Written by one half of the winning team of the SA State Champs, Julie Quinn, ACT

David Baldwin and myself are rogaining tragics (in David’s words). One of our favourite places to rogaine is South Australia so we talked about taking a few days off work and coming over for the state champs when they were planned for near World’s End. We were even more keen when we heard that they had been moved further north to near Holowilena where we had an excellent rogaine a few years ago.

We were grateful for booking a motel room in Hawker on the Friday night (mostly so we could recharge our EV) when the wind and rain came up. It didn’t sound like there was much good pre-event sleep at the HH, especially for the Dream Team and their flattened tent. There was a freezing wind that greeted us when we arrived in the morning, so we quickly set ourselves up in a sheep pen in the shearing shed to plan. Great to see some of our SA rogaining friends at the event too. On assurances by setters, Craig and Evelyn, that we would get around the entire course, and with our string measurement at roughly 90 km, we drew a loop around all the controls. The route would take us east into the hills, getting the hard work done early, before looping back north and west into the flatter, and hopefully faster, part of the course.

We headed out SW from the HH and were quickly on our own – #22 didn’t seem like a popular control to start with! It had not warmed up much and both of us had our rain jackets and buffs on to stay warm even though we were jogging much of it. As always it took a bit of time to get our heads into the scale of the course and what was mapped or not, working out that even what was only a couple of contours on the map looked quite big on the ground because it was so clear. This proved to be the case even more so at night with what looked like huge mountains by moonlight being tiny knolls!

The hills to the east of the course were really interesting, with quite a lot of complexity to weave a route through. We had a good number of teams nearby as we took in 71-34-45-81-42-90. From 90 we headed north over one of the larger hills to 66 taking in the excellent views to the west and south. Despite the suggestion of many contours and the nearby teeth of a cliff, the descent to 66 was down a lovely spur. Continuing north we found one of the many unmarked basic 4WD tracks that were in this area. They were a bit odd for farm tracks but we later worked out they were more for 4WD tourists. W3 was in a creek gorge  with massive river red gums. These are such a highlight of this country and I love the watercourses and imagining what they would be like in a flood. Onto 100 which was a popular control at the time we arrived flying the flag high up on the hill near the knoll.

We then departed from most teams and completed a loop in the central part of the course, which had been the hardest to plan how to most efficiently pick up these controls. Looping 51-64-70-65-48-53-82-67-43. Again, interesting country and the travel underfoot varied depending on the rock type from very stony that was hard to move on quickly, to easier travel. We saw one other team nearing 53 but otherwise no-one on this stretch. Running up a gentle gully towards 82 I tripped over in the rocks (this is not an unusual occurrence!). My left foot hurt quite a lot at that, but I hadn’t faceplanted on anything so I got up and hobbled on, to catch up to David who was running in front. I let him know it was sore so we walked for a bit, got the control and headed over the hill to 67.

After 43 we headed into what looked like an interesting part of the course with vegetation marked and a small range. 44 was a bit tricky with multiple deep eroded gullies but working off the knolls behind we found the right gully. It was a bit slow going over the limestone rocks so we opted to head back west to run along the track to make the most of the fading daylight. We put our lights on just before 46 at our rough 30 km mark. I love the creek beds that completely cut the ranges in this area and east of 46 was one of these. We then picked up the watercourse to 62 thinking it was straight forward. I had not got into my night nav scale and had forgotten to start a pace count from the bottom so was starting to be convinced that we had gone too far. Fortunately, David had more confidence and around one more bend found the control – phew!

Heading north to 92 looked tricky in the dark so we carefully planned a route that was mostly a bearing but carefully taking note of where we were. This was a leg where the “mountains” resolved themselves into small ridges and knolls as we approached, and gave us a few moments of questioning what we were looking at. A slow leg. We met an ambitious 12 hr team heading north and took a fairly similar route to 72. They had a day of mountain biking planned for Sunday rather than a full 24 hrs on foot.

49 at the windmill was a super easy, quick control up the creek bed to the track, and then west up the hill over the range. I tripped over again on the track but this time nothing hurt. Around the broad spur to 50 and wondering if it might be a bit of a treasure hunt in the dark to find the right rocks but found the control right on cue. Up to the water and 41. Control 52 tripped us up a bit, perhaps because we’d come straight from 41 and were not 100% sure which little spur we were on. A few minutes wasted while we decided where we were in relation to the creek bend and hill behind. Heading up Canyon Creek we met Meredith and Abi going the opposite way. This was a promising sign that we were making good progress around the course as they said they had mostly done the western half of the course and it was only about 9 pm. Canyon Creek was impressive with the big gums, tall walls and easy going. 91 came quickly and we then huffed our way up the steep sides, high enough to swing back north-east towards 60.

From here we didn’t see another team until nearly dawn. Quick going through 60-55, then a grunt up to 33 which had us wondering which extra two controls had been put out for our benefit after we entered – it seemed like a long way up a hill for 30 points! (note: it was 39, not 33). Across to 56-39-63 and down to the track. We could see the safety patrol up near the water drop and Craig and Steve waited to ask us if we’d seen a 12-hr team and quickly established it was the team we’d been out east with. It was still not midnight and it turned out they were making their way back through the middle of the course and arrived back on time.

From the water we had a very fast series of controls through 61-68-24-36-54 before the map flip (the double-sided map worked just fine, with having a full planning map at a 1:40k scale) and tackling the biggest hill in the west over to 83. Quite interesting terrain through 58 and south to 73 with a series of knolls. Again, a place to make sure we kept track of where we were, although I had more difficulty through the flat drainage to 80 but David was on the ball here. We picked up the track at 32 and ran along it to 26 where I noticed my foot being a bit painful to run on. We had a short break to eat while filling our water bladders before heading off to look for the ruin of Morgan Hut. I guess I was expecting a bit more of a ruin than what we found having seen so many substantial ruins around the place in South Australia. Interesting to ponder who Morgan was though.

76 was an interesting rock outcrop that was easy to find as was 31. We saw another team going strongly on the way to 93 – sometimes overnight when you don’t see another team for many hours you do start to wonder if you are in an event with anyone else. We had difficulty with 93 not realizing as we came in off the main watercourse that there was not much of a divide between it and the other marked watercourse. So we ended up walking way too far up the southwards creek before looping around back to the right place. 74 was picked up easily but then we switched off a bit on the way to 77 and messed up our creeklines, needing to concede and head a few hundred metres up the hill to categorically relocate and come back into the right spot. Resolving to pick up our game we headed onto pick up 57 and then 35 (the other control put out for us – and we were the only team that did go there) which was a lovely little gully.

It was light by now and we had turned the SW corner so a bit of a morale boost. We then headed east and started the countdown of controls to go (10 from here) while threading our way across gully heads and saddles to 78 and our 80 km mark. The map looked very flat from here but fortunately there were enough ups and downs to only need to check the compass bearing a little rather than being super strict about it. I was starting to slow down quite a lot at this point so while still running I think, to anyone watching, it would have been a good “Cliff Young” shuffle. 29 then a jog up the road and into 75, neatly tucked behind the spur from the direction anyone would come from. Then out and north-east to 47, which by contrast was “I think it will be in those trees on that spur over there” seen from a long way off.

We were seeing lots of teams at this point heading back out onto the course for their morning loops after a sleep. Instead, we were looking forward to finishing and having ours. Onto our final loop of the low points around the HH with 21 and 25 very fast, a slight uphill and into the gully for 40, over the spur and spot the cliff on the far hill to head to 30, back away from the HH through some rocky terrain to collect 23 then up the long gully to the saddle and down towards 20. It is funny how the terrain can still confuse you right up to the end as we had some debate on our way to 20 about exactly where it was. Maybe we were being just a bit too eager to get there.

Finally, into the HH at a run to then go and ask for a finish punch at Admin – clearly a bit too early! We finished about 9:30 am but we were both quite happy to collapse in some convenient chairs and stop. I finally took my shoe off to inspect the damage from the trip from about 5 pm the day before and found a multicoloured and swollen foot, which I found out a couple of weeks later was due to a broken toe. David had a few blisters too.

The wonderful catering folk specially heated up some food for us as we’d arrived between breakfast and lunch allowing us to have a feed and a short sleep before lunch.

Thank you to Craig, Evelyn, Trent and Jenny for setting a superb course that highlighted lots of interesting features on the Three Creeks Station and provided good planning and navigational challenges.

NOTE: Check out David and Julie’s route on the map here: https://rogaine-results.com/event/results/2024/south-australian-state-champs/24hr