FACES OF THE AUSTRALIAN

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Your rogaine isn't our loss

By Phillip Adams
September 2

WHEN it comes to guarding the homestead, our two dogs, the border collie and the Jack Russell, aren't worth feeding. Neighbours' dogs are appropriately theatrical. They bark, they snarl, they menace. Whereas our dills of dogs leap, lick and grovel so that a wide variety of the unknown and unwelcome are encouraged to approach, arriving at the kitchen door just when you're pouring the cup of tea you've been wanting all morning.

The kettle had just boiled when our tail-wagging welcoming committee ushered another total stranger to the door. Opening it, however, I found a face so gentle, so charming that I knew whatever its owner wanted, the answer would be yes.

And he wanted permission to have 400 people run all over the property. For a day and a night. In about 18 months' time. No, nothing to do with the Olympics. It would be the Australasian Rogaining Championships.

What the hell was rogaining? He described a sport that requires considerable skill and physical stamina, a variation on orienteering, with people reading maps as they charge through the scrub, trying to find control points that would be cunningly concealed – up gullies, on hilltops, in thick scrub. The contest would begin at noon on a Saturday and finish 24 hours later, with people going all night (many would wear lamps on their heads, like miners), and the ones who reached the most checkpoints, or at least those worth the most points, would win a trophy.

Had it not been for the kindliness of the aforementioned face, I'd have suspected rogainers were a right-wing survivalist group rehearsing for a coup d'etat . . . or a religious cult intent on mass suicide, who would turn our remote property into a sort of Jonestown.

When Patrice found out I had agreed, she said: "You're bonkers." Apart from anything else, it was so out of character. I'm the one who hates having visitors. "And you've invited hundreds of people? People who'll leave gates open? Get the cattle all mixed up? Leave mess? Start bushfires?" Phil, the farm manager, was equally aghast.

But when Pat and Phil met the rogaining bloke and his wife, the matter was instantly settled. Not only was she as charming as her husband but she was Aboriginal as well. After years of agitating for treaties, land rights and having an Aboriginal flag flutter on the pole at the front of the homestead, shouldn't we be asking permission of her?

The rogaining course spread across Elmswood with forays into the neighbours who, like us, had found the visitors irresistible. For months there were mysterious, secretive preparations, other bearded blokes in 4WDs would head for the hills or we'd spot them clambering up cliffs and disappearing into ravines. Then, suddenly, it was happening. Little Gundy's population quadrupled overnight as rogainers from Rotorua to Rottnest pitched their tents on the little oval that doesn't get a lot of use except for Gundy Gala Day and Phil's beloved dog trials.

Now once again I started to worry about rogainers. If it wasn't some sort of paramilitary operation designed to train a revolutionary elite, it was most certainly a gathering of cultists intent on self-destruction – because the day they had chosen for these 400 men and women to rush around reading maps had to be one of the coldest on record.

I'm willing to accept the possibility that there are chillier places on earth than Gundy. Perhaps where Mawson's ship was crushed in the ice. Or on the South col of Everest. But we'd had a solid week of solid frosts while the nights had been beyond the redemption of open fires, electric blankets and hot-water bottles. In the kitchen, we'd keep the slow combustion stove roaring like a BHP blast furnace, yet we were still breathing fog from our mouths.

That dawn revealed a frost as thick as the icy accumulations in the freezer – one that glazed every puddle, pond and dam with the plate glass of ice while freezing the water in the homestead pipes until mid-morning. For once the dogs showed no interest in accompanying Patrice as she crunched her way through the olive grove, to see how much damage had been done to the trees.

Elmswood is a little more than 3640ha, of which a portion consists of river flats rising to comparatively domesticated hills. But the rest is elemental and mountainous. And a quick look at the map that was being handed out showed that the scores of control points on Elmswood had been selected with devilish, sadistic skill.

At 12 sharp, off the 400 went. Not en masse but, from the beginning, scattering in every direction, each team of two, three or more pursuing its own strategy. In the hope of winning the most points.

Most of the 400 were experienced rogainers but a few were novices. And the greatest novices of all were Patrice and her team-mate, a young bloke from Sydney who has been visiting the farm for years. Clearly they would share the home ground advantage. And, as well, Patrice has a passion for maps.

Little wonder the organisers talked of handicapping Patrice ("We should put some rocks in her haversack"). But it proved unnecessary. Despite overall familiarity with the acreage, the home team was left far behind by regular rogainers whose map-reading skills were extraordinary. They didn't seem to need compasses. By day they used the sun to locate their position, while at night the most skilful were navigating by the stars. By 9pm the Elmswood team had staggered back to the homestead, leaving those with miners' helmets to slog on.

The night was colder than charity, and the next morning my eight-year-old daughter Rory and I rugged up, climbed on the four-wheel bike and headed off to see how many rogainers we could spot. Virtually none. The 400 of them had simply disappeared into the landscape.

Elmswood is criss-crossed by more than 100km of tracks cut by bulldozer blades over the past half century. And there are hundreds of less emphatic tracks we've created by repeatedly bush-bashing in 4WDs when out looking for cattle. All of them, however, are now invisible, thanks to the thick grass kindly provided by La Nina.

And after 15 years of mustering and exploration you'd think we'd know every nook and cranny. Yet Rory and I continue to discover secret places – waterfalls and rock pools in hidden crevices, or eagles' nests high in branches against protected cliffs.

What we couldn't discover that day were rogainers. And it occurred to me that it was possible, even probable, that at no time in human history had 400 people been on the place at the same time. In the glory days, in the 1890s, Elmswood had had 100 staff, working cattle, erecting fences, dipping sheep, growing vegetables. That's more than 90 that live on the place today. And it's unlikely there would have been more than 50 or 60 Aborigines in a single camp in pre-colonial times.

What the weekend taught us is that you get one experience of landscape by flying over it, another by driving through it, another by riding around on horseback. But it's what you learn about a place on foot that is a revelation. And, come to think of it, what you learn about a place wearing boots is entirely different to the intimate knowledge that Aborigines' bare feet would have provided.

The people who knew the place best, the barefoot people who had lived there for tens of thousands of years, were driven off or killed off in the 19th century. Local histories barely, or reluctantly, mention them. These days, the greatest local knowledge belongs to the cattle, the kangaroos or the wild pigs whose paths along cliff tops and creek beds we find ourselves following. And every now and again, among the telltale sign of roo, wallaby or pig, we see the print of a rogainer's boot.