About

History

1st Ferntree Gully Scout group was originally founded in 1925 (the exact date is unknown). The first Scout Master was Kenneth McKenzie who joined the group on 1st of July, 1925 - this is the first record we have with a specific date for the group. Later in 1925, Alexander Lyford, Assistant Scout Master (ASM) joined the group. the following year in 1926, records from Victorian Government Hansard show the fledgling group being refused a grant application.

Records of members that Scouts Victoria Heritage Centre have for the group is the registration the following scouts:

1926 members of 1st Ferntree Gully

The fact that all of these scout registration numbers are so close to each other suggests that they were all registered at once (just under one year after 1st Ferntree Gully was originally founded)...

An article "Scout Competitions" from the Fern Tree Gully News (see right) of 6/3/1926 which reports on a carnival of events "in the hands of the committee of the 1st Fern Tree Gully Boy Scouts, the organisation was excellent." the article goes on to refer to Fern Tree Gully Scoutmaster McKenzie (our founding leader).

The article also refers to committee members:

Mr Morris (President)
Mr Colliver (Treasurer)
Mr Carroll (Secretary)

The Carnival included the following events:

High jump
Bicycle Race (50 yard fast and slow races)
Long Jump
Stepping the Chain
Threading the Needle
Flag Race
75, 100 & 150 yard races
Sack Race
Bowling a Wicket
Siamese Race
Hop, Step and Jump

Other groups in the competition were 1st City of Camberwell and 1st Box Hill (disbanded).

This earlier article from February 1926 talking about the planning for the Carnival which was held on 27/2/1926 as "...the newly-formed troop of Fern Tree Gully Boy Scouts..." :

With this new information, we may have been formed late in 1925 or early 1926. I guess we'll need to have a centenary celebration late 2025 or early in 2026.

If you have any other information, please share it with us at gl@1strferntreegullyscouts.org

If you'd like to read the 1926 article without the need to read through the poor scan quality - a full transcript is available here

In 1934, the group appears to have been disbanded until it was reformed in 1959 with Thomas Pinninger as the Group Scout Master (GSM) followed later that year by Florence Davis joining as the Cub Master. In 1959, Ferntree Gully was a booming holiday destination for those in the inner suburbs of Melbourne.

Of note, we did celebrate the reformation anniversary in 2009 (50 years) and again in 2019 (60 years). In particular the badge to the right was produced to celebrate the event.

A few years later in the early '60s when the Victorian Government formed the Shire of Knox, separating from the Shire of Ferntree Gully, scouting groups in the old Shire of Ferntree Gully were split into the Sherbrooke, Knox and Knox West scout districts. Many groups in the area were renamed to 1st through to 9th Knox; 1st Ferntree Gully included for a period, was known as 7th Knox (or sometimes 1st Ferntree Gully/7th Knox), before reverting to back to 1st Ferntree Gully like a number of other scout groups in the area (including 1st Boronia, 1st Upper Ferntree Gully, 1st Bayswater among others). This name reversion was to make it easier for the community to associate with local groups.

Despite this, some groups (such as 4th Knox) retained the Knox naming - possibly because 1st Ferntree Gully was only 172m from the 4th Knox hall on the grounds of St Joseph's College - to differentiate from our group - I imagine the community would have found it very confusing to have (say) 1st Ferntree Gully and 2nd Ferntree Gully so close to each other.

In that period, 1st Ferntree Gully was using the old Returned & Services League (RSL) hall, before moving to a Scout hall that was in the North East corner of the Wally Tew reserve - known as the 'Tin Shed'. In the late 1970's the opportunity to buy the old football rooms at the nearby north oval at Wally Tew reserve. That purchase process was started with a deposit of $3000 in May, 1981 and was completed in May of 1984. The group moved into the football rooms in early 1982 and that's were we continue to call home.

In 2019 an the 60th anniversary of the reformation of 1st Ferntree Gully, the hall was renamed to be the "Brockman Scout Hall" in honour of the work that the Brockman family (Michael (ex leader), Leanne (current Joey Leader), Emma (current joey Leader) and Kate (Cub leader at the time, now a committee member). - See the short video from the unveiling.

Since then, the group has been involved in scouting across the state and around the world including participating in: