News / Community
Newest Queen’s Scout keeps it in the family
Charley Baden-Powell is the first member of her clan to achieve the award
Mark Phillips
CHARLOTTE Baden-Powell is not exaggerating when she says scouting is in her blood.
The Brunswick 17-year-old’s great-great grandfather literally wrote the book on Scouts.
Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s 1908 book Scouting For Boys was the manifesto for a worldwide movement that has grown to about 50 million young people and adult volunteer leaders.
But despite that lineage, Charley, as she is known to her family and friends, is the first member of the Baden-Powell clan in 117 years to attain the movement’s highest award, becoming a Queen’s Scout.
Advertisement
In gaining her Queen’s Scout badge, Charley has achieved an ambition she announced to her family when she was seven.
Proudly watching on when she was presented with her patch at the 4th Brunswick Scouts hall on Tuesday night were her father, David, the current and 5th Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell, and her grandmother Joan, the widow of the 4th Lord, Michael Baden-Powell, who died last year.
“If you couldn’t tell by my last name, I was kind of born into this,” Charley said at the presentation ceremony.
“I didn’t have a choice but to be a Scout, it’s in my DNA. It’s literally in my blood.”
Charley’s great-great grandfather, Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, used his experiences in the Boer War to found the Scouting movement in 1907, followed by the publication of his seminal handbook the next year.
He was made a Peer by King George V in 1929 and held the title until he died in 1941. It has been passed onto a male heir since then.
The 4th Brunswick Scouts honours board will now permanently carry the surname of the movement’s founder.
Charley’s own involvement in the Scouts movement began at the 4th Brunswick hall as a Brownie Guide when she was six. She continued with Girl Guides until the Covid pandemic when she was 13.
After the end of the pandemic, she then joined the Merri-bek Venturers, who meet every Tuesday in the same hall. Venturers are an older contingent of Scouts aged 15 to 18.
She has fond memories of selling Girl Guide cookies door to door, hiking in the New Zealand alps, and numerous camping trips – all experiences that have been available through Girl Guides and Scouts.
Her parents David and Edwina have encouraged her every step along the way, but the person she wanted to dedicate her award to was her late “Grandpa Michael”.
“I know he would have absolutely adored to be here tonight and he’s in our hearts and his spirit is with us,” Charley said.
It is through Michael that the Baden-Powell family ended up in Australia.
He migrated to Melbourne in the 1964 to join the woman who would become his wife. He had met Joan Berryman when she was touring Europe earlier that decade. Settling back in her home town, they had three sons, the oldest being David.
Michael held the title of 4th Lord Baden-Powell following the death of his older brother, Peter, in 2019. He died in July last year at the age of 83 and the title was inherited by Charley’s father, who has lived in the Brunswick area for more than two decades.
“I feel so proud that something my family created brings such joy and connection around the world,” Charley said.
“Going to camps and even walking around the city and seeing the uniform makes me realise the impact my great-great grandfather had. The world Scout jamborees, even when someone says ‘oh, I recognise that name’.
“I am very happy Scouting can be a place where people make friends, can achieve their goals and have heaps of fun.”
Both her grandfather and father continued the family tradition of Scouting, but neither gained a Queen’s Scout honour, which requires the completion of a number of milestones and skills.
“I remember at the age of seven telling my cousin that one day I will be the first Baden-Powell to get a Queen’s Scout award,” Charley said.
A Queen’s Scout candidate must complete various outdoor activities, plan and lead an adventurous journey of at least four days/three nights duration – which Charley did with a small group of other Merri-bek Venturers in the Yarra Ranges earlier this year – and also attend a personal development or leadership course. Charley is the 40th Queen’s Scout from 4th Brunswick in more than a century. Among those attending her presentation was the Deputy Chief Commissioner of Scouts Victoria, Daniella Taglieri.
Charley’s father, David, was also a Venturer until the age of 17, and has been a group leader at 4th Brunswick Scouts since 2019. Her younger brother, Max, 15, has just graduated from Scouts to Venturers.
David said the entire extended Baden-Powell family in Australia and overseas was “stoked” at her achievement.
He said Charley was an “irresistible force” with great determination who has balanced Scouts with Year 12 studies at Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar.
“She’s worked hard for it over the past few years,” he said.
“It requires lots of commitment and dedication, especially when it would have been easy to stop to concentrate on Year 12.
“Everyone is super proud of her.”
Charley will join several hundred other Queen’s Scouts in being formally acknowledged at Government House early next year.
Support independent local journalism
We are an independent hyperlocal news organisation owned and run by the people in your community. With your support, we can continue to produce unique and valuable local journalism for Brunswick and the inner north of Melbourne.
