Badges and sashes live on

The challenge was simple: Nelson Mail reporters were asked to try their hand at something they had always thought about giving a go. For ALICE COWDREY, that meant the chance to attend to some unfinished business with the Brownies.

The colour brown, a crumpled shirt in the bottom of my schoolbag and a dire badge collection are the main things I remember from my Brownie days.

Style and dedication were not really my thing, and apart from one or two diehard badge-earners who took the "lend a hand" motto a tad too seriously, things were pretty casual in my pack.

We gathered weekly in a woolshed, about 200 metres down the road from my rural primary school on the western side of Lake Taupo. There was a sharp smell of sheep wool in the air while we danced around the white-spotted ceramic toadstool, ate homemade baking off the shearing stage, ran around the wool-press and beavered away on craft projects under the careful eye of Brown Owl.

Enrolling as a Brownie was a progression, really. I joined Pippins when I was about six, although I had to join the "lone" pack, meaning I never really went to meetings. Instead, I received a stack of activities through the mail every month or so. When the mailbox became void of Pippin packs, I became a Tweenie and gladly ditched the brown pinafore with its round apple badge and square pocket.

According to my battered Brownie manual, becoming a Tweenie meant you were "tween not being a Brownie and being a Brownie". This left me confused, so I was glad when my Brownie enrolment date in the woolshed finally rolled around.

Initiation involved a great deal of preparation – learning the lines to the Brownie promise and law, and getting my fingers straight enough to perform the Brownie sign. The actual ceremony was all a bit of a daze, but involved a mirror, a toadstool, a line of Brownies, two shiny metal badges and a glossy certificate.

The gloss was not to remain, however, and I soon decided I didn't really like Brownies. It wasn't the woolshed – I was used to that environment, having attended numerous birthday parties, kindergarten, and even gymnastics in the makeshift community centre. I think it was the commitment factor, the uniform and the thought of selling biscuits that scared me.

I broke the Brownie promise. I started to resent the days when mum would shout out "don't forget your Brownie uniform!" before I caught the bus. Dad and my brother didn't help matters, asking me about "Brown Eye" and then sniggering. I would fight back, teasing my brother that he should shut up and go look for his woggle, the leather ring used to hold his Scout scarf together.

One thing I enjoyed about Brownies, however, was camp. There were great outdoor activities, walks, lolly hunts and singalongs, although chronic homesickness was never too far away. The worst pangs I experienced were during a camp at the two-storeyed Scout den on the shore of Lake Taupo.

My ugly khaki green stretcher (with the scratchiest surface in the world) was just so darned hard to put together. The metal legs kept on popping out of their plastic sockets, and in the middle of the night it all turned to custard. It was just too much and I couldn't hide my tears from Brown Owl any longer.

Scarily, she pulled me into her heaving bosom for a hug while handing me a paper patty-case filled with homemade toffee smothered with a layer of hundreds and thousands.

I think I got some sort of outdoors badge that weekend, and when I got home, I stitched it next to the two others on my sash.

Willing to widen my tainted view of Brownies, I asked my sister, who is three years younger than me, what her most vivid memories of the pack were. She emailed me back a list in record speed.

"Never doing any work, so I got no badges. I remember the Brown Owl making me sit down and tick off stuff so I could get badges. I remember the day you quitted and I wanted to as well."

This bit was in caps: "You made me wear my Brownie outfit as a joke when Mum and Dad had visitors at home and dad got really angry. And who can forget the geeks who used to wear their sashes on the bus displaying how many badges they have?"

Hmm – well maybe she felt the same pressures as me. Maybe I needed to go back to Brownies to reconnect.

"Do they wear those brown sacks and minty green T-shirts any more?" I ask Amanda Woolf, the 21-year-old leader of the Waimea Brownies Unit.

"No, they wear pink," she says, as a group of excited girls were dropped off by their mothers.

Before Amanda took over the unit, her mother had the role for 12 years.

The girls decide they are going to play stuck-in-the-mud and tag out on the grass, and one blonde girl can hardly contain herself, shrieking with excitment. There is a cat, too, which wanders over from a house nearby.

"Please leave the cat alone, girls," says Amanda.

I ask about the toadstool and the mirror and am told these things were thrown out with a modernisation of Brownies, but the girls can still learn about it as part of the heritage badge.

They don't call the leader Brown Owl any more, either.

Amanda has been involved with the girl guiding movement since she was seven and even has the Queen's Guide Badge, the highest possible badge a guide can be awarded. It took her three years to achieve the award.

Amanda is wearing the snazzy T-shirt that is now part of the leader's uniform, as well as jeans and Crocs. The girls go back inside the Holy Trinity Church in Richmond, with its washed-out yellow walls, to make "what makes me, me" posters.

They have felts, glittter, paint, scissors and pencils. Kayla Burnaby, 8, of Ruby Bay is concentrating on making an invitation for her Brownie enrolment. She wants to give it to her mum, and can't wait to become a "proper Brownie".

"It's fun with heaps of games and they help me feel really welcome, and it's fun planning terms and stuff like that. I am going to learn how to sew my own badges on, too," she says.

Molly Floyd, 8, has written two lists on her piece of paper. Under the work "dislikes" are snakes, glue, fires; under "likes" are cats, animals, art, free time and food. She has illustrated each word, and is a talented drawer.

"Fires are scary; I don't want to get burnt and stuff," she explains.

"I enjoy getting badges ... it's just like you feel proud of yourself for earning them."

Is it hard work? I ask,

"Kind of ... not really."

Nicole Macdonald, 8, is listening to the conversation.

"Sometimes it's challenging to get badges and sometimes you don't really want to do it, because we had to do a speech and we didn't really want to do it, did we, Molly?"

Nicole isn't too keen on going on an overnight camp.

"I wouldn't be able to handle two nights. I would probably miss my mum and my dad and my nice warm bed."

She reminds me of myself as Brownie.

The meeting is all over in a flash and it seems to me that modern Brownies is more about the girls' choices. They are so rapt to be there, and as well as playing games and nattering among themselves like a flock of parrots, they are making new friendships outside of school.

The group gathers to say goodbye, handing me my very own Brownie badge that says "thank you". I leave feeling something I never thought possible – that it would actually be a lot of fun being a Brownie leader.

Then I go home to sew my new badge on to my brown sash.

BROWNIE TERMS I REMEMBER

Brown Owl: Leader of the Brownie pack.

Tawny Owl: An assistant leader in the Brownie pack.

Pow wow: A Brownie ring to discuss pack business and share Brownie secrets.

Brownie Bells: A prayer set to music, used to close a Brownie meeting.

A good turn: Help given willingly that has not being asked for.

The Brownie Motto: Lend a hand.

The Brownie Promise: I promise to do my best, to love God, to serve the Queen and my country, to help people at all times and to keep the Brownie law.

- © Fairfax NZ News