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When my sister Netta first
told me in 1985 or so that she was going out on overnight bushwalks
with her university friends and not
even sleeping for 24 hours, I thought she was crazy. One by one, her
rogaining partners went overseas. Then,
in 1989, she asked me if I'd like to compete with her in the NSW
Champs at Murrumbo, near Scone. I had begun to
get curious about rogaining by then and agreed to join
her. Little did I know what I was getting myself into!
I got to the Hash House ten
minutes before noon, thrilled with my timing. Netta was very
impatient - where had I been, we had to
make preparations! Fortunately she had done most of it already,
including covering the map, making
sandwiches, packing lollies and planning our route. The map was a
mix of undulating open farmland and
more rugged open bush.
I will never forget my first
rogaine - the shine of moonlight across the paddocks and the sharp
bite of frost toward midnight, and the
way that erosion gullies lose all perspective at night. We never did
find that particular checkpoint, though
we could see exactly where it would have been from the top of a
distant hill in the first light of the
following morning. We could also see the positions of the next three
checkpoints all around the remainder of
the course! I was hooked and never quite so late to the start again!
Evans Crown, August 1990, set
by Trevor Gollan and George Collins, was originally planned to be a
12 hour event. Very heavy rain the day
before the event caused local flooding. Making our way to the Hash
House was a great challenge as all routes were
blocked by flooding or fallen timber. The start was delayed;
half of the course was designated out of bounds on the other side of
the flooded Fish River and the duration
of the event was cut to 6 hours. We carried our rain gear, but
didn't need it.
At Copeton Dam (1990), set by
Graeme Cooper, we had an un-nerving experience where the river began
flowing backwards while we were crossing it.
We made our way between rocky hillocks - and though we tried
several times, after each crossing, the water was headed in the
opposite direction. It took great faith
to believe that the compass was right and we had actually turned 180
degrees each time. We were so
disoriented that we holed up in a sheltered spot and waited till it
got light enough to see the hilltops around
us so we could take a back-bearing to relocate ourselves. That was
also the event we covered more than
2300 metres vertical displacement in 24 hours - more than climbing
from sea level to the top of Mt
Kosciuszko and down again.
The Plum Pudding rogaine
(1992) was also set by Graeme Cooper. Less than half an hour after
the start, we took off our shoes and
socks to cross a wide shallow river. We didn't want to have wet feet
for the following 12 hours! The water
was no more than knee-deep. Netta let go of my hand to climb out
on the other side. I watched in amazement as
she began a slow descent backwards and ended up lying in
the water! At least her socks were dry!
One of my favourite rogaines
was the Bugs Bunny Easter rogaine (1993) at Weddin Mountain near
Grenfell, set by Tony Maloney. The map was
shaped like a butterfly. The first hour of the event was awful
- we made a poor choice to push through the
scrub between checkpoints instead of taking the longer route
along a track. It took us more than an hour to cover less than a
kilometre in the daylight! The remainder
of the event was wonderful. We were treated to the sight of a rich
western orange sunset over the
sandstone cliffs that were featured on the poster that we won.
Warwick Marsden drew a checkpoint on
the poster which still hangs on my wall. In the wee small hours we
found ourselves walking up a flat grassy
valley between sandstone cliffs. The moonlight shone off the still
leaves of the gums and I felt like
dancing. We were 2nd overall and I still contend that we'd have won
had the leading team not trodden on and
broken my compass when we encountered them in the dark.
There was a memorable rogaine
in the ACT when an electrical storm struck around 4 pm. Was that the
event where Julian Ledger and Tony Maloney
watched a bolt of lightning strike some 20 metres away from
them? They fled, not even bothering to return to collect their
control card! When the first thunder rolled we were on top of one of
those great sandstone pagodas. Suddenly I thought I'd lost my
partner as Netta slid straight down the nearest runnel to the more
sheltered forest. She doesn't like lightning.
Or bears. Fortunately bears are not a common hazard
in Australian rogaines, however when we competed in the 3rd World
Championships (1998) near Kamloops in BC, Canada, there were bears.
We didn't see any but other teams sighted them no more than half an
hour after we passed.
Bert van Netten's Lake Macquarie events have taken
us to some wonderful country in the Watagans. I love driving north
along the freeway and identifying places where checkpoints have been
located in the past.
Lake Tabourie (1993) and Pretty Beach (1996), both
set by Trevor Gollan, introduced me to the beauties of the south
coast. And also cured me of my previous irrational fear of leeches.
After detaching 22 leeches from under one gaiter, I stopped
counting. It was a good thing that I wasn't so worried about leeches
in another of Bert's Lake Macquarie events. Foolishly I had decided
not to wear a hat - it was raining and no sun was forecast. However,
I got a lot of rubbish falling in my hair and down over my face and
in my eyes. I tried to wash it off in one of the, by then, fast
running creeks we splashed through. One stubborn piece of grit would
not come out from under one eyelid. I asked my partner, Mike
Hotchkis, to remove it for me. Of course it was dark - and raining
then. He held a torch in his teeth and tried to hold my eyelid in
one hand and scrape with the corner of a hankie with the other.
Though half-blinded by the light of the torch, I saw him blanch and
step backward. He gulped and explained that it was not a pieceof
grit, but a leech, attached to my eyeball! Fortunately he had some
saline eyewash which made the leech let go.
Other bright memories of rogaining - walking across
still-warm embers after a bushfire during the "A Flat"
Queensland State Championships (1994); sleepwalking from 11pm till
5am on most 24 hour events while Netta continues to navigate and
steer me around the obstacles; jetlag doesn't help to stay awake any
better in the dark; when all your torch bulbs blow and you try to
read the map in the light of the moon, you cannot tell the
difference between creeks and tracks; while course checking in the
Blue Mountains on a rare day off, I joined an international
telephone conference and chatted to my Singaporean and Danish
colleagues as I counted paces between ribbon markers; the notorious
1st World Champs (1994) near Beechworth where it was 11 km between
two consecutive checkpoints; frost glistening off the grass tips and
coming across an unexpected Spinifex plant in the Gardens of Stone
event; the fragrance of everlasting daisies that clung to my running
shoes for several months after the Fruit and Veg 2nd World Rogaining
Champs in WA (1996); carrying a 3 month old baby around Mullo's
Walks Socialgaine (1999); breastfeeding a 6 month old baby around
the Metrogaine earlier this year as, on the mobile phone, Netta told
me of her long-awaited engagement; turning off our torches quickly
after punching a checkpoint so as not to lead other closely
following competitors in to it!
The years have not dulled my enthusiasm for
rogaining - though family circumstances have precluded me from
competing much over the last few years. However, every time I see a
full moon rise, or look out on a starry bright night, I smile and
think how perfect it would be to be out there rogaining…
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