Australian Wooden

Hundreds of Boats, Thousands of People and Our Scouts

Officially established in 1994 the Australian wooden boat festival was held at Constitution Dock, Hobart. The event, inspired and held by boating enthusiasts Cathy Hawkins, Ian Johnston and Andy Gamlin, started as a two day event. Making it’s debut, the event had outstanding support from the local City Council and several other organisations, including the ABC radio and spirit of Tasmania.

The warm summers day was bustling with 180 beautiful wooden boats, ships and hundreds of attendees, making the first Australian Wooden Boat Festival and incredible success.

Now, 29 years later and the event has only grown more popular. Now a four day event the Australian Wooden Boat Festival (AWBF) was over the 10-13th of February at Constitution Dock & Sullivan’s Cove. The program started midday at Lower Sandy Bay, where a grand 200+ wooden boats sailed across the River Derwent to the festival site, with sights of Tall Ships, Yachts and more. After welcome to country and official event opening on water events and viewing ensued.

Saturday and Sunday held the Derwent World Championships and Foster’s cup, with the infamous Clennett’s Mitre 10 Quick & Dirty Boat Building Challenge Race held on the Monday.

Scouts Tasmania is proud to see our Scout Groups and youth members participating in local events, along with tackling the creative, fun and skilful challenge put forward. The Scouts spent 3 days building their crafts, supplied with resources and set instructions. Once the youth teams had constructed the skeletons they set out to cover and waterproof the vessel frames ready for the race on day 4.

Our Local Scouts also, once again, got involved in community service, empting and replacing bins, cleaning up rubbish and ensuring the event stayed clean and sustainable.

The AWBF expo inside and along the dock showcased small sailing boats, similar to the ones our Scout Groups sail in, along with the events ‘most impressive’ ships, 11 Tall Ships berthed across Sullivan’s Cove. Our 5 local Tasmanian ships included Windward Bound, known for their youth development programs and Lady Nelson, the original having 2-4 million Australians with ancestors who sailed on her during the early 1800’s. Continued...