A Peaceful Place – Glenrock Scout Camp

When scouts roll up their sleeves they turn a former coal mine into the perfect scout training centre.

Glenrock Scout Camp, near Whitebridge, sets the bar pretty high when it comes to a regional scout training facility and scout camp. It has attracted scouts and their leaders for well over 80 years.

There’s a magic to this freehold scouting property, a former coal mine smack in the middle of Glenrock State Conservation Area and about six kilometres from the Newcastle CBD.

The camp embraces an amazing natural landscape with the essential features of land, water, trees and isolation. It is the perfect location to put into practice the virtues of outdoor activities, the development of self-reliance, and the art of improvisation by young people.

The camp is tucked away alongside Glenrock Lagoon, a stone’s throw from the rolling breakers of Burwood Beach, and it has its own woodland which merges with the surrounding national park.

Glenrock itself is a beautiful valley with two main creeks and waterfalls that meet and flow into the lagoon, with a sandbar across its mouth. The lagoon lives on Nature’s terms, regularly breaking open to empty into the ocean. The name Glenrock comes from the early settlers and means the glen (narrow valley) with the rocky nature.

Read more in Edition 74 of Hunter & Coastal Lifestyle Magazine.

Story and images John E Le Messurier.