Elizabeth Woodgate (NSW) and Thorlene Egerton (Tas)
2026 Australian Rogaine Championships: The 24-Severn
The 2026 Australian (Australasian) Rogaining Championships, known as "24-Severn", were held near Stanthorpe/Nundubbermere in south-east Queensland on 29-30 August 2026. The course combined open grazing country with the rugged terrain of Sundown National Park, which had the steep sided Severn River running through the middle.
Weather conditions were close to ideal: dry underfoot, comfortable/’a-bit-on-the-warm-side’ daytime temperatures, mild overnight temperatures, and a full moon for much of the night. No mud, no extreme cold, crossable rivers, no soaking rain, and good moonlight are about as favourable as championship conditions get. Apart from….
The bush was very slow and a bit nasty in places, and the hills were STEEP, but only on half of the map. This is kind of OK as long as you know. If you know you can plan accordingly and adjust your expectations (both in terms of speed and enjoyment).
There were many teams caught out by the unexpected slowness in parts of the map. In the end we did OK. We went anticlockwise through the national park section first. By the time we got to the south we were 2-3 hours behind our schedule but had options to drop loops in the thicker treed stuff. We also heard the horror stories from the people who had done a lot of the eastern/southeastern checkpoints. These people had fewer options to drop things on their routes back to the north section.
We had a good long stop at one of the two All Night Cafes and then took the simplest route north and out of the Sundown National Park. We then took an even longer break at the HH. At 4.45 we headed back out and into the glorious open farmland. Sunrise was gorgeous, and we enjoyed the rolling hills, open forest and short cropped grassland, with fun navigation. Here we managed to underestimate our speed and finished more than an hour early, having dropped the checkpoints furthest away from HH.
The winning team, Queenslanders Mitch Nissen and Murray Macpherson, reportedly covered around 135 km with approximately 5,000 m of ascent, which is an incredible example of physicality and clean navigation. We ended up doing 70kms and 2700m climb (as measured by my Garmin watch). And apparently we're only moving for 18 hours!
The organisers and volunteers did a terrific job putting on the event with a great crew of local adventure racers staffing the All Night Cafés all night.
Queensland won the interstate challenge and Trans-Tasman challenge ahead of New Zealand and New South Wales. Given the terrain was in south-east Queensland and Queensland rogainers may have been more familiar with the terrain in Sundown, that was probably not unexpected.
Thanks to my incredibly strong teammate, Liz Woodgate from NSW helping us finish 36th overall (1st womens supervet, 1st womens vet and 3rd open womens). As for the other Tasmanian teams - Luke and Ivy Rapley had a great event coming 24th overall. James Down and Karen Cole came 48th (2nd mixed supervet). Also, congratulations to Jon Sutcliffe who finished a great 31st place overall (and 4th in Men’s SuperVet). Ryan King and Andrew Wright were the best placed Tasmanians at 16th overall. Christine Brown and Karen Peddley came 49th overall (4th in both womens supervet and womens vet categories).
All the results, maps and photos can be viewed at qldrogaine.asn.au/arc2026