Friendly locals
By Tara Powell
Last year in the carpark near the domain athletics centre Gary asked if I wanted to help set a "little bush rogaine" (extra emphasis on little) and I said yes. That simple yes started an experience that lasted more than 6 months of my (and my Dad's) life.
Dad and my setting/vetting team was then joined by Richard Ward. I was particularly excited about the new map as the southern part of the map was an area I was very familiar with from orienteering. The area also included the Greenhill Observatory owned by the University of Tasmania which was very cool to get a chance to look at (even if it was from behind a very tall fence). Between Dad, Richard and I we had about ummmmm..... 0 hours of experience setting and vetting rogaines. Dad and I took the job of setting the controls on Rodney Jones' property and Richard took the job of setting the controls on Wayne Carnes' and Roderick Taylor's Properties. We all set off with a bunch of setting plates, naivety and a bit of hope.
The gorges right near the southern edge of the map were Dad and my first setting hurdle. We visited the southernmost gorges to have a look to see if they would be suitable to have some checkpoints placed in them. They were not. They were so big. The cliffs on the sides of them could easily be 50+ metres tall. Dad and I both had to sit down for a few minutes to catch our breaths after looking down into that gorge.
Before June, the entire area was very very very very dry. Rodney told us that last year the area only got 2 inches more rain than the Sahara Desert. Then June came and brought a lot of rain with it. The area went from "so dry the grass crunched under your feet" to lushious rolling green hills.
The rain caused a wide range of fun shenanigans including me slipping over on a hill and then butt sliding all the way down said hill in the mud. It also caused many setting trips to get postponed and pushed my last setting trip into my exam period, which I could have postponed but I had the perfect excuse for some procrastination so I took it and smashed around the bush with some sheep instead of studying.
The sheep can clearly recognise that they get fed when a car drives near them, which led to the sheep sprinting full speed towards our car whenever we drove anywhere. Once reaching the car they would run in circles around it with no awareness that we might hit them. My 2012 Subaru Forester was put through its paces, including up the track to 81, a track which requires a bit of a prayer to get your car up.
Then there were the fences. Rodney told us that the farmer that owned his property before him lost all his fences in a bush fire so the farmer rebuilt all of them without a scrap of wood. This led to Rodney's property having some of the most insanely strong fences I have ever come across. In many instances I had to resort to squeezing under the fences in what I assume were small divots dug by animals, this added significantly to the amount of dirt I was covered in when I would return home.
We discovered many things on our setting trips, everything from the ruin of an old stone house to some of the most picturesque valleys I have ever seen.
After much shenanigans the setting was complete, then came the vetting.
After proposing a "short walk around a paddock" to my partner Tom, he joined the vetting team as my personal vetting guinea pig. What I coined as a short 2 hour stroll around Wayne's property ended up being a 5 hour bash through old plantations with poor Tom having to do the navigation (as my tester for someone with limited rogaining experience). Due to the fact it was the middle of winter we ended up racing to get back to the car before sunset. I also may or may not have left our box of shapes in the car, something I did not realise until we were at the furthest possible point from the car and Tom asked for the shapes. Tom then returned to help put out controls, where we met Rodericks pet cows (some of whom were very pregnant), including one which tried to use Tom's leg as a scratching post. Tom's many years of scout experience came in very useful in tieing up the controls. Don't worry, I didn't forget the shapes that time.
The event day ran perfectly, the weather gods smiled happily upon us. We were initially worried that the course was too short due to the small area but the large hills and thick bush worked in our favour and no one got close to clearing the course.
I'd like to thank my Dad for his work, I may have been the one to volunteer but unbeknownst to him we are a package deal when it comes to organising events. I'd also like to thank Richard for his work, particularly for the 6 checkpoints he dutifully put setting plates out for and then when they were removed for logistical reasons, had to go and collect them again. I also need to say thanks to those who did so much work behind the scenes, particularly Bass and Gary, who not only organised the event but had to teach us how to set, vet and assign checkpoint values.
Lastly thanks to Tom, who has sworn to never trust me again when I describe something as a "short walk".
In total I went up to the area 7 times and ate at least 3 mood food potato cakes every trip. Over the course of all my trips I visited every single control on the map at least once.
Here is a link to some of the photos and videos I took with my Drone, including a video of the 6 hour start.
I hope that everyone enjoyed the event and I would recommend setting and vetting rogaining events to everyone.
Tara 😃