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.
Fortunately, my wife, Evelyn, was able to recruit last year’s State Champs co-setters (Trent and Jenny McInerney) at the last minute to assist her with the site visit, marking all the required arm-chair set control sites and re-locating some to more suitable locations as required or as requested by the landowners. These alterations were relayed to me for map corrections (possibly not the most ideal method as there were a couple of minor mis-interpretations, but I think we got close but with all markers in the correct spot).
With my hospital stay becoming more involved and extended, the committee did a sterling job of getting a control hanging team to assist Evelyn in the lead up to the event, as well as getting enough volunteers to make sure the event
could go ahead.
My thoughts for the course planning was not to have too many controls (reduced work for the control hangers and collectors) and to have a clean-up distance to entice the top teams. I also planned a good proportion of the controls (with re
asona
ble high values) in the more scenic areas and created some challenging route choices (especially the area south of Yednalue road) which most of the teams would be able to explore, even the 8 hour teams. As such I opted for a higher proportion of 90 and 100 pointers in areas where I wanted to encourage a lot of teams to go and placed the 20 pointer controls which could easily be avoided or dropped (unless you were trying to “clean up”).
My straight-line “clean-up” distance for a 15-hour route (i.e. no break, finishing at 3am) was a fraction over 60km. Evelyn and I did about 65kms last year, for third place, at the 15-hour Parnaroo event and I believe the winners (Steve and Zara) did approximately 75kms visiting all the control sites.
I’ve attached three maps:
1A showing a straight 15-hour loop for all controls – 60.4kms line
4 showing a suggested route for a 39.1km first loop – possibly a 9-to-10-hour first loop
4A showing a Sunday morning loop of just under 23kms – possibly a 5-6-hour loop (and could easily drop C30 and C33 if time poor).
The distances shown above are all straight-line between controls. Possibly need to add 10-15% for variations off the straight-line.
It doesn’t appear that my route choices were in any way like those the participating teams decided on; not that I find this unusual or the least bit concerning as this sport offers so many variations. Well done to you all.
I’m very glad the event went off relatively smoothly with good weather (though a bit dark and damp at night), and many thanks to all the volunteers and landowners for making it possible.
