Commencing from the now famous Wagga Beach (recently rated the 9th best in Australia!) participants had to find the answers to questions about the CBD within a set time limit. Questions included dates of specific events, house names, and particular details on the various murals that decorate the city. Points were awarded for correct answers and deducted for exceeding the time limit.

Competing on the 45 minute course Andrew Slattery managed to find answers to 25 of the 31 questions on offer and scored an excellent 200 points despite losing 5 points for exceeding his time limit by 35 seconds. His closest rival was Waggaroos Alex Davey who managed to find 21 answers and scored 170 points. John Oliver was not far behind collecting 165 points.

On the 30 minute courses the Metcalfe family scored a very good 85 points but were outrun by Stuart Young who amassed 120 points.

The Waggaroos Summer Series of Orienteering will resume on Sunday February 2 in the Turvey Park area.

Shane McMullen visited almost the same locations but did it in a clockwise direction to tackle the Rocky Hill area early in his chosen route. In the end the difference between the two was that Shane suffered a penalty for exceeding his time limit and was relegated to second place with 150 points. Nonetheless Shane's effort earned him handicap honours for the day.  

Deb Davey chose the 30 minute course which she won with a score of 75 points. Julie and Sean Sunley were not far behind with 60 points.

Clever course planning by Wes Campbell resulted in the northern part of the course containing the majority of the questions, most of which were of lower points value, whilst the southern part of the course had fewer questions but all were of higher points value. Deciding which way to go became a critical decision.

On the 30 minute course Deb Davey and the Metcalfe family group both focussed on the northern component of the course. Deb finished with 2½ minutes to spare and a good score of 120 points. The Metcalfe family, Imogen, Zoe and Fiona, found one more answer than Deb but in doing so exceeded the time limit and suffered a time penalty which reduced their score also to 120 points.

Alex Davey just edged out John Oliver on the 45 minute course. Alex focussed on the periphery of northern area to start with and then moved into the southern area picking up some of the higher value answers. By contrast, John went to the southern area first and finished in the central part of the northern area. It worked slightly better for Alex who finished with an excellent 195 points compared with John’s 190. Shane McMullen was just off the pace finishing in third place with a healthy 180 points.

The 3rd event in the series will be held on Sunday 8th December, starting and finishing in the park on the corner of Sherwood Ave and Kilpatrick St in Kooringal. Starts between 9:00 am and 10:00 am.

Starting from the eastern end of Mount St in Kooringal the 1.9 km Easy navigation course followed some of the paths and tracks across the top of Rocky Hill challenging participants to find particular boulder clusters and cliffs along the way.

Tom Janetzki, with the experience of the recent Oceania Carnival, had an excellent run winning by just over two minutes from the improving Imogen Metcalfe. Zoe Metcalfe came third a further 2 minutes back.

The Hard courses wound around the steep hillside having participants locate specific boulders, cliffs and thickets. Although visibility was excellent, the steep ascents, difficult descents and profusion of wild oats made the courses physically demanding and difficult to re-locate if navigation was not perfect. Missing a control site meant some more hard work and significant time loss. It did not seem to concern Phil Roy who won the 2.4 km Hard navigation course comfortably finishing more than 10 minutes ahead of the rest of the field. His was an excellent run in the deceptively difficult terrain. Trent Seaman finished second with John Oliver a further 2 minutes in arrears.

It was much closer on the 3.2 km Hard navigation course with less than four minutes separating all participants. Stuart Young was spurred into action by a brown snake just near the start and did not look back finishing just ahead of Alex Davey. Junior orienteer Jack Janetzki finished third with Deb Davey rounding out the field.

This was the final bush event for the year and Waggaroos will commence their Summer Series of Orienteering in late November. The summer series will use a score event format in which participants will have a time limit (30 or 45 minutes) to find the answers to questions about the locality in which the event is held. Points are awarded for correct answers and points are deducted for exceeding the time limit.

The first event in the Summer Series of orienteering with commence at 9 am on Sunday 24 November on the eastern side of Main St, Lake Albert alongside Crooked Creek.

Rocky Hill results:

The Carnival will commence at CSU on Saturday 28 September with the Oceania Sprint Distance Championships and National Orienteering Championships. Then it will move to Bethungra for the Australian Long Distance Championships and Relay Championships in a new area comprising rugged rocky outcrops.

On Tuesday October 1 it will return to Wagga for the Australian Schools Orienteering Championships. 160 school children from across Australia and New Zealand in representative state and national teams will compete in sprint distance, long distance and relay races over three days. The sprint distance will be held at Kildare Catholic College on Tuesday 1 October, the long distance at Connorton on Wednesday, and the relay at Pomingalarna on Thursday. Associated with these events will be the Riverina Run, a 3-day public event that has attracted over 500 entries including Olympic marathoner Martin Dent and Australia’s oldest orienteer, 95 year old Herman Wehner from Canberra.

The carnival will conclude on the following weekend with the Oceania Middle Distance and Long Distance Championships near Beechworth.

Deb Davey’s selection is just reward For her consistent performances at national and international level for the past 3 years. Deb will team with Ballarat’s Jenny Bourne and Newcastle’s Hilary Wood in the W60 age-class and should be too classy for the New Zealanders. Deb is also the day organiser for the Schools Long Distance Championship at Connorton.

On the local front Waggaroos conducted a sprint orienteering race at Rawlings Park last Sunday. On the 4 km course in the early part of the race Stuart Young and Jack Janetzki were just a few seconds apart to each control. However in the middle part of the course as the race moved from the ovals to the bush land Stuart was able to navigate a bit better and eventually won by 5 minutes. Deb Davey came in third a further minute behind.

On the 2.9 km course Imogen Metcalfe ventured out by herself for the first time and excelled. Laura Shelton started very well and after 3 controls had built up a 3 minute advantage. Imogen had started more slowly but as her confidence built she started to catch up. Laura made a navigational error between 7 and 8 allowing Imogen to take the lead which she maintained despite a miss at the 9^th control. Wes Campbell came in third. 

Elena and Tahlia Franklin and Charli Speers tried orienteering for the first time. They sensibly tackled the 2km Easy course first and enjoyed it so much they then completed the 4km course.

In the Interclub Orienteering Challenge points are awarded to participants for participating and completing their course and to the placegetters in each course. The points earned by placegetters are weighted in favour of the longer and harder navigation courses.

The event was conducted in the northern part of the Livingstone National Park and State Conservation Reserve where the broad steep hills are prickly scrub are unforgiving when navigational errors are made. Time was easily lost if route choice was not carefully made.

There was an excellent turnout with almost 50 people including several family groups participating. Waggaroos started the day 44 points in arrears and despite some good performances could not completely wipe of the deficit.

On the 5.7 km Hard course although Matt Flower (A) finished second behind ACTs John Scown and scored valuable bonus points for the Albury club, Waggaroos Stuart Young and Tadeusz Davenport were just seconds behind and by finishing ahead of crack Albury trio Raf Freire, Leigh Privett and Rob Simmonds helped Waggaroos take a slight 3 point lead.

Then Waggaroos junior Jack Janetzki and veteran Alex Davey finished first and second respectively on the 4.5 km Hard course ahead of several Albury orienteers to increase the Waggaroos lead to 7.

Albury reduced the deficit when Emma and Indiana Flower won the 3.5 km Moderate course but a succession of Waggaroos finishing before the next Albury orienteer ensured Wagga won this course and slipped out to a 15 point lead.

This was extended on 1.8 km Easy course where Wagga were unchallenged by Albury.

At the end of the day Waggaroos won the event 63:32 but Albury won the series 376:363 in what was the closest competition for a number of years.

The next local event will be conducted at Rawling's Park on Sunday 15 September starting at 10 am from the eastern end of Angel St, Lake Albert. Newcomers are welcome.

Results:

·        AWOC President Peter Mousley advises that there were 61 participants in total - many children - making it one of the bigger Interclub events ever.

There were some fine performances by Waggaroos:

·         Deb and Alex Davey completed the quinella in the Short Red; and Jack Janetzki came 4th .... and we still lost that course!

·         Stuart Young did very well in the Long Hard course.

·         Great to see that Nick Mousley (AWV) and Tom Janetzki (WRN) teamed up and ran together on the Orange course. Apparently Peter Mousley had suggested to Nick last year that he should run with one of the other kids to help get confidence on a harder course. So yesterday he teamed up with Tom and they came second! It is what Tom needs too - a bit of confidence in the forest. As Peter said: From their course time they should have been doing it long ago!  (I have agreed with Peter to give each 3 bonus points each rather than splitting the points between them - they deserve the points for their effort and although it makes no difference to the relative points tally, we had better not lose by less than 1.5 points after the next race).

·         Julie, Jarrah and Eltan came second on the Easy course.

• Lovely to see that Nicola Smith made the trip with her family; and for Road Runner Nicola Wunderlich and her two children to pop along to what I think was their first event even if it was a rather slow wander.

From all accounts Jack Janetzki did a great job organising his first bush event.

The 1.9 km Easy course was a close affair with Waggaroos 12yo Tom Janetzki winning by a mere 54 seconds from his 12yo Albury counterpart Nick Mousley.

Alburys Josh Roy did very well to win the 3.o km Moderate course but with Dale Clegg and Wes Campbell filling the minor places Waggaroos just sneaked ahead to win that course.

A rather innocuous depression on the two long courses was not as innocuous as it appeared and several participants lost time there; Waggaroos fared worse allowing Albury to do better in the two Hard courses.

Despite Alex Davey comfortably winning the 3.6 km Hard course and scoring valuable bonus points, Albury had Liz Wood and Hugh Cameron came in ahead of the next Waggaroos participants and the course was tied.

Albury dominated the 4.8 km Hard course with Leigh Privett, Matt Flower and Peter Mousley filling the first three places before Waggaroos Stuart Young and Briohny Seaman finished.

On the day Albury had a nice 10 point win 47:37 and after 6 events lead 269:260. There are two events to go, with the next being at Tabletop, just north of Albury, on 4th August.

Wolfram full results: