“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)

We arrived back from our afternoon jaunt in time to greet other South Australians, Paul Hoopmann and Des Norman, who camped by us and later, Jenny and Trent McInerney who arrived by bus.

After a hot Friday, the coolish morning on Saturday gave me some hope that we could do the event, rather than just some nighttime training that I had been envisioning along the way. Soon it was 9am and we got to see the map: 1:25000 scale with 5 metre contours – it was a large map but not quite the tablecloth I was expecting.

There were a huge number of controls; David Baldwin dislikes making the course doable as he feels it makes planning too easy as teams just join the dots without considering point value. He likes to make route planning a challenge for all teams.

The HH was near the edge of the map, making a circle an obvious choice. I immediately discounted the big hills through the middle, even though that’s where some big points were, but they didn’t appear any closer than those at the outer reaches so we both concurred on circumnavigating the map. Going clockwise seemed the smartest option, getting some hilly bits during the day and relatively smaller hills at night, apart from one steep range, and the flattish western side for the Sunday morning. Also, this route provided plenty of cop outs, which proved to be necessary.

Our plan was roughly 65km, which was in keeping with our average rogaining distance, however, the heat (sweat was pouring off me on the climb to our first control), and the fact that Craig and I were arguing over route choice, ended up with us taking the worst route possible, putting me in a poor state of mind. And I think mind space is the most important factor in completing a rogaine.

We followed a ridge top to our second control and there was a shady tree, so I opted to have a sit down. It was here that Craig saw a dog, quite large. I only saw some ears and was rather sceptical. Not a common wildlife sight. Upon getting up I discovered that my backside was covered in prickles that proved rather elusive and required some embarrassing gymnastics to rid myself of them.

After that exceedingly slow start, we were on our way again and found the next few controls without mishap. The sun had found a cloud, and we were in trees providing some shade. There were a few tracks to provide some easy navigation, but you had to go quite some distance to reach them, so we generally opted to straight line through the quite tough/fight scrub.

It was always a relief to hit the various open valleys, but often they would have boggy, tufty, grassy, mossy bits to slow you down and it was then quite a relief to get away from them.

Around 5pm Craig got a serious leg cramp and we had to stop for a while. After that we were ready to pull the pin and just take a middle track back to the HH. Our problem here was that there were relatively low points to collect along the way unless you climbed the big hills and there was no water. This was the clincher. I gave Craig a magnesium gel and we continued on our course, not to be competitive, but en route to water.

We crossed a stream at dusk where we could replenish our supplies using the water purification tablets handed out at the start. Craig thinks he saw a platypus in the stream, so we thought the water would be pretty good. The sun was going down, but the heat stayed. It was ridiculously humid, and it was not long before we were feeling drained again. Luckily, we passed over several streams and were able to wash our face, hands etc. – very refreshing.

A bit after 2am we finally hit the water station and after replenishing our water supplies, I gratefully grabbed an apple and banana but was too tired to eat them. I unwound my space blanket and spread it out on a convenient grassy patch and lay down. Craig just went to sleep on the grass. Fortunately, the magnesium gel did the trick, and his cramping had not continued, but we were both exhausted. After about 20 mins the cold started seeping in and I put on my gloves and jacket and had revived enough to eat the fruit. Wow, I felt much better but could not face the pasties and fruit cake I had brought along.

We were just about ready to leave when Trent and Jenny joined us. The discussion was whether to go to 107, a bit over a kilometre with a 200m high climb to a spur, or follow the road to a 40 pointer up a creek line. I didn’t want to start with a big climb after the rest, over some very scrappy ground, so we opted for the creek. This proved to be as crappy as you can get but we had the entertainment of listening to Trent and Jenny getting stuck on the wrong side of the creek and their horrendous time getting out of it.

Sunday morning was lovely, and the terrain was a little bit friendlier, until we were on the final leg back to the HH. Upon leaving our last control we noted the line of teams heading up a hill not in line with the HH and deduced that they were collecting an extra 20 pointer, but we chose to continue straight lining to the HH. This unfortunately meant we went through the most challenging boggy stuff, finding ourselves in knee deep, shoe-sucking, foul-smelling sludge. But on the bright side, it was cooling!

We got back with about half an hour to spare but I was completely shattered and, due to our slow progress, had no illusions of being competitive. Had I realised that that extra 20-pointer would have given us a 3rd placing in the supervets category I’m sure I would have been there in a shot. As it turned out I was thoroughly surprised we won the mixed ultra vet class for the second time in a row.

We had a couple of hours sleep in the afternoon then got up to have dinner before trying to go back to sleep around 9pm. This was when a storm hit, and what a beauty it was – thunder, lightning and the most buffeting winds along with torrential rain. Thankfully, it did not last very long but gee, if we had that the night before, it would have been a disaster.

I think the site chosen was challenging and the terrain quite varied. Coming from SA it’s always lovely to cross creeks with flowing water. It was unfortunate that it was so hot. The controls were well placed and provided several route options i.e. do we straight line (up and over), approach from the left or right, or go down to the track and back up?

My only real criticism was that the water drops did not have any point value, nor were they at expected route crossings. A control description or a marker on the track would also have been handy as the water drops were not necessarily visible at night from the tracks. We heard of one team collecting water from a stream and they were only a hundred or so metres away from the water station but hadn’t found it. When we did get to ours, I really appreciated the fruit.

Thank you to the setting team and volunteers who created a wonderful and memorable event.