Posted on 08/05/2017 by Chris Stevenson

The Australian Championships were held over the weekend in an area near Bredbo, south of Canberra, and I thought I would write down a few things that piqued my interest from the event.

Firstly, I must pay homage to David Baldwin and Julie Quinn who won the event and scored 10% more than 2nd place. I am in complete awe of their ability to run quickly over all sorts of landscapes and navigate flawlessly. It’s just a pity they are Canberrans when state (and territory) pride was on the line over the weekend. ACT won the State (and Territory) challenge with NSW a slightly distant 2nd.

Secondly, I will call out Rochelle Duerden who ran with two TAFE friends who had never before been to a rogaine. Rochelle is a very good rogainer and I could not imagine trying to keep up with her for 24 hours, especially on my first rogaine.  To the credit of Rochelle and her friends (Morgen Ely and Issy Allan) they were all smiling at the end and managed a creditable 2nd in the women’s junior event as well as 7th in the Open Women’s event and 7th in the Intervarsity event.

I must also discuss the All Night Cafe, it was like visiting a Michelin starred restaurant in the middle of the course. The All Night Cafe had everything your heart could desire and more. I made a pig of myself and I think I am not the only one. My only complaint is that it was very hard to pull myself, and my team mate Julian, away from this luxury oasis to chase more points in the dark, cold and unforgiving bush. The All Night Cafe had several main meals on offer as well as soups, hot drinks and a range of homemade cookies and slices. The All Night Cafe was run by Jean Douglass and her sister. Jean was also the course setter for the event, along with Ron Simpson, and she was also the event co-ordinator. Well done Jean, it was an amazing effort.

The course was interesting. It was set in a fashion commensurate with being an Australian Championship, that is there were no easy controls. All controls required skill to find. In fact I met a team at the water drop who were lamenting the fact that they had failed to find the last four controls they attempted. I think they were in good company. Julian and I duffered, but found, control 80 and failed to find control 46 in the dark. The other thing to note about the course is that it was huge, covering about 140 sq km and full of controls, with 68 to choose from. All the controls Julian and I visited were fairly set and we enjoyed the hunt. It’s just a pity that we could only manage to get to about 1/3 of all the controls on offer.

Julian and I had planned a gentlemanly approach to the rogaine which involved coming back to the hash house for a well earned mid competition sleep. However, not all plans come to fruition and at midnight we were several hours away from the hash house when Julian suggested that we “bivouac” instead of returning to the hash house. Bivouacing may sound exciting but it was cold and windy and I kept thinking about my mattress and two pillows in my tent. Anyway, we crawled off into the bush near control 60 and slept for several hours until we became so cold that we just had to get up and keep going. It got down to -1.1 degrees at nearby Cooma Airport with the wind chill making it feel like -5.1 degrees. Needless to say Julian and I were wearing everything we had with us and we also broke open our space blankets to stop from freezing. Sleeping rough, until the cold of night forces you to go on, is a strategy Julian and I also employed at the Garland Valley 24-hour event a couple of years ago.

There were a number of performances from my NSW colleagues that were worth a mention. Gill Fowler and Jess Baker won the women’s category and came 8th overall. Mike Hotchkis and Tristan White teamed to come 4th overall and 3rd in the men’s event. Mike and Tristan are an interesting pairing. Mike is a Super Veteran and Tristan was in the Under-23s until last year. Mike has been an outstanding rogainer for many years and is a bit of a legend in our sport. Tristan is at the vanguard of a new generation of outstanding rogainers. It would have been interesting to attach a GoPro to one of them to watch the action and hear the discussions. Mike would have won the men’s veterans and men’s super veterans if he had been competing with someone from his own age group, but having said that, there are very few super veterans who could keep up with Mike. Also well done to Colleen and Colin Mock who came 2nd in the mixed ultra veteran’s event.

Still on the subject of NSW performances Ivan Koudashev and his sister Elena won the Mixed Juniors and were the second placed junior team. I will be interested to see how well they perform when they are no longer juniors. If they stick with rogaining they may well be household names in the rogaining community for decades to come. Nihal Danis and Sue Clarke (now a Queenslander, but a former NSW rogainer) came 2nd in the Women’s Super Veterans and Ted Woodley and John Anderson came third in the Men’s Ultra veterans.

On the flip side of the coin Richard Sage and Walter Keleman (a Queenslander, but a former NSW rogainer) were so late that they were disqualified. Richard and Walter are both fine rogainers and have more than 40 years of rogaining between them. Rumour has it that not only did they miss a control, but they were also significantly topographically embarrassed (i.e. lost) and that is why they were very late back. What is certain is that Richard and Walter were soundly beaten by a team comprising their better halves (Nihal and Sue).

I can’t finish this post without talking about the terrain. It was similar to terrain in the Tarlo River rogaine – great for rogaining but very marginal country with little evidence of life outside of the odd kangaroo and a wombat or two. Walking through that country you can understand why it is available for rogaining as it would be pretty useless for farming. Thanks to Laurie Scheele the owner of 30% of the course for sharing his country with us. I am told there are koalas on the course but I couldn’t find them. Having said that though, it is hard to look for koalas during a rogaine without falling over, which is something I did regularly.

Overall the event was very well organised and there were a lot of tired but smiling people at the end. I confess a slight sense of regret that relatively few people took advantage of the event. There were only 153 teams in a course that could accommodate three or four times that.

Thanks very much to my ACT colleagues for putting on (and winning) a great event.

2 Responses to My wrap of the Australian Championships

1. Andy Macqueen 09/05/2017 at 10:57 am says:

An excellent event indeed. Greg King and I were a team of Super Vets who no way could’ve kept up with Mike. However, thanks to his competing at a younger level we took 1st in the SV (and 2nd in MV). Off to WRC in August by which time we’ll both be UVs (shameless self promotion!).

• Chris 12/05/2017 at 8:34 am says:

Andy, My apologies for not mentioning Greg and your superb achievement in winning the Men’s Super Veteran category for NSW. I also missed recognising Andrew Smith and Toni Bachvarova who came 2nd in the mixed veterans. Well done to all.