point, near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. On the grounds of Eprapah. August 1928. Copyright has expired in Australia (http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/using-digitised-newspapers-faq/#using_reuse). Boy Scouts' new training centre—Eprapah, near Victoria Point. The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.&#160;: 1866 - 1939), 9 August 1928, p. 38.
context_page_description: Eprapah, the Charles S. Snow Scout Environment Training Centre, at Victoria Point, near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, is a noted ecological area within Redland City. Owned and managed by the Scout Association of Australia, Queensland Branch, the 39 hectares is home to a variety of habitats along Eprapah Creek to its north.
  Its value is recognised as a declared environmental reserve by the local city council, and designated as a Scout Centre of Excellence for Nature and Environment site. It is possibly the only Scout campsite in the world devoted principally to environmental education.
  Located at the intersection of Colburn Avenue, and Cleveland-Redland Bay Road, Victoria Point, the property was named for the creek travelling through its bounds. The name Eprapah is believed to be a corrupted form of the Biblical word Ephratah or 'fruitful land'.
context_section_description: In April 1928, the property of Eprapah was purchased with money from the Bob Monteith Memorial Fund trust.  Robert Henry Monteith (born 1892) was killed in action at the Battle of Mont Saint-Quentin, France, on 2 September 1918.  His father was involved in the Scouting movement and the parents created the deed in trust remembering their son.
  The thirty-nine hectare site hosts a separate local Scouting entity, the Victoria Point Scout Group.  The current group was formed in 1969 and group operates from a former World War II military hut which originally served as a hospital at Greenslopes.
  Additional to a warden's cottage and local Scout den, the three main structures are the sleeping shelter ('bunkhouse'), the 1974 Grey Owl activity shelter and associated 1976 Biolab study shelter, and the 1993 Mungara visitor museum.  Mungara is a restored on-site hand-made brick whitewashed cottage, now fulfilling the functions of meeting room, educational facility, and site museum.  The name itself is the local indigenous word for the Queensland Blue Gum tree.  The Grey Owl shelter was destroyed by fire in January 2019.   
  The former Westpac Bank of the 1982 Australian Scout Jamboree held at Collingwood Park, Queensland became the site's warden's cottage.  It was the residence of several on-site caretakers.  After falling into a state of disrepair, the building was demolished 1 July 2015.
  Its present purpose is encompassed by aspects of the generally universal Scout Promise and Law, 
  A Scout is a friend to animals (the Australian 6th of 10 laws; c. 1910-).
  A Scout cares for natural resources (the Australian 8th of 9 laws; 1973-)
  A Scout cares for the environment (the Australian 10th law, 1990s)
  The Australian Scout Environment Charter sets out eight positions on how a scout can care for the environment, including: Taking part in activities and projects that encourage education through nature and the environment, learning about nature and the environment, and action for nature and the environment.
  The Scouting movement's founder, Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, wrote many references to the importance of the environment and the education value of the environment: 
  For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the forest is at once a laboratory, a club and a temple.
  As a Scout, you are the guardian of the woods.  A Scout never damages a tree by hacking it with his knife or axe.  It does not take long to fell a tree, but it takes many years to grow one, so a Scout cuts down a tree for a good reason only – not just for the sake of using his axe. For every tree felled, two should be planted.
  Travel and reading and Nature study are all part of self-education.
  By continually watching animals in their natural state one gets to like them too well to shoot them.  The whole sport of hunting animals lies in the woodcraft of stalking them, not in the killing.
caption: Flagpole, 1928
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