page_title: Eprapah
section_title: 1928 to 1953
hierarchical_section_title: Eprapah / Scouting heritage / 1928 to 1953
caption_attribution_description: English: Newspaper clipping. Gilwell Scout training course, at Victoria Point, near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. On the grounds of Eprapah. February 1937. Copyright has expired in Australia (http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/using-digitised-newspapers-faq/#using_reuse). Lady Houston's Splendid Gift To Boy Scouts. The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.&#160;: 1872 - 1947), 15 February 1937, p. 11.
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: The centre was the State's leader training centre although youth member camping was permitted.  Leader training was conducted in other locations in Queensland too, but Eprapah was the principal establishment.
  The first training course was on 4 June 1928.  Leaders would draw their rations from an area now known as the Beaver Shelter, and also marked by the stumps of the cook's table, and a dining seat area.  Youth member activities included training patrol leaders for emergency responses, constructing bridges, rafting, Scouts' own (religious observance), and water fights.
  Baden-Powell visited Queensland in May 1912, March 1931, and briefly in December 1934.  It was on his second visit on 26 March 1931 that his shoe print was immortalised in concrete at Eprapah.  A copy is now in place, with the original held at the Scout Museum at Baden-Powell Park, Samford, Queensland.
  
  The State's governor, Sir Leslie Orme Wilson, also visited the site as the Chief Scout of Queensland through the 1930s.
  The first of the site's two totem poles, the 18 feet (5.5 m) pole and notice board, an owl was carved during a November 1931 training course, and at its foot, B.-P.'s boot print.
  The chapel area was fenced off to stop wandering cattle.  A large buttress stump was capped in concrete and the Scout badge with 'Old Scouts' set within (today, the concrete cap remains).
  Various teams continued their improvements to the training ground, engaging in building construction and pioneering works.  'By 1933, '[i]n between times of clearing lantana and carrying out the preliminary surveys for the draining of swamps, the Rovers and Men Scouts [of Brisbane] have been busy on the erection of a gate of typically Scouty design at the entrance of their section of Eprapah.  Above the lintel of the gate will be the figure of a crocodile, carved out of a log of wood.  A forked end will represent the paws, in which pointed pegs will appear as fearsome teeth.  A swishing branch will serve as a tail to the wooden 'monster'.'
  An old scout hall was moved from Redland Bay to Eprapah in 1934.
  In 1937, the campfire circle was accentuated by an eagle totem pole.  Rover Scouts from Sandgate spent two years carving a life-sized eagle with a body was from local bloodwood, and wings of beech.  The eagle, painted in bronze, stood 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) wide and 4 feet 9 inches (1.45 m) on top of a 19 feet (5.8 m) totem pole.  Light from the fire reflected off the eagle.
  Various Scouting personalities would later lend their names to various structures on the property, as well as to Scouting locations and events in Queensland, including:  
  Charles Smethurt 'Chief' Snow (20 September 1882 – 7 June 1953 (aged 70)).  A watchmaker and jeweller, Snow became a scoutmaster with one of the first four Brisbane troops in 1908.  He was elected the first chief scoutmaster for Queensland (today, 'chief commissioner'), and encouraged the purchase of Eprapah.  His name is also attached to a Scout district in north Brisbane, and the leader training centre at Samford.
  Kenneth Alexander 'Kauri' Boyd (1905–1976 (aged 71)).  The straight-standing Boyd was an optometrist, starting as a scoutmaster at Buranda continued to become an assistant international commissioner.
  Thomas 'Grey Owl' Gloster (1855 – 13 January 1941 (aged 86)).  A Cleveland identity, Gloster was a soldier in the Royal Munster Fusiliers.
  John Victor 'Running Stag' Marquis-Kyle (1 May 1897 – 1981 (aged 83)).  Marquis-Kyle's  contributions to Eprapah included carving the poles for the Providore, and the owl totem pole.
  Louis Varsey 'Beaver' Masters (1885 – 15 May 1964 (aged 78)).  A Scout district on the Sunshine Coast.  Beaver Masters is interred at the then Sir Leslie Wilson campsite at Florence Bay, Magnetic Island, Townsville.
  James Alfred 'Nebo' Manderson (7 May 1901 – 9 August 1964 (aged 63)).  Manderson was a signwriter, Rotarian, Wolf Cub leader, and a known story-telling character.
  David Thain 'Kiwi' Weir (16 March 1889 – 1973 (aged 83)).  With his trademark tobacco pipe, Weir rose to be the central Queensland region fie
caption: Training course advice, 1937
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