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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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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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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