The Australian Jamboree was an outstanding success for 12,500 Scouts thanks to Dr Paul Rollason of Absolute Dental Care in Taringa, QLD
There are over 30 million Scouts worldwide with about 66,000 members in Australia. The kids learn life skills and how to work in teams. Scouting also fosters friendships that last a lifetime. You have mates all over the world that treat you like a brother or a sister.
“I started in Scouts when I was 12 years old. I progressed through Scouts [ages 11-15], Venture Scouts [15-18] and Rovers [18-26]. After that I became the National Advisor for Youth Affairs for Scouts Australia and eventually Branch Commissioner International for Scouts Queensland—a position I have held for the past 15 years.
“I look after the international side of Scouting in Queensland. One of the big events is the annual Jamboree of the Air. Around the world, about seven million kids talk to each other using radios and the internet.
“Each year, we send kids overseas on exchange programs to the UK, Denmark and Japan. They, in turn, send Scouts to us and we look after them here in Australia. We also assist kids in attending one-off international events. On top of this, I still help out at my son’s Cub and Scout Pack every second Tuesday night.
“In 2013, Queensland hosted an international 10-day Jamboree for 12,500 youth members. I borrowed a government dental van and set up a dental clinic that dealt with 73 patients over that period. I discovered that some of the kids from Timor-Leste and PNG had pretty terrible teeth. These kids had never been out of their villages. They had never seen a toilet, let alone an aeroplane or a multi-storey building. I invited them to the clinic and every one of those children went home with a clean bill of health. One of the kids was very sick in hospital with a stomach issue and I was quite concerned. I took two X-rays and discovered he had a couple of severe abscesses. The cause of his stomach problem was that he was swallowing pus. I fixed him up and two days later, he found me in the middle of a massive crowd. He put his arms around me, gave me a hug and said ‘thankyou’ using his broken English. He was able to rejoin his fellow Scouts and they had an absolute ball. Not only was that probably the highlight of my dental career, it’s also what Scouting is all about.
