eNewsletter 221 - Sunday 10^th May, 2026

G'day fellow rogainers,

In this newsletter

• Nightgaine review
• Online Nightgaine recap opportunity this Tuesday
• Entries NOW OPEN: 2026 6-hour Paddy Pallin, Glenbrook, Sun 14^th June
• NSWRA first aid revival
• Our new team finder service has gone live. Check it out!
• Combined NSW & ACT 2026 Rogaining Calendars

Nightgaine review

This year's Nightgaine was a roaring success with a total of 346 participants in 129 teams, split evenly between the 5 and 3-hour events. This was 30 more participants than last year's Nightgaine, indicating a bright future for novelty events like this.

The evening was cool and clear with a bright moon, making it an ideal night for nighttime exploring. The course was about 42 kilometres in length, making it a challenge for even the very best to complete. It consisted of a mixture of the relatively easy going streets of suburban Cherrybrook, or you could take your chances and dive into some serious tricky nighttime navigation on faint, hard-to-find trails in the deep vegetated ravines slicing through the suburbia. Something for everyone!

Congratulations to the overall winners of the 5-hour, the mixed veterans team of Gill Fowler and Phil Whitten with 2710pts out of a possible score of 2720pts. They finished with just over a minute to spare in 4 hours 58 minutes & 42 seconds. The top mens team of Keelan Birch, Jeremy Fowler & Xanda Kolesnikow got in 18 minutes earlier, coming second overall with 2660pts. Both of the top two teams could have cleared the course if they had made better decisions on the night.

The overall winners of the 3-hour were Tim Leask, Neeraj Krishnan & Thomas Schanzer with 1640pts.

The food. All good rogaines finish with the food! This time we finished the evening with two main courses followed by a range of tasty desserts. Ravenous participants were greeted with a choice between two gigantic pots of delicious Minestrone overseen by Robin Cameron, or their grab of slices from more than a hundred large pizzas supplied by one of the major pizza chains only 20 metres from the HH!

For dessert we went with apples, grapes and oranges. Half as a fruit salad with yoghurt, and half as cut fruit. In addition, we had 3 slabs of caramel slice and Robin made more than 350 ANZAC biscuits at home in her own oven.

Despite the copious amounts of food consumed, the sheer gluttony of the crowd ensured there was very little wastage, except for a pretty impressive pile of empty pizza boxes. Most importantly, everyone seemed happy and fed, and no doubt everybody slept well that night.

Results

5-hour winners by category:

3-hour winners by category:

Links to the full results are available from the event page.

Volunteers

This year's Nightgaine would not have been possible without the help of the following:

Julian Ledger and Chris Stevenson also did approximately 300 letter box drops targeting those houses that were backing bush and likely to wonder what was happening over their back fence on Saturday night.

The reclining rogainer -- famous for his prowess in the sport -- and ability to sleep under any conditions...

For a lot more photos by Bruce Sutton, see the event page.

Online Nightgaine recap this Tuesday

Contributed by Nicole Mealing

Have you been poring over your map post-event and evaluating the route choices you made? Want to reflect on Saturday night’s course, and to learn from like minded rogainers?

This coming Tuesday May 12^th from 19:30-20:30, Nicole will be hosting an online gathering via Google Meet.

You do not require a google account to join in. If you join before the host, you’ll wait in a waiting room until 19:30 and then be let in. The link is: https://meet.google.com/tqb-eisc-xho.

If anyone is keen to hold an in-person debrief in your area after a rogaine, get in touch via volunteer@nswrogaining.org and we’ll coordinate this for future rogaine debriefs. The more the merrier!

6-hour Paddy Pallin, Glenbrook, Sun 14^th June

For your calendar: add the event date & add entries closing reminder

Entries OPEN

We’re going back to Glenbrook for the first time since 2008. The “Gateway to the Mountains” is also a great intro to the sport, as well as a welcome challenge for veterans. The off-track will be a mix of gentle open forest, rock platforms, and bouldery creeks – but also some bushfire regrowth that will fight back against the unwary. The trails themselves will also not disappoint, with some of the most iconic walking trails and lookouts approximately one hour from Sydney.

Highlights include: Lookouts over the Nepean river, Emu Plains, & Mt. Portal; Euroka creek & Glenbrook Causeway; and Red hands cave & stone tool grinding grooves.

Key info at a glance:

Location. The rogaine will commence at the Euroka campground, Glenbrook area in the Blue Mountains National Park, approximately one hour from Sydney.

Course times:

Sunday 14^th June 2026

Timings of map availability, novice briefing, final briefing and prize givings will be confirmed closer to the event date. Final Instructions will be available on the website from Monday 8^th June.

Team finder service

If you are looking for a team to join, or would like to start a new team for this event, go to our new Team Finder page. More info about our brand new team finder service can be found in the article below.

Enter Here

Info for novices with advice on what gear to bring for a bush event and other information can be found on the website.

Event related queries can be directed to: admin@nswrogaining.org

NSWRA first aid revival

Our upgraded first aid kit & brand new Automated External Defibrillator (AED)

Our ever-smiling friendly neighbourhood first-aider, Charles Kuan, has completely revitalised our event first aid infrastructure.

In addition to an upgraded first aid kit, we now have a brand new St John Ambulance G5 fully Automated External Defibrillator (AED), for use should anyone suffer a cardiac arrest. Everybody should familiarise themselves with this amazing piece of life-saving technology. By following the step-by-step video instructions built into this machine, even YOU could save a life. Take a look at this video to see more.

Our new team finder service has gone live!

Rogaining is a team sport and a great way to meet new people. However, one of the barriers to entry into rogaining for a solo newcomer is finding a team.

Accordingly, over the past few months, Matt and Siobhan, our webadmins, have been hard at work developing and testing what is arguably the best fully automated, unmoderated, and fully private web-based rogaining Team Finder Service ever developed.

Its great strength is that private details such as email addresses or phone numbers are not publicly revealed at any stage in the steps taken for two potential team members to find each other.

This service ticks all the boxes in terms of privacy, security, and useability. So, if you are looking for a team to join, or would like to start a new team for an upcoming event, check out the new Team Finder page on the website.

NSW & ACT 2026 Rogaining Calendars

Below is the latest state of play as the NSW and ACT calendars continue to firm up. The dates for two more very important interstate rogaines coming up in 2026 have also been set and the 2026 NSW ‘fridge-friendly’ printable calendar (pdf) is ready to download.

Planning an interstate trip? Check out the ARA's National Rogaining Calendar.

In all cases, remember to check the respective websites should there be any changes since some of the events are many months away.

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