Mougamarra NSR Day

The Rock Challenge badge has proved excellent bait for getting girls outside in the environment: last Sunday, 5 NSR families came to enjoy Mougamarra Nature Reserve. I scouted the area a couple weekends before to get some photos to put on Facebook, in the hopes of luring people with visuals rather than words. It definitely got some attention, even if it didn’t pay off in numbers.

The group was honestly way smaller than I had been hoping, and this was in part due to a flyer not being emailed out until less than a week before - I chased it up after suspecting that it had not gone out even though I sent it a month in advance! However, it actually turned out to be a bit of a blessing as I realised that 10am was way too busy a start time for the last weekend of Mougamarra: I should have gone with 9am, or 1pm - or used both as suggested entry times! Had the last group been a couple cars back, they would have had to walk 3km into the park.

Of the 5 families, 1 was a leader, her husband and her Guide-aged daughter. They smashed out the 10km on their own and were done by 2pm. With this in mind, perhaps any Senior Guides that came in future years could walk in from the main road to make it more of a challenge. The boyfriend reported very good flower views along the track to the park, and it would be an additional responsibility/safety challenge for the older girls too.

2 families with JG girls came with me to the Lloyd Trig 2-3hr walk, and they managed fine and were comfortably challenged by some aspects of the walk. The park had run out of track notes at this point so the families had to rely on me for directions. Next time, I might scan some copies for digital distribution.

2 more families came, a leader with a JG-aged daughter and her friend, and a leader’s husband with two very young kids. Both families completed the flat 30min walk, and then did parts of the other walks and also went home at around 1pm. In future I would like this event to be run with a “me” at each walk so that girls and parents can split without worrying. I feel as if the two girls with the leader were wanting to do the 3hr walk with us but ended up just following the leader (who seemed much more interested in the less-than-challenging option).

In conclusion, the event was a bit of a flop in terms of numbers but was met with enthusiasm by the ones who came. I intend to rerun this event next year with more notice, more families, and more leaders! I am also really enjoying this “bring your family” format as it allows the outdoors to become more than just a Guide thing, and it becomes a family thing, normalising outdoor activity for a whole group of people and maybe even their future families!