Tag: State Championships

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 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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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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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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