Welcome to the May Australoper's Newsletter. It has been a busy time at the club with the State School's Championships (Sprint and Forest) and The Australian Orinenteering Easter 3 Day Champs. Australoper's members also competed in The Victorian Orienteering Championships and The New Zealand Orienteering Championships. |
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Congratulations to Liana Stubbs on her selection for the Australian Junior World Orienteering Championships Team which will compete in Trentino, Italy from 26th June to 4th July.
Such a wonderful achievement and a fitting reward for all the hard work Liana has put in over many years of orienteering. There are a range of fund raising activities being planned by Liana and Ali (see article below).
Also congratulations to Francesca Taufer who is a coach for that team. |
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Congratulations also to Euan Best (EVOC) for his selection in the JWOC team having been a reserve for the team last year.
And finally congratulations to Jett McComb (SHOC) for his selection as a reserve in the JWOC team. |
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Australian Easter Orienteering Championships | Australopers had 48 competitiors competing in this event with a further three Australopers competing for the Tasmanian Foresters NOL Team. As usual Australopers performed well. The 3 day championships were held in rural Victoria on some challenging granite and gold mining terrain. |
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Australopers who Medalled in the Overall Results: | Walter Butler (M10A) 🥇 Sophie Hartmann (W16A) 🥇 Zoe Dowling (W21 Sport) 🥇 Blake Merritt (M35AS) 🥇 Kate Lucas (W65AS) 🥈 David Marshall (M70A) 🥈 Liana Stubbs (W20E) 🥉
| Australopers who Placed Well on Individual Days: | Louise Fairfax (W70A 1st Day 1) Jeff Dunn (M65A 3rd Days 1 and 3) Bert Elson (M70A 3rd Day 1) Helena Griggs (W80A 2nd Day 2) Abagail Hewitt (W10A 2nd Day 2) Angus Hewitt (M14A 3rd Day 3)
| Also congratulations to Team Butler (Isaac, Aria, Walter) who competed in the Family relay race coming 13th overall. |
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Ever wondered why Mick Cooper (sledge class) always sprints up the finish chute. In many classes the final overal results are often very close and seconds in the finish chute can determine who wins and who loses. For example, in the M20E class at the Easter 3 days, in the overall results the 1st, 2nd and 3rd competitors were split by just 3 seconds after more than two hours total of racing.
Congratulations to everyone who competed and represented our club so well. |
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Victorian Orienteering Championships: Following the completion of the Australian Three Days, some Australopers moved on to the Victorian Championship races the following weekend. Again there were some great results. In the Short Distance Jeff Dunn (M65) won his event and Mikayla Cooper (W21A) came third. In the Middle Distance Championships there were bronze medals to Bert Elson (M70A) and Mikayla Cooper (W21A). In the Long Distance Paul Liggins (M55A) won his event. |
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New Zealand Orienteering Championships: While this was happening in Australia we also had our international contingent in New Zealand representing the club at the New Zealand Orienteering Championships. Congratulations go to Bass Burgess (M65) with gold in the long distance, silver in the sprint and bronze in the middle distance and to Liz Canning (W60A) with bronze in the long distance race. |
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Route Choices: | Due to the raging sucess of the first installment of the route choices discussion we have decided to bring it back in greater force. This means more people, more events, more everything. Today we have some great descriptions from all three of the events mentioned above. Big thanks to all contributors. If you would like to be featured in next months installment please email Tara (tarajrpowell@gmail.com) with your resume and pleads. Anthony Stoner - Australian 3 Days Bert Elson - Victorian Championships Bass Burgess - New Zealand Championships |
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Victorian Middle Distance Leg 7-8 - Bert Elson: | | I had had a reasonably clean run to control 7. My first thought was to follow the road around to the two boulders on the right of the track over the top of the hill then run SSE through the yellow to the control.
BUT .. on looking again at that I realised it involved 3 contours down and 5 back up. So scrapped that idea and instead thought of staying on the track only as far as the big rocks at control 9 and heading across the bare rock to control 8 from there.
BUT … then I realised Bruce Bowen and Mike Calder were both 150 m ahead of me on the track up hill out of 7. Now I couldn’t recall if Bruce had left before or after me (turns out it was well before me but he had lost 5 minutes on control 1) so at times like this I tend to throw caution to the wind and take a risky route on the basis of it being worth the risk if there is a chance of catching up to someone who is ahead of me on elapsed time.
So, I cut right going up the hill, around the big rock features and up a gully to the bare rock. At this point I met Roch Prendergast who had gone out after me but was muttering that he didn’t have a **** idea where he was!!! So I whipped past him and slightly to the north and fortunately popped out right at the control, just after Bruce and just before Mike – so I had made about 50 seconds on Bruce – he was still faster than me at 6:15 to my 6:55 but I would have been at least a minute behind him coming out of 7 and he is a faster road runner than me so I feel the gamble paid off. Mike was close at hand at 7:38.
The leg was won by Victorian Rod Gray in 5:21 with Roch, lost for 5 minutes at 12:14 and poor Mark Petrie taking 30:12, 20th in our class on that leg. That was my best run of the Easter week coming 3rd in M70 (thanks to Bruce's misadventure on control 1). |
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Victorian Long Distance Leg 3-4 - Bert Elson: | | This is the sort of leg you look at and groan – “which way will I go?”. But I saw that the middle section of the leg had an old 4WD track and a band of relatively open country to the left of the hilltops. Furthermore the 4WD track ended at a turning circle – a reasonably identifiable feature.
Having that as my first objective I could see that it was at the top of a distinctive gully involving some downhill then uphill, but reasonably clear to follow. This proved to be the case and I followed the gully to the 4WD track, along the track then to the left of the second hill around through some rocks and scrub to the bare rock at the S of the hill. This rock was quite identifiable so crossing it and dropping into the control was quite straightforward.
Now in retrospect I note that Gordon Wilson (14:45) and Roch Prendergast (17:00) both crossed the saddle between the two hills thus moving around the right of the second hill. This involved a tiny bit more of a climb BUT – took them across quite open forest with clearings and brought them in to the control more directly. They each picked up time on me on me (18:00) for that leg. Lesson noted for next time!
|  Bert's Route | |  Gordon's Route |
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Australian 3 Days (Day 2 The Granites) Leg 1-2 - Anthony Stoner: | | For control 2, I wanted to stay out of the rock and have an easy approach. My plan was: - run west out of 1 in the clear ground and pass control 10
- cross the top of the bare rock,
- get through the green into the clear ground in the gully,
- turn right and go over the hill directly towards the clear ground near control 2.
As I ran through the green in the gully I could see that the hill to the right was very rocky and green, and I could also see the clear open ground leading up into the saddle towards control 11. I hesitated a bit, changed my plan and ran the clear ground, over the saddle, then around the spur, across the gully, then slightly up into the control.
This one went well, although I could have saved some time by being more decisive when I changed my plan. (6th, 1:19 time loss) | | | Australian 3 Days (Day 2 The Granites) Leg 6-7 - Anthony Stoner: | | The first part of my plan here was to get off the spur to the track near the creek bend with the clear ground. After that: - run straight from the creek end in the open ground to the bare rock with the cliff on the spur
- run into the clear ground in the gully on the other side
- follow the patches of clear ground to control seven.
It turned out that the green out of six was a lot thicker than the green I’d been through earlier so I should have gone around that. After that it went to plan, and had the advantage of being able to take quick bearings off the tower on the hill to confirm position around the slope. (2nd, 0:04 time loss) | | | Australian 3 Days (Day 2 The Granites) Leg 5-6 - Anthony Stoner: | | The linear hilltop, the clear ground to the north of it leading into the control, and the track made the route decision easy on this one. My plan was: - run the clear ground out to the track,
- run along the north side of the hilltop
- take the clear ground to the green
- run around the green into the control.
The clear ground was very runnable and the plan worked really nicely. (1st!) | | | Australian 3 Days (Day 1 Psalm Singing Gully) Leg 7-8 - Anthony Stoner: | | I’d had a ragged approach to control 7 with difficulty seeing the difference between the broken ground and the large pits, so wanted a safe route to 8. My plan was: - run the line out to the track
- bear left to the clear ground
- run the adjacent ride
- take a bearing through the green to the small track and clearing with the bank
- handrail the creek to the control.
With the green on this map being relatively open and runnable, my safe plan turned out to be easy to execute and accordingly fast. (2nd, 00:01 time loss) | |
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New Zealand Long Distance Orienteering Championships 3-4 - Bass Burgess: | Diana and I have been competing in the Easter New Zealand National Orienteering Championships over the past six or so years, and follow them up with a decent tramp (bushwalk) and then call in on Diana's folks before returning home.
This year the champs were held in and around Christchurch in very wet conditions. The event kicked off on Good Friday with sprints in down-town Christchurch, mostly along the Avon River, followed by the middle distance in coastal sand dune pine forest at Waikuku Beach, just north of Christchurch. The Long was held on Easter Sunday on steep sheep farming, pine forest and native rainforest landscapes at Mt Cass, and then the relay back in coastal sand dune pine forest at Woodend.
Austrolopers were the main Australian representatives, with Liz Canning, Diana Cossar-Burgess and myself comprising a team in the mixed veterans. Hugh Fitzgerald did better than us in a mixed team in the same class.
My best result over the carnival was winning the M65 Long against a strong field including a few gnarly Kiwi adventure racers. | | Here I give a summary of route choices taken on the longest leg (controls 3 to 4), of our 4.25km, 9 control course.
While following a track on my way to control 3 I contemplated alternative routes for the next leg, deciding upon the more direct line, including doubling back along the track I was on and diving into forest, down to a creek and then out to a well formed forestry track. In the steeper section of the descent I went a little too far left, which required scrambling over multiple large fallen pine trees (my Kiwi nemesis came badly unstuck here too).
After a quite long break at a water station I decided to shortcut the switchback track and cross the creek, which required pushing through a narrow section of blackberries and then scaling a steep bank back to the track. My intention then was to take the left track and contour to control 4. Somehow I missed the track junction and continued uphill along the main track and came into the control from the other side of the small hill. M60 and W50 age groups used the same map and several of the top runners took alternative routes, choosing to either keep to open paddocks and tracks or follow the gully down to fencelines and the main track.
I decided against those approaches 1) because the gully option is shown as patchy dark green in a narrow corridor through dark green and adjacent to hatched green (thick understorey). Vegetation mapped as dark green in NZ is almost impenetrable, so best avoided if you want to be seen again. 2) these options were longer distances and I find running on fire trail type tracks tedious. |  Bass's Leg in Red, Guy Cory-Wright in Green | And that conlcudes this week's installment of route choices, thanks again to everyone who provided content for this month's installment. |
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Next Meeting: The next Australopers Club meeting is on Thursday the 15th May 7:30pm at 7 Miley Place, Warrane. All members are welcome. |
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And on that note it is time to bid you all adeiu, I will leave you all with a photo of my favourite child, Daisy
Thanks for reading, have fun orienteering, Geoff Powell (President) |  Daisy Powell, Cat Orienteer in W85 (Cat years) |
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