A decade-long journey for former Nayland College student Josh Dunn was saluted at Iron Duke Sea Scouts with the pre-eminent award for youth members of scouts in Aotearoa.
The 18-year-old was awarded the King’s Scout Award earlier this month, the first member of the Nelson group to receive the accolade in almost 80 years.
Josh, who was first invested in the group as a Cub around 2013 and became a Venturer in 2020, says the award represented many community service hours, a residential project, and an expedition.
“I had to put in about 50 plus community service hours, and I probably did closer to 100 at the time… I did a lot of plantings in the dunes at Tāhunanui Beach and planting poplar trees at Poplar Reserve,” he says.
“My residential project was going to Ignite’23 which is a jamboree for Venturers, there were 3000 of us from New Zealand and Australia who all met up at Mayfield [Mid Canterbury], and had a good time for 10 days.
“I had to make several levels of progression through my personal badges like my hiking badge, rock climbing badge, and the other main event was the expedition I had to do which was the four-day tramp up in the Richmond Ranges.
“The weather didn’t exactly play ball, so we had to adjust our plans on the fly, but it all worked out great.”
Josh, who is in the first year of his engineering degree at the University of Canterbury, says he’ll continue navigating his scouting course.
“I might join a crew down in Christchurch… it’s always a nice place to meet some new people because they are always doing cool stuff,” he says.
“Back in Cubs I joined because I had a few friends who joined, but it was also a fun place to learn some new skills, and going out and doing outdoor activities was a big part of it.”
