Conversations

Wariparri Wandering through Sturt Gorge

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Written by one half of the winning duo, Andrew Heitmann

It’s been six long years since the last rogaine in Sturt Gorge and 2020 was a totally different time. I still vividly remember the March 2020 event – our final taste of freedom (and communal pizza), just hours before a public health emergency was declared and life suddenly went off the rails.

Warripari Wandering was a chance to return to those magnificent rolling hills, rocky creeks, coastal views and flowy singletrack. After a wet winter, everything was looking stunningly green. Fortunately water levels had subsided since the TRSA trail running event there a few weeks earlier, so as promised in the pre-briefing, there was no need for soggy shoes.

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The Aus Champs… With a Few Surprises

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Written by Jo Powell

My sister Karen and I headed to Nundubbermere, Queensland last weekend for the Australasian Rogaining Championship — about three hours south‑west of Brisbane and, as we discovered, an event that held a few surprises.

We arrived by bus in the dark, greeted our fellow South Aussies, Shanti and Cath, pitched our tents, and were immediately rewarded with a dinner that could convert anyone to championship rogaining: huge, perfectly cooked beef chunks, roast veg, fresh salad and sticky date pudding with cream – yum! After that feast, sleep came easily.

Morning revealed our first surprise. Instead of the lush Queensland greenery we’d imagined, we woke to rolling hills, brown grass and drought‑stricken trees. The cool air filled quickly with 240 competitors collecting their event bags — maps, an event pen, a flyer for next year’s World Rogaining Championships in SA, and… water purification tablets. Not something you normally get handed in South Australia.

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The Oladdie Ranges Ramble: an advertising perspective

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Our roving reporter, Bruce Greenhalgh, looks at the recent ‘Ramble’ from a different viewpoint

Mid-morning on Sunday at the Oladdie rogaine and Team 46 (Chris Graves, Farley Wright and myself) decided that our route back to the Hash House would be ‘conservative’, thus ensuring a timely return without any dramas. It possibly wasn’t the correct decision as we might have had time to collect one more outlying control (yep, one of those decisions). However, our less frantic pace did give me the opportunity to take in more of my surroundings than usual. And what surroundings! As we made our way down the Oladdie Creek under a clear azure sky the sunshine glistened on the clear waters in the creek. Majestic river red gums lined the watercourses and were frequented by colourful birdlife, and on the banks of the creek and into the distance a sea of vibrant green undergrowth prevailed. Even this perennially dissatisfied old bugger was impressed.

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YABBA-DABBA-DO! FROM BEDROCK TO BENDLEBY

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Written by Fred Flinstone sock wearer, Bruce Greenhalgh

The socks I usually wear on rogaines are of the high-end, adventure/outdoor variety. The sort of socks marketed as having special performance qualities (for which a premium is charged) and with names like ‘Summit’ or ‘Horizon’ or with logos depicting mountains. Habitués of outdoor gear shops will know what I mean. Despite wearing these state-of-the-art, world beating, outdoor socks my rogaine performances are generally pretty ordinary and my feet still hurt. And that had me thinking that in my quest for the ideal combination of shoes, socks, blisters and bruised toes I could consider any and all socks. And I did, trail testing various hosiery before finally deciding on a pair of socks for the Bendleby 24 hour that cost nothing (they were a give-away promotion from my local supermarket) and were decorated, not with inspiring adventure insignia, but with the cartoon figure of Fred Flintstone complete with his exultant catchcry of ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!’

I gave a lot of thought to my sock selection, really agonised over it, but ten minutes into the rogaine all my ruminations felt like a complete waste of time. My shoes and socks were sodden, courtesy of the weeds that covered much of the ranges which were wet from recent rains and current fog. Yep, fog. In the ‘driest state in the driest continent’, north of Goyder’s Line, we were in for a wet and misty weekend. It didn’t really rain, I’ll say that, but there was a lot of moisture around. (Creeks with water in them? Good heavens!) If I had to sum up the 2026 State Champs in one word, that word would be ‘foggy’. It was foggy enough to mess up our navigation. Our route first took us on anticlockwise loop of the Bendleby Range and after visiting a few controls we aimed for a high ridge between controls 43 and 81 thinking that the elevation would give us a view of the lie of the land. Wrong. The view we had was of fog and more fog and what followed was a masterclass in getting it wrong. We did find the control, almost by a process of gully elimination, but it was a disheartening experience. At least there was some solace in later learning that other teams had experienced similar fog induced navigational embarrassment.

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Q&A with the McKinnel brothers on the State Champs

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Interviewer: Jo Powell
Interviewees: Jonty and Tiaan McKinnel, winners of the SA State Rogaining Championships 2026

Firstly, congratulations on your win last weekend. It was a difficult event with the fog and, collectively, we were astounded at how well your team did, cleaning up the course with 3 ½ hours spare.

A few questions for you:

You told me that you have honed your navigating skills over many, many years getting purposely lost in the bush in NZ as teens and have rogained since you were quite young. What strategies did you use for this rogaine, particularly when the fog overnight was so dense, when contours couldn’t be seen?

We had recently done a lot of bush navigation during our multi-day adventure races, meaning navigating with very few features to go off was second nature. It was important for us to know where we were at all times. So, bouncing from a big feature, sometimes only a few hundred meters away, was important getting to the control. Rather than doing big, long bearings, we did short bearings and always checked features with the bearing to confirm.

When you route plan, what do you consider? eg shortest distance, flats in the early hours, difficult terrain early, using handrails at night… (I did hear a whisper that you only spend 10 minutes route planning and therefore shortest distance is your only consideration. Is this correct?)

We used to only spend about 10-20 minutes route planning. We’ve changed that over the last 2 years, which has helped a lot. Now we try to use all the available planning time and consider every possible option. For this event, we spent just over two hours planning, tweaking and adjusting our route.

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The Fantastic Four?

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh

I’ve been competing in rogaines longer than I care to remember, but the recent ‘Jetty? Set? Go!’ minigaine at Glenelg was a first for me. I’d never previously rogained as part of a team of four (or five for that matter). In a way that’s easy to explain. Rogaining frequently involves a fair bit of, shall we say, ‘discomfort’ so it’s often difficult to find even just one partner, let alone multiple team members. Take the minigaine for example, if I had a crystal ball I would have had to admit to potential team members that competing in it would involve getting drenched and acquiring a deep understanding of the term ‘wind chill’ not once, but twice. It would have been a hard sell. But I don’t have a crystal ball so I didn’t have to make that admission and my initial pairing with Chris Graves expanded to a team of four with the addition of Lauren Bradley and Jesse Kerrison – two novices yet to experience the meteorological delights of rogaining.

Being in a team of four had me pondering the question of, ‘What’s the ideal number of team members for a rogaine?’ (Yes, it’s true. I don’t have a life.) A team of five has always struck me as being too big and unwieldy, that it would involve too much time and energy getting the team all rogaining in the same direction. A team of four would be better in this regard, but presents the potential for a ‘dispute resolution’ problem. If two members decide on one course and two decide on something else, how do you resolve that situation? So, maybe a ‘three’ is the way to go? Two versus one? And a ‘three’ would bring in the benefits of having extra team members, beyond the minimum of two, namely the increased likelihood that at least one team member is on the ball when, invariably, brains fade, as well as the advantage of having extra eyes looking for controls.

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Cactus Cull – who knew weed control could be this fun?

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Written by Jo Powell

I have to confess that I now harbour murderous thoughts towards any garden cacti that resemble Opuntia robusta or Wheel Cacti. I swear these cacti are plotting world domination with their hellish ability to recreate.

This ANZAC Day weekend, our annual Parnaroo Cactus Cull delivered everything we love: bush camping, hiking in the scrub, campfires, and the deeply satisfying feel of injecting poison into cacti. With beautiful new injector packs that made injecting a joy (we looked like environmental Ghost Busters), over 4,500 cacti were dispatched, and 100 litres of glyphosate was put into noble use.

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How the Winning Team Won

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By Meredith Norman, one half of the winning team

Camilo and I usually find ourselves competing against each other in rogaines, but this time we decided to team up for the four-hour event in Strathalbyn, one of our few opportunities to race together this year. I had previously visited Strathalbyn a few times; the most memorable was for breakfast in the Town centre with Joe Milne and Josie Smernik as we walked 53kms from Highland Valley to Goolwa.

I was looking forward to this rogaine particularly after bumping into the enthusiastic course setter Guy Schubert, a few weeks earlier at orienteering. He was eagerly enticing us to enter the event. I briefly skimmed the entry list prior to the rogaine and saw there would be many fast teams – I knew we’d have our work cut out for us!

In my last rogaine with Camilo, I accidentally packed two left shoes (silly I know) so I was meticulous when packing the rogaine gear for this event. Given the warm weather, I packed plenty of water, electrolytes, a filling lunch and a left and right shoe!

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Desperate and Dateless

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh

Before most rogaines I usually spend a not insignificant amount of time musing, pointlessly, on the coming event. I try to figure out exactly what the weather will be like, imagine the terrain, ponder which of my many enduring ailments will plague me – that kind of thing. However, for the ‘Strath Sundowner’, the time and head space I have to devote to rogaining was taken up with two things that left me with no pause for wistful contemplation. Firstly, I was busy setting the course for April’s Velogaine (a great event, not to be missed) and I also had to find a team/partner for the Strath four hour.

Getting a team together should have been easy. I was a member of a team of three for last year’s November minigaine and it was understood that we’d likely team up again for coming events. Then injuries came along and left me, almost literally, the last man standing. I started asking around. I asked no less than six people to join me, but had no takers with the reasons for declining ranging from injuries to ‘I’m washing my hair that night’. So I ended up on SARA’s answer to Tinder, the Partner Matching Service. That’s when Doug Gillott contacted me. He’d lost his original partner through injury. (What is it about rogaining? It seems all you have to do is ask somebody to join your team and they end up with an injury. Should the sport come with a health warning?)

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The Spring Racing Carnival Visits Gawler

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We go trackside with team 94 (Steve Sullivan, Chris Graves and Bruce Greenhalgh) to get the inside running on the Minigaine.

While it doesn’t have the nation stopping status of the Melbourne Cup the recent ‘Glimpse of Gawler Stakes’ proved to be a worthy addition to the Spring Racing Carnival. A strong field of over 500 competitors took part in the event which was, of course, not just about racing, but also about the fashions! Chris Franklin and Paul Hoopman caught the eye with outfits that harkened back to a yesteryear of grace and charm. Our team chose an Hawaiian theme with grass skirts, Chris in his cutting-edge multicolored skirt, while Steve and I went for a more classic single tone look. Assured that my bum didn’t look big in my skirt we joined race goers at the starting gate for the final briefing. Naturally, given the standard of our couture we were hounded by the paparazzi (well, Richard Sprod took a photo). After the briefing, the final countdown, and then… we were off and racing!

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Oh, What a Night!

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24-hour State Champs Event Report – written by Evelyn Colwell

My first rogaine was a 12-hour rogaine in Kuitpo Forest 20 years ago, where I joined a random team after my husband Craig showed no interest. I enjoyed it so much that I convinced him to come to the next event—the State Champs at Tuilkilkey—where we placed 21st and learned how rogaining differs from orienteering. We’ve since hoped to revisit the Tuilkilkey site to compare our current skills to our younger selves. The recent state champs was our chance. Sadly, Craig was in hospital during this year’s event, but I was lucky to team up with Anne Oke.

Given the mostly flat terrain and good visibility, Anne and I planned a 70 km (straight-line) clockwise route—tackling the hillier terrain during the day and saving the flatter northeast for night, using the full moon and careful pace counting and bearing work for navigation (not my strong point). Our strategy also avoided the mistakes Craig and I made years ago: walking into the sunset and getting confused by unmapped tracks. This time, our pace counting and Anne’s time keeping meant we were able to disregard most farm tracks not mapped.

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World Rogaining Championships – Spain 2025 Race Review

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We arrived in Spain several days early to prepare for the event. The model event gave us a chance to get familiar with the terrain and map. It quickly became clear that areas marked green really were thick and best avoided, while the surrounding landscape was beautiful and inspiring.

Everything for the Rogaine was packed carefully the night before, dividing our food into 4– 6-hour bags so we could keep eating consistently throughout the event. Bottles were filled, gear, torches and safety gear packed — everything ready. After a big breakfast the next morning, we set off for the event.

For planning, the northern part of the map was hilly, while the terrain sloped steadily downhill as you moved south. We decided to tackle the hills early in the day while we were strongest, leaving flatter ground for the later hours. The technical planning was split between us where we were analysing points per kilometre along with distances and alternate routes.

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Volunteering for Rogaining: Helping Fit Older Competitors Focus on the Fun, Not Just the Load

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Written by Jo Powell

Rogaining thrives on teamwork, endurance, and strategy. But behind every successful event is a small army of volunteers making it all possible. And too often, that army is mostly… older participants themselves.

Many of these veterans of the sport, still impressively fit and passionate, are not only competing but also setting courses, organising logistics, and packing gear trailers. At the recent State Champs, six over 70-year-olds plus a few under 70s committee members spent almost four-hours cleaning up and packing the two SARA trailers, AFTER they’d just finished competing in the 24-hour event.

Without fresh volunteer energy, they’re forced to carry the physical and mental load of running events — when really, they should be enjoying the challenge they’ve spent decades supporting.

That’s where you come in.

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The subtle (and not so subtle) art of getting it wrong

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh

‘The art of losing isn’t hard to master’ – Elizabeth Bishop ‘One Art’

Sometimes you get it right; sometimes you get it wrong. Unfortunately for Des Norman and myself the Tuilkilkey rogaine was one where things had a tendency to go wrong. Indeed, they went so wrong that it’s a rogaine I’d rather forget. But I know that tales of woe are at least as interesting as those of success so I will record our exploits for your edification and amusement.

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A Volunteer’s View – event report

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Written by poet tragic, Bruce Greenhalgh, from his volunteering perspective.

 

What instruments we have agree
The day of the rogaine was a dark cold day. – W.H. Auden

Okay, Auden’s poem, written in memory of the poet W. B. Yeats, doesn’t say ‘the rogaine’ but I do think Auden does a particularly good job of describing cold with his ‘instruments’ device and the Three Pleasant Mounts rogaine was on a ‘dark cold day’. How cold? My car thermometer (my ‘instrument’) said 8 degrees as I left home. It was also drizzling, with the drizzle turning to genuine rain after only a few minutes. It was classic ‘Why didn’t I stay in bed?’ weather. That I was volunteering and not competing didn’t make the conditions any more appealing. Volunteering or competing I’d be in the not-so-great, ‘great outdoors’.

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Food for Thought

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By Keren Faulkner

Having worked in sport for over 25 years and observing the way athletes prepare for their events, I have a strong interest in applying my learning when I head out on a rogaine. I want to share a few ideas, respecting of course that there are plenty of people with more experience and expertise than I have.  I am not a dietitian (but I do spend time with some very good ones.)

One thing I’m interested in is the research that links cognition (eg problem-solving and decision-making) with blood glucose levels. It won’t be surprising to regular rogainers that our chances of making a navigation mistake increase when blood glucose is low. What might be surprising is that if we’re feeling depleted, we can trick our brain into thinking we’ve eaten a meal by sucking on a sweet or holding a high glucose drink or gel in our mouths.  There are glucose receptors in our mouth which signal to our brain that we’ve eaten food.  Mood and cognition have been shown to temporarily lift, even when a glucose drink was just swilled in the mouth for a few seconds and expelled. Think about this tactic when you’re making basic errors that you wouldn’t usually make.

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It WILL happen overnight

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By Bruce Greenhalgh, our follicularly challenged correspondent

If you google ‘rogaine’ the results don’t relate to the sport of long distance cross-country navigation. Instead, you get a lot of links to a treatment for baldness that shares the name ‘rogaine’. I guess this is symptomatic of capitalist driven algorithms and such since there’s far more money to be made from flogging hair loss remedies than from the sport of rogaining. However, the coincidence of names is confusing and might lead to people thinking that the sport is, somehow, an effective treatment for baldness. The reverse is actually true; rogaining causes baldness. I present myself as a case study to support this assertion. When I took up rogaining I had a pretty full head of healthy hair. It had colour. It had ‘volume’. Baldness was something that happened to other people. Now after a rogaining career (admittedly of a good few years) my hair line is receding, my bald spot is expanding and what hair I have left is dull, lifeless and greying.

If only rogaining was a remedy for hair loss! Not only would I have an admirable head of hair, but rogaining would be a far more popular sport. Entries would be swollen by legions of follicly challenged middle-aged men subconsciously drawn to the heavily vegetated areas of the map.

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Arcoota Creek – Setter’s Review

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By Craig Colwell, lead setter and coordinator of the 15-hour bush rogaine, Arcoota Creek

As the Event Coordinator and lead setter, this event turned out to be a very strange one for me.

The initial idea for having the roving event at Holowiliena Station developed in August of 2024, when Evelyn and I were assisting the Holowiliena owners, Luke and Frances, develop a permanent rogaine course within their Spring Wells Paddock which is adjacent their homestead and the shearer’s quarters. We thought that the course we prepared would take at least 8 hours to visit all controls. It wasn’t much of a leap to consider if extra land could be found that we could organise a roving 15-hour event which would also promote their permanent course. The land to the south of the Spring Wells Paddock showed great promise, especially in Holowiliena South and along the Arcoota Creek.

Once land access permissions were obtained, a map was prepared and possible control locations were inserted based on the contours and using Google Earth for a general overview. We planned to visit the site in late March/early April after the landowners had completed shearing, to finalise the control locations and update the base map from the field trip. Unfortunately for me, the site visit got delayed and delayed due to the onset of a septic infection in my left knee and finally hospitalisation just before the ANZAC Day weekend.

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AUSTRALASIAN ROGAINING CHAMPIONSHIPS 2025

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“Murrumbidgee Wayfaring”, Kosciuszko National Park, NSW

Written by Evelyn Colwell

On our drive up to the Koscuiszko National Park we noted that the mountains looked lovely, but the vegetation was rather thick for walking. However, Long Plains proved to be what they are named after, long pastures (it looked easy walking whilst driving through) surrounded by relatively low-lying hills covered with gum trees. Perfect rogaining country. We met David Baldwin (one of the setters) on entering the still sparsely populated campground and a couple of disgruntled horse people leaving.

Fellow South Aussies, the Hearndens, were already set up having arrived the night before. On David Baldwin’s advice we set out after lunch to the local Coolemine Homestead. Amazingly neat and beautifully reconstructed. A very isolated but gorgeous location. Nearby was Clarke Gorge and its caves. I would very much like to revisit this spot and do the whole gorge walk one day. (The Clarke Gorge Trail is apparently THE most fun and spectacular hike in NSW according to many on the internet. Ed)

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The Hell of the South

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Written by The Callington Cruiser Velogaine survivor, Bruce Greenhalgh

The same weekend that SARA ran the 2025 edition of the Velogaine another notable cycling competition was happening on the other side of the world. The ‘Paris-Roubaix’ is one of cycling’s one day classics, arguably the most prestigious, and a race renowned for being tough. It’s tough enough to have acquired a special moniker, ‘The Hell of the North’. But in comparison to the ‘Callington Cruiser’ is the Paris-Roubaix truly hellish? The French race is held in often cold and wet conditions, but isn’t hell supposed to be hot, like ‘fire and brimstone’ hot? Our ‘Hell of the South’ was certainly that with temperatures in the mid-thirties and long sections sans any shade.

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Matthew, movies and my left knee

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Written by intrepid Victor explorer, Bruce Greenhalgh

As a school boy I was taught about the European explorers of Australia. By far and away my favourite explorer, for reasons I can’t explain, was Matthew Flinders. I know it’s weird having a favourite explorer, but there you go. Anyway, when I learnt that 2025’s opening rogaine would be held in the environs of Encounter Bay I thought that the theme for my report on the event might well be Matthew Flinders and his explorations. As you probably know the bay is named after the encounter between Matthew Flinders on the Investigator and Nicolas Baudin on the Geographe on the 8th April 1802 (well, you probably didn’t know the date, but knew of the encounter).

The idea of this being the theme was reinforced by my having recently viewed the Flinders exhibition held by – wait for it – Flinders University. Amongst the items on display was a nifty combined compass and sundial once owned by Flinders, the very thing for a 19th Century rogainer! Perhaps Flinders was a fellow rogaining spirit? It did occur to me, of course, that a sundial would only be useful for part of a 24-hour event. Still, it was a desirable object and were they on sale today I’d be tempted.

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?*

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Not SARA’s rogaine reporter, Bruce Greenhalgh, as he alludes to matters literary in his report on the Ship-Tee-Shore 3 hour.

At one point during the recent Minigaine, my team (77) found itself heading along Port Road ‘to the lighthouse’ as my teammate, Jacob, noted.  This brought to mind one of the few novels I’ve read multiple times, namely Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the lighthouse’. I mentioned the novel to my team, but neither Kerstine nor Jacob had heard of it. Fair enough, I suppose, because while it’s quite a famous novel it’s not standard fictional fare. The action in the book is pretty much limited to a family’s trip to a lighthouse. It’s hardly an action packed read. It is, though, an exemplar of the ‘stream of consciousness’ style of writing in which an author attempts ‘to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass the mind’.

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The Joy of Six

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SARA’s embedded journalist, pedant and rogaine junkie, Bruce Greenhalgh, reflects on the Onka Three ‘n Six.

During most, if not all, of the rogaines I’ve competed in there comes a point when I conclude that rogaining is an insane thing to do and that the current rogaine will be my last. It happened again during the ‘Onka Three ‘n Six’.*  It could have happened when I attempted to clamber over a fallen tree trunk at the creek crossing near control 94, lost my footing and performed a manoeuvre that even Simone Biles wouldn’t dare attempt.  But it wasn’t then. It wasn’t shortly after as we climbed out of the gorge toward control 77 when it began raining making the track slippery, dropping the temperature and dampening my spirit. It wasn’t even when we made the long, slow, steep climb toward the road from control 71 with me having nothing in the tank. Nor was it when I was crawling underneath bushes in a futile attempt to find control 46. And it wasn’t when we had to run the last kilometres to make the cut off (increasingly faster as the time slipped away) with my body screaming ‘NO!’

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Event Entry Issues

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EVENT ENTRY ISSUES

Occasionally we experience issues with our entry system – usually due to software updates. If you have issues entering, please only enter your credit card details ONCE.

Please wait and see if you receive a payment receipt and/or check for any credit card charges. If there is an issue with entries often we will see it on our end and will rectify and contact you if required (i.e. if the payment has not gone through). If you enter your credit card details twice, the system will sometimes charge you twice. Not only is this annoying for you, we also get charged a fee when processing refunds.

If you are unable to proceed to the payment page at all you can try on your mobile phone or a different browser or contact us with your team entry information. The best people to contact are our enquiries page, our treasurer or our website editor. We can then enter you manually and send a link for payment.

We will need:

  • any special categories (scout, novice or family)
  • any concessions
  • team member emails

If the team members don’t already have an account with SA Rogaining, please either set one up or provide us with

  • Name
  • Email
  • Gender
  • Year of birth

All contact info is on our contact page.

Not Just Three Creeks, Event Report

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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!

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Our New President’s Update

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It is already the end of July, and this is the first opportunity for me to sit down and update our membership about the changes and events which have occurred so far this year.

At our March 4-hour twilight event, SARA conducted the AGM where I was elected President. Big shoes to fill after Zara Soden decided to step down after four years in the role. For those who do not know me, I am a 67-year-old retired electrical contractor. I have been involved in Orienteering since 2000 and been participating in Rogaining since 2005 with my wife, Evelyn. Since then, we have enjoyed travelling interstate to National championships and overseas to World Rogaine Championships as well as competing in our local SA events.

Whilst Evelyn joined the Rogaining committee almost immediately, it was a number of years before I got involved with the SARA committee and it was due to Evelyn hosting the committee meetings at our residence. Since then, I gradually became more involved, both in the mapping area, utilising some of the CAD skills I had from my previous working life, and in the administration of events. One of the main reasons for us staying involved in Rogaining at the committee level for so long, is our association with so many wonderful people past and present who make it so interesting and worthwhile, and to keep events occurring and our sport alive.

This year has been a remarkably busy one for the committee and me, in particular. In March, SARA held the 4-hour twilight event at Noarlunga, set by Meredith Norman, highlighting some lovely parts of the southern metropolitan area and the Onkaparinga River estuary. Just after Easter, Bruce Greenhalgh took us to the hills around Mt Pleasant (aptly named) for the annual 4-Hour Velogaine. Following this, our association again visited Parnaroo (east of the Barrier Hwy and Oodla Wirra) for the third year running, to assist with the eradication of the “Wheel Cacti” which have been infesting properties in that region. Many thanks to Richard Sprod for organising this with the local landowners and to all the SARA volunteers who came up and camped on site and assisted for a few days.

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‘W’ is for wind: Three Creeks and one alphabet

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Our roving reporter, Bruce Greenhalgh, shares his thoughts on SARA’s 12/24 State Rogaining Championships near Cradock

An occasional rogaine team mate of mine, Chris Graves, is fond of declaring that it’s an achievement just to get to the start of a rogaine. He’s referring, in particular, to bush rogaines which require not only organising a team, an entry and transport to the event, but also arranging three or four days away, camping gear, meals for the pre hash house period and so on and so forth. A bush rogaine involves a lot of preparation.

The process is made easier if you have a regular team mate (or two) and have been through the rigmarole a few times. My Plan A for the ‘Not Just Three Creeks’ rogaine was a case in point, as I entered with Steve Sullivan who I have rogained with over many years. ‘The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men’ truism applied however, and Steve fell ill before the event and couldn’t compete. I didn’t have a Plan B, but a few ‘partner matching’ enquiries brought an offer from Kerstine Alba and Amelia Purvis to join their team. I accepted and Plan B had us all travelling up in Amelia’s car. Plan B became Plan C and then D, E, and F as arrangements ran a gauntlet of changing circumstances, what with sickness, holdups and, well, you name it. But Plan F did, finally, get us all underway in Kerstine’s car.

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Success and Failure at Parnaroo

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh

‘I never tired of lost causes
tales of losers and closed doors
ruins and forgotten wars.’

Success is a wonderful thing. We admire and applaud those who achieve in their chosen pursuits. At the recent Parna-roo-gaine the winners of both the 15 and 8-hour categories produced stunning performances, truly something to marvel at. And we did. And for a short while, perhaps, basked in the reflected glory. Conversely though, we also reveled in the failures of the weekend. In fact, our interest in, our fascination with, failure might be greater and more enduring than our contemplation of success.

As proof of this idea, I would cite the conversations I overheard at the HH campfire on Saturday night. There were plenty of remarks along the lines of ‘…and then we got lost’ or ‘It was a poor route choice’ or ‘We searched for ages but just couldn’t find the control’. Conspicuous by their absence were remarks of the ‘We executed our route choice perfectly’ or ‘By nightfall things were really coming together for us’ variety. I can’t recall one. This seems to me to be evidence that people are more captivated by their failures than their successes and figure their audiences will similarly prefer tales of woe to those of achievement.

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