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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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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