Maryborough hosts nearly 10,000 Scouts and volunteers for Australia Jamboree

With a tent city of more than 150 “villages”, thousands of youths, and visits from Australian music royalty, the flurry of activity at this regional Queensland showground could be mistaken for a music festival — if it wasn’t for the sea of uniforms.

The Australian Jamboree, the country’s largest gathering of Scouts, has returned for the first time since the pandemic, attracting almost 10,000 children and volunteers to the heritage city of Maryborough, three hours north of Brisbane.

A curious question to one of his classmates landed 13-year-old Gabe in the mix, 35 hours from his home in Tasmania.

“One of my friends introduced me to Scouts because every Tuesday night he had to leave school a little early,” Gabe said.

“One day I asked him ‘where do you go every Tuesday night?’ and he said ‘come with me tonight to find out’.”

“I found out I loved Scouts and have been going ever since.”

Nearly 200 buses and countless plane rides transported all 1,700 leaders, 7,500 Scouts, and their families to Maryborough, a town of 28,000 people.

More than 500 of these are international children who travelled from the likes of Austria, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the United Kingdom.

“We’ve practically been doing Scouts our whole life, but this is the first time we’ve gone properly abroad with it,” said Issy, who had travelled 21 hours by plane from the Midlands in the UK.

“It’s such a beautiful country. It’s so different from home.

“The temperature is very different … but it’s like being on holiday.”

‘Building another city’

After commandeering the Maryborough Showgrounds the young Scouts are responsible for setting up their own tent villages.

Nearly 200 units span across all 105 hectares of the showgrounds, along with an onsite medical centre, shop front, and entertainment arena where music legend Amy Shark opened the 10-day event.

“We’ve bought in marquees, tentage, toilets, showers. We’re using the horse stables for a logistics shed,” said chief commissioner of Scouts Queensland, Geoff Doo, who also wore the “camp chief” hat for this year’s Jamboree.

Organisers estimated that by the end of the event on Wednesday the Scouts would go through some 130,800 packets of biscuits, 1,152 kilograms of cereal, and 14,294 litres of fruit juice.

Between extreme zip lining and commando crawling through a muddy adventure course, the Scouts were also responsible for mundane tasks.

“Activities are one part of it, but it’s also about making sure that those young people are able to go back with the skills and the resilience to make a better contribution to their local community.”

Thirteen-year-old Harmony from Cobargo in south-east New South Wales was tent leader in her unit.

“We kind of run the tent and help clean it up. We have sitting areas for eating, then we have the food area. We try and keep everything separate to keep it tidy.

“We hardly have enough time to clean it but it’s very fun — totally worth it.”

Shaping the next generation

The Australian Jamboree had historically been held every four years, but the 2025 event was the first in six years due to the pandemic, 90 years after the first ever Australian Jamboree.

While the popularity of Scouts has wavered slightly from that of its heyday, Mr Doo said the almost 10,000-strong attendance from children and volunteers showed there was still a place for the movement in modern Australia.

“It would be fair to say with both the financial pressures on families, but also the number of opportunities available to young people today compared to what there was in the 1970s, there is a small decrease in the number of people who come [to Scouts],” he said.

“But I think we have such an opportunity as an organisation to demonstrate to governments what we can do to create really good citizens through Scout programs.

“We are really keen to continue that conversation.”

The ABC has spoken to the scout participants with the permission of their families. It is the policy of Scouts Australia not to use children’s surnames.