As we drove through the competition area to the hash-house, our first impressions caused dismay. There was bush everywhere, and it appeared thick and prickly with a rough groundcover of dead wood and scrub. No chance, we thought, of the open country which we kiwis are used to; especially useful for the night-time hours.
The reality was quite different. We found ourselves actually enjoying the challenge for most of the time. The map was 1:25,000 with 10 metre contours, and as anyone who has Rogained in Australia knows, the spurs and gullies in the bush are far more subtle than in NZ and require a persistent concentration to stay in touch with. This, along with the surprisingly varied terrain, unexpectedly open nature of most of the bush, and fine but cool weather allowed us to progress ahead of our schedule in a delightful little world of our own, rarely interrupted by the occasional sighting of another team.
Maps were issued at 9:00 am, allowing nearly 3 hours for planning and weatherproofing of maps. They were big; A2 size. We planned our route to stay largely in the narrow open strip which appeared on the map like a big capital “C” for the night hours. This meant we had to do a loop in the SE corner on Saturday afternoon, passing back through the hash-house shortly after dark. Our big “C” would take us to the northern part of the map by daybreak, with only a few kilometres of dense bush in the middle. We then planned to use the Sunday hours in the bushy NE corner.
Having learned the cost of being too optimistic, we planned a conservative 3km/hr through the bush for the first 5.5 daylight hours, and a steady 2 km/hr during the 13 hrs. of darkness, in what appeared to be open country. For the last morning of daylight we allowed 2.5 km/hr because of the thicker bush and the worn-out bodies, but with a 4 km/hr last hour down a road. In total, we had 64 kms planned, worth about 2600 points.
Right from the noon start, it was obviously a well-planned course. 190 teams headed off in many different directions, and within an hour we were on our own. We sighted the occasional team for the next four hours as we alternated between open bush, 4wd track, hills, and tussock open land, but they were always aiming for different checkpoints, from each other as well as us. Anne saw a black snake about 600 mm long sneaking away from a big dead log which Bill and I had just stepped over. We also say a wallaby and heaps of Eastern Grey kangaroos, but in spite of many wombat holes, we never saw a wombat. There were some steep hills and some surprisingly rough areas, with rock faces and boulder-strewn streambeds, but overall the afternoon proved very pleasant. By dark, we were 90 minutes ahead of our schedule, and travelling strongly.
Attractive as the tussock valley floors were, they frequently proved to be slower than expected, because of the size of the tussocks and the swampy ground they were on. Often we reverted to the bush edge, or even right under the canopy. The vegetation marking on the map was not as reliable as we would have liked; a fair proportion of “open” was in fact sparse bush. Delightful to travel through but harder to navigate in.
The bush section in the middle of the night contained a 90-point checkpoint, hidden on a small spur just off a tricky but fair knob. We found the knob and were hunting in the scrub for the spur when some torches, attached to people and voices, passed within 50 metres of us, looking for the knob. Either they didn’t see us or they thought that we had found the checkpoint and were moving off, but they didn’t follow us. Almost immediately we bumped into the checkpoint and set off in haste; too much haste as it turned out. We knew we had to go east to a gully, but the lay of the land felt different and we kept heading north. After some time of considerable fight in ever-thickening scrub, we corrected our mistake and forced due east by crashing, bashing, crawling, and smashing through manuka-like rubbish which would challenge a snake before the vegetation eased after 15 minutes and we could move normally again.
In spite of this, we maintained and even exceeded our schedule, so that at 3:00 am we added an extra 90 point loop. This was a mistake, as it took 2 hours even in open country. By this time the cold was up to Canterbury Winter standards; our water-bladder hoses all froze and we couldn’t drink for 3 hours. There was a heavy frost and a misty haze in the valley floors, and a gentle but bitter breeze straight into our faces. We would have been much wiser to take to the bush section we had planned for daylight, in spite of the darkness. The hilly bush was much warmer, and we had the time to spend on navigation.
However we were back on our original schedule by 7:30 am, until a very tricky 90-pointer took us by surprise. It was in a small gully; the only one mapped. On the ground, of course, there were 3 gullies; all steep and vegetated. We searched up and down and across, until we finally decided to use the compass to check gully directions. This worked, but we had lost a critical 30 minutes. We no longer had time to execute our point-rich route to the hash-house, and instead had to do a road-runner (walk actually), picking up such casual checkpoints as the planner had chosen to taunt people like us by placing them apparently close to the road.
Thus we finished with 25 minutes to spare, with 2260 points and in 23rd place overall, down from 10th at Perth and 4th at Gundy. We still managed 1st mixed supervets and 1st mixed vets, but notice how we are slowing down !!
Tony Gazley and Chris Tait from Wellington were observed running from a checkpoint with 30 minutes to go, and finished 21st overall with 2350 points, placing 8th in the Vets category. Ted Van Geldermalsen (formerly Hutt Valley) and Derek Morris gained a remarkable 2750 points to finish 8th overall and 5th mens vets, while Mike Sheridan and Allan Stowell from Hutt Valley gained 2200 points for 27th overall and 9th vets. 195 teams took part in a very successful and well organised event.
Nigel Aylott, with Kevin Humphrey, held his outright title with 3260 points,
from a determined challenge by Robert Vincent and David Rowlands, who scored only 10 points less!
Written by Peter Squires
and installed on 1 May 02.