“I want Scouts to promote responsible risk-taking amongst young people because as a nation we are ensuring our kids grow up in strait-jackets, where they take no risks.

Dick Smith, quoted in ‘No More “Cotton Wool Kids” Dick Smith promotes responsible risk taking’, Lord Baden-Powell Society Newsletter for Members, #31, May 2009, p.5

Commemorating 100 years of Scouting in Australia

The Scouts movement was founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) who developed his ideas while serving in the British Army in India, where he was sent in 1876. Officer Baden-Powell’s methods of training soldiers in stalking and fending for themselves were the basis of the ideas he applied to the training of 20 boys at an experimental camp on Brownslea Island off the coast of Dorset, England in 1907. Such was the camp’s success that Baden Powell penned his theories in Scouting for Boys, published in 1908, and in the same year Scout Groups were established not just in England, but in Australia, New Zealand and India.

Scouts Australia and the arts in Australia

The centenary is not the first occasion when Scouts Australia have worked with an eminent Australian artist. In 1997 celebrated Australian painter John Coburn (1925-2006) was commissioned to re-design the Scouts logo. Coburn’s logo combines the international Scouts symbol, the fleur-de-lys with the five stars of the Southern Cross.

Of the many successful Australians who were Scouts, a number, like John Coburn, have become major contributors to Australian cultural life. Coburn was once a Scout, an experience he valued all his life: “I was a shy boy and not very assertive and Scouting brought me out of myself”. (John Coburn, quoted in The Melbourne Corporate Luncheon https://www.vicscouts.asn.au/Luncheon/Docs/MCL220702.pdf)

Other distinguished creative Australians who were once Scouts include artists Sydney Ball (b. 1933), Richard Goodwin (b.1953), Brook Andrew (b.1970) and the Federal Minister Peter Garrett, (b. 1953; former lead singer of the Australian rock band Midnight Oil).

Dick Smith himself is the grandson of one of Australia’s best-loved artists, the great pictorial photographer Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953).

In the course of developing the artwork, the artists came to favour a ground plane design of concentric circles. This latter design was a much closer emulation of wind patterns and as such, was a much stronger link to other component of the artwork, the wind vane. It would also encourage the audience to experience the artwork with a circular movement reinforcing the rotations of the wind vane above.

Wind vane

Turpin and Crawford tried numerous iterations of the wind vane before settling on the feather form. For the artists, the feather is also the quill which has inscribed the words in the ground.

Wind tests

The artists worked with CPP Wind Engineering & Air Quality Consultants to finesse the vane’s behaviour in the specific conditions of the site at Circular Quay. The wind tunnel at CPP’s St Peters, Sydney office was modeled to analyse wind conditions at the Circular Quay site. The actions of a 1:5 scale model of the vane were studies in a three part test. The first was a visual test to ascertain the desired movement of the vane, second, an analysis of the Circular Quay site’s wind conditions and the final was a series of strain gauge tests to determine the wind forces which would act upon the sculpture. The mechanical engineers and structural engineers then used this information in their preparation of design drawings for the vane and its mast.

The fabrication process

The fabricated vane was installed at the Hycast factory at Smithfield, in Sydney’s west, so that its performance could be tested before installation at Scout Place.

Phrases associated with the philosophy of Scouting such as ‘lead the way’, ‘do your best’ and ‘be prepared’ as well as actions suggestive of Scout activities including ‘help’, ‘save’, ‘seek out’, ‘venture’, ‘search’ and ‘navigate’ have been incorporated into the sentences to celebrate the values of Scouting within the artwork.

Download the Windlines Guide which includes a map and each of Windlines’ unique directions – the riddles and the locations which inspired them. It should be noted that all distances and directions are taken from Scout Place and directions are based on Grid North (GN) that is one degree off True North (TN).

Selecting the destinations

In finalizing the 16 destinations of Windlines, the artists researched numerous wonderful places outdoors in the Sydney and greater Sydney area.

Unsurprisingly, given the location of the Pacific Ocean, the artists had less choice of destination in the easterly directions, while the western areas offered an abundance. 

Most of the destinations are of significance to Scouts, and several are of personal significance to Dick Smith. For example the NE destination, Ball’s Pyramid (which at 788 kms north east of Sydney and 23 kms south of Lord Howe Island is part of the seat of Sydney in the federal electorate) was climbed by Smith at the age of 20. Once, on an expedition to the NW destination of Mt Mistake, Smith became so lost that for a while he feared for his life.

Jennifer and Michaelie have worked collaboratively as artists in the field of public, environmental and community art for more than 15 years.  They have worked on projects in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Singapore and regional NSW.

The artists draw frequently upon the services of a variety of engineers including structural, hydraulic, mechanical and environmental as well as specific architectural designers. The studio often works in collaboration with developer, architect and landscape design teams on public competitions both in Australia and overseas.

Selected projects and awards

Storm Waters 2003

Client: Landcom 
Awards: 2003 Planning NSW Award for design National Association of Women In Construction (NAWIC) and the Lloyd Rees Civic Award Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA).

Description: This large stormwater sculpture in Victoria Park, Zetland, South Sydney comprises two 20 metre long sets of water stairs in the sloped embankments of the park. The water used is storm water, treated without the use of chemicals and is part of the water sensitive urban design principles of the entire 22 hectare site. The water cascades down the stairs at an intriguing 450 angle

Tied to Tide 1999

Winner for the Sydney Harbour Foreshore’s Authority  (SHFA) 1998 national competition
Award: 2000 NAWIC- Arup Award for Art in the Built Environment
Client: SHFA; current owner: City of Sydney
Description: This floating tidal, wave and wind activated installation at Pyrmont Point Park, Sydney Harbour comprises8 identical 10 metre long timber units. Incorporating counter-balanced maritime red ladders the units move in a constant state of flux to the rhythms of the harbour’s waters, winds and tides.

The Memory Line 1995

Client: The Australian Conservation Foundation and Fairfield City Council
Awarded: 1997 Award of Excellence Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) NSW and ACT groups
Description: This environmental artwork for the Australian Conservation Foundation's "Restoring The Waters" project involved the rehabilitation of Clear Paddock Creek, Fairfield, Western Sydney. The Memory Line was a temporary memorial to a lost water way, now partly restored. In 1995 a 3.5 kilometre long x 4 metre wide band of rye grass was planted following the course once taken by a creek in Western Sydney that had been canalised in concrete 10 years earlier. The Memory Line meandered its way through a suburban landscape, highlighting the ‘poetics of place’ to help reinstate a balance between nature and the urban environment.

The artists' design philosophy

Artists Jennifer Turpin and Michaelie Crawford have worked collaboratively over the past decade and a half to produce artworks for the public domain. The largely permanent sculptural installations are a dynamic response to the specificity of the sites they inhabit. Working with nature’s elemental energies, their kinetic installations seek to create rhythmic, responsive and transformative ‘performances’ in the everyday life of the city.

Sculptural form derives from the built and natural language of each site and works are seamlessly integrated within given structures and landscapes. Condensed and simplified in their form, the works become instruments to scribe more complex rhythmic and arhythmic pulses at the intersection of the built and natural environments.

Water, wind and light become sculptural media and deliver poetic expression through kinetic intrigue. Whether harnessing the diurnal rhythms of the tide, the invisible patterns of unpredictable winds, the shifting light of the day, the weather and the seasons, or the choreographed sequences of mechanical drives, movement is deliberately mediated and slowed to engage a direct bodily response in the viewer. Always fluid, the sculptures ‘partner’ the elements in a dance led by the fascinating forces of nature.

The works form a nexus between the solidity of the urban fabric’s built form, the myriad rhythms of the people who engage it and the energetic forces of the surrounding natural elements. At once puzzling, playful, mesmerising and contemplative, the artworks make visible the invisible and highlight the elemental so often the taken for granted.

Cazneaux’s son Harold Jnr had been killed at war, Harold Jnr had been a radio enthusiast and in the 1950s the young Dick spent many hours in Harold Jnr’s radio room – and his love of electronics was born. He joined the Scouts in 1952, becoming a Rover Scout in 1967 and receiving the Baden Powell award in 1968.

In 1966 he fell in love with Girl Guide Philippa (Pip) McManamey and in 1968 they started the business Dick Smith Electronics which they sold to Woolworths in 1982. In 1983 he completed the first solo flight around the world in a helicopter. In 1986 he founded Australian Geographic magazine and was awarded Australian of the Year. In 1993 Dick and Pip Smith completed an 11 month east to west around the world trip in a helicopter. In 1999 Dick Smith Foods were established to provide Australian owned and produced alternatives to products from foreign-owned food companies and in the same year he was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Smith’s record as a philanthropist and advocate is distinguished. In 2005 he gave public support to the asylum seeker Peter Qasim and in 2007 Smith helped fund a campaign to secure a fair trial for Australian terrorism suspect David Hicks.

Windlines is one of a suite of projects funded by a $1 million donation from Dick and Pip Smith to Scouts Australia to commemorate its centenary in 2008.