Category: Event Reports

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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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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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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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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‘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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The Road Not Taken

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Confessions of a Velogaine course setter, Bruce Greenhalgh

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The final stanza of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’

I imagine that many rogainers can relate to the sentiment expressed in Robert Frost’s famous poem because route choice can make ‘all the difference’. However, the poem is usually interpreted as a celebration of individualism, a call to venture off the beaten track, to go your own way and do your own thing. That’s a perfectly valid reading of the poem. The origin of the poem, though, is less elevated. Frost actually wrote it as a joke, making fun of a poet friend of his, Edward Thomas, who was an inveterate procrastinator and who, when they went walking in the woods together, would agonize over the choice of paths and often later rue the path they’d taken.

Edward Thomas, I suggest, would probably have made a less than perfect rogainer. I’ve learnt that when faced with two (or more) route choices that appear to take roughly the same time the best thing to do is to decide on one quickly and not give ‘the road not taken’ any head space once the decision has been made.

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The Life Aquatic?

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By Bruce Greenhalgh (half of team 88 with Steve Sullivan)

A knackered nautical navigator of Noarlunga continues with the maritime theme as he reports on the four-hour rogaine.

It’s going back a bit in the movie archives, but those who have seen the 1987 film ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ will probably recall the irreverent DJ, played by Robin Williams, describing the weather by declaring, ‘It’s hot! It’s damned hot!’ It’s a description that could equally be used for this year’s four-hour event.

I guess it could have been hotter. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in following the weather forecast in the days preceding the event. Heat wave conditions prevailed and a day in the high thirties was a possibility. Fortunately, Saturday was ‘only’ forecast to reach 31 degrees. It was, however, ‘damned hot’.

We devised our route more-or-less assuming we’d be okay running (not necessarily that fast) in the heat. And we had a few escape routes if our plans capsized. Initially things went well enough. We started by heading south to the nearest control (32), then onto the river plain before heading north into the ‘burbs. By the time we’d changed tack and headed to the coast we were alone, which suited us fine. It means no distractions and we are just silly enough to think that on such occasions maybe we’ve got it right and everybody else has got it wrong. Whatever the case, it was plain sailing. By the time we passed the Port Noarlunga jetty we were again seeing other teams and so it remained for the rest of the day. There were, of course, hordes at the pirate ship, lured by the promise of treasure and the chance of a close encounter with SARA’s equivalent of Jack Sparrow (Jacqueline Sparrow?).

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Just a suburban boy

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh (part of team 72 with Chris Graves and Craig Bettison)

As we finalised our route choice for ‘The Secret Garden’ minigaine I was reminded of a song from way back. It was Dave Warner’s from the Suburbs, Suburban boy. After flirting with the idea of tackling the lower slopes of Black Hill we decided to avoid the Black Hill controls completely. We figured we could spend all our time and energy in the suburban parts of the map, thus avoiding the time and energy sapping climbs required of a Black Hill visit. We were to be then, ‘suburban boys’ rather than bold bush walkers/trail runners.

I imagine we weren’t alone in this, but I suspect that not so many know of Dave Warners’ minor hit from the seventies. That’s a pity because it’s a good song and one that still resonates with me all these years later. Like ‘Wreckless Eric’s Whole Wide World and Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Wake up and make love to me it’s at the antipodes to the usual pop song romantic situations and sentiments. So… you now know far more about my musical tastes than you ever wanted to know, and wasn’t this report supposed to be about rogaining?

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Reflections on the ARC 2023 in Goobang NP, NSW

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Written by Craig Colwell (Team 23)

Evelyn and I travelled to NSW to compete in the 43rd Australian Rogaining Championships which were being held in and around the Goobang NP, located east northeast of Parkes, NSW on 30 September to 1 October.

The Hash House was adjacent to Lake Endeavour, which kept the temperature slightly cooler during the night.  Paul Guard (ARA president) has provided some excellent aerial footage of the camp site which can be viewed on the NSW Rogaining website here. Unfortunately, the temperature during the event was in the low 30s during the daytime with a strong northerly breeze blowing and still very warm during the night unless you were near a waterway or water body. The hot weather had a detrimental effect on our and other team’s performances.

The course setters created a very well-presented and detailed map (A1 size at 1:25,000 scale) with 85 controls to collect with a total of just over 5000 points.  Only 4 teams managed more than 60% of the course, with most of the teams covering less than 40% of the map.

There were six water drops plus the Hash House and a remote ‘All Night Café’. All were needed in the warm conditions to keep hydration up.

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The new ETS: how you can make money while rogaining

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Written by Bruce Greenhalgh

No doubt you are aware of ‘carbon offset’ schemes that facilitate companies meeting their emission requirements by allowing them to buy credits from other companies who have excess credit or engage in activities that directly reduce carbon in the atmosphere, for example reforestation or carbon sequestration. These ‘Emission Trading Schemes’ (ETS) strike me as a bit questionable. Does this vicarious climate change action really make a difference? I’m reminded of that dieters’ joke about it being okay to drink a can of coke provided you later cancel out the calories by drinking a can of diet coke. Yeah, right.

Still, it got me thinking about the whole concept of doing things by proxy and the idea of buying credits from somebody who was doing something you didn’t want to do. The Australian Government Department of Health recommends that adults should exercise for – depending on exercise intensity – about three hours a week. There are a lot of Australians (millions!) who don’t meet the recommendation preferring to settle into the sofa with the TV remote rather than exercise. Not rogainers though, even doing a three-hour minigaine means they meet the guideline, and any other exercise done in the same week puts them in exercise credit. What if you could trade that credit to those wishing to lead more sedentary lives? If there was an ‘Exercise Trading Scheme’? Think how many exercise credits – ‘couch offsets’ – you could build up in a 24-hour event! You could get rich by rogaining.

If there was such an ETS in operation at least Steve and I would have had something to show for our endeavours at the State Champs at Oraparinna. As it stands, we only have the memory of probably our worst ever rogaine performance. Perhaps being team 13 had something to do with it.

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All Over Oraparinna

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Written by Nick Somes (from Victoria)

The Lead Up

I commenced rogaining in 2018 in Victoria and rapidly fell for the sport in a major way through 2019 when I competed in my first 12 and 24-hour events. The covid years were hard in Victoria, with very little rogaining and no prospect of interstate travel to compete. When we emerged, my regular partner and I were keen to expand our horizons and take on challenges in new terrains. The long hours of lockdown had led me down the internet rabbit hole to the SA Rogaining website where I discovered past courses and maps. I spent many an hour looking at past courses, route planning and thinking about past events.

Too much thinking about SA events, led to a plan to head over for the 2022 State Championships at Wilkatana; it was my first experience of the Flinders Ranges and was a baptism of fire. As my partner said, “We needed to bring our A game and fell well short”. Challenged, rather than disheartened, I vowed to return in 2023. Mission accomplished, I have now competed in SA’s 15-hour roving rogaine and the 2023 State Champs.

Sometimes getting to an event is as much a challenge as competing and my path to Oraparinna required three goes at getting a teammate. My usual teammate was never a starter and at the last minute my planned team fell through, so I rolled the dice and called Derek Morris who I had partnered with twice before in Victoria. Derek immediately said yes, and we were set. I was somewhat nervous as Derek is a living legend of the sport in Victoria, having been involved for over 40 years, winning and setting many major events.

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“The More I Practice… The Luckier I Get”

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Written by Jonathan Schubert, one half of the winning team at Witchitie 15-hour

‘The more I practice… the luckier I get.’ Popularised by golfer, Gary Player

There were many things that went right over the course of this event. I think that some of those were the result of practice and learnings put into place over the last few years. Some of them were pure luck. And possibly some of it was that by doing enough things right we put ourselves in a position to get lucky.

I have been reflecting on this event over the last couple of weeks and I have no idea which of these options is more true about this wonderful weekend.

To get things started here are two things about me.

The Process Refiner

 My brain is happy when there is a process to refine and optimise. I enjoy learning the hows and whys of things. I love a well refined process that can lead to a consistently good outcome. I tend not to mind ‘mistakes’ too much as long as there is something that can be learnt from and a process can be refined.  This is true in a general sense as well as applicable to fairly small things.

After a discussion in the car on the drive up to the event the mindset that we took into this event as a team was: to be in the moment, to enjoy the process and see what we can learn.

Playful Banter

‘Tribalism implies the possession of a strong cultural or ethnic identity that separates one member of a group from the members of another group’. Wikipedia: Tribalism

One element of my personality is that I enjoy a bit of playful banter. To help with this banter it is always helpful to identify a tribe to stick with and in doing so also identify this opposing tribe to act as a pantomime villain. A good solid bit of rivalry. The Adelaide Crows vs Port Adelaide Power.  Tribalism can have its issues but it can also be a part of some playful fun.

I haven’t been around rogaining a great deal but in the period that I have been involved it has seemed that there is some playful tribalism in the rogaining world … the Rogainers vs the Trail Runners.

The trail running tribe has their identifying uniform: running shorts, light weight shoes and a running pack. They also seem to move a bit faster but are prone to poor planning and navigation errors.

The rogaining tribe has their uniform: pants, gaiters, shoes with leather uppers and a daypack style pack. They move at a consistent ‘march’ regardless of terrain along with solid planning and exceptional navigation.

In the past I have always identified as a part of the trail running tribe. I have made jokes to my teammates about the silliness of cork boards, pins and string.

In the lead up to this event these elements of my personality sat in conflict with each other. I can see that there is value in the processes of the rogaining tribe, but I have been reluctant to betray my tribe and move to the dark side. In the end the process refiner won the battle. I got my hands on some gaiters and tried them a couple times to get used to them. My teammate (Barry McBride) and I discussed tactics and planning, and that ended with him buying a cork board and pins and sourcing some string.

I hoped to find a place to exist in between the two tribes.

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Fifteen Hours of Fame?

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SARA’s roving reporter, Bruce Greenhalgh, reflects on fame and the 15-hour roving, Witchitie, event

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol

There it was at the entrance to the Art Gallery of SA’s recent Andy Warhol exhibition, his famous quote. Indeed, Warhol is as famous for that statement as he is for his Campbell Soup can paintings and his Marilyn Monroe silk screen prints. Me being me, the (very slight) coincidence of it being fifteen minutes of fame and the next rogaine being a fifteen hour event had me pondering the question of whether Warhol had considered the possibility of rogainers (as part of ‘everybody’) achieving brief world-wide fame when he made his much celebrated utterance.

The answer, especially after the Witchitie 15/8 hour rogaine, has to be an emphatic ‘No’. Here’s why; firstly, the sport of rogaining is far from well known. If you want to be famous it’s best to engage in something that lots of people know about or are interested in – football, cricket, music etc. My experience is that to tell somebody that you rogaine is to then, invariably, have to explain the sport. You don’t even have the out, as practiced by Greens leader, Adam Bandt, of telling somebody to ‘Google it’. If they do the most likely conclusion they’ll reach is that you’re involved in something that promotes hair regrowth, as a Google search takes you to sites selling a hair replacement treatment. As I now have a bald spot I can see some advantage if this was the case but, it clearly isn’t, and there were moments on the weekend when I could have torn my hair out so… So, it’s strike one against getting famous through rogaining.

If you’re going to be famous it’s also advisable to carry out your fame generating activity at a well-known and populous spot, like New York or Paris. Carrieton is a fine little town (and the pub reopening seems to have given it more life) but it doesn’t have the recognition factor or population of, say, London or Rome, and telling somebody you’re going to Carrieton usually, again, requires some explaining. To compound things the Witchitie rogaine was 50 plus kilometres from this not-well-known small town. And to make this an unequivocal ‘strike two’, rogainers, once the event starts, are hell bent on getting more remote, even from fellow rogainers (we had a period of about 4 hours on Saturday afternoon when we didn’t see any other teams) making the acquisition of fame unlikely.

Still, after the whip crack and as we jogged away, I was hopeful of doing something notable in the 15 hours. As it turned out, by late afternoon I had attracted a crowd of eager followers and was well and truly in the spotlight. Unfortunately, the followers were flies and the spotlight was a blinding low winter sun as we headed west. As if endless loose rocks and Copper Burr prickles weren’t enough.

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