This area saw orienteering in the 70s before Belmont Regional Park even existed - the black and white maps were called Maori Point or Camel's Hump. There was a larger block of pine trees where the carpark is now, and farmland to the south. This is now subdivided, although there's still a track from Otamarau Grove to the top of the hump. After the pines were cut down the attraction for orienteering fell away, and only recently have club members looked there again. What they found was a nice little park entrance with a few tracks; pockets of passable (you wouldn't say runnable) bush; and a lot of indistinct tracks made for possum control. Peter Bakos and Michael Wood turned some of the club runs into exploration missions, and the result is a nice little white/yellow area, some beside-the-track possibilities for the loop track past the historic Korokoro Dam, and an idea for utilising the "jungle". The map is now called "Otonga", after the now-closed primary school next to the park entrance.
Sunday's white and yellow courses saw lots of family groups both old and new. And the taped route through the bush might just have got enough use to be marked as a "track" next time. Evelyn Paintin and her friend Kate were fastest on the white adventure course after practicing on the white regular, but Emma Rudge was less than a minute behind. Matthew Turner and Eric Sanson posted excellent times on yellow, especially since this had more climb on it.
Nicole van Oosterom took out the short version of the trail course ahead of Alan Horn and her brother Peter. A sting in the tail perhaps was the control between the stumps which was well off-trail and much harder than the rest of the course. The longer version was an extension using some of the better indistinct tracks, and this was won by former world champion Yvette Baker, while grandad visiting from the UK took 3-year-old Olaf round the white. He wasn't the only UK visitor either, with William Power's mother and Malcolm Duncan on the short trail. William was second to Yvette on the long trail. These were both good workouts, the climb and the fact that beelining was not practical leading to fastest times of 40 and 44 minutes.
The final course linked together the passable pockets of bush with possum bait lines, some quite indistinct. The steep terrain and impossibility of mapping the bush perfectly led to the label "jungle course" and a restriction to pairs. Nevertheless five teams completed the course successfully, and another mostly. They were pleasantly suprised at the nice bits of bush. An hour and three quarters by John and Tim Robertson was the fastest time, but the course planner feels it can be done under the hour, and was hoping for some Central Magic members to prove that.
Michael Wood planned the courses, which were checked by Kate Rea, Lizzie Ingham and Nic Gorman. Nic also helped bring the controls in, as did Pablo Wolinski, a recent immigrant from Argentina on his first orienteering event.