It’s strange when you arrive somewhere new after dark.  You have no idea what your surroundings are like. I vividly remember alighting from the tram in Istanbul, at the stop right next to the Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome. It was 7pm, we’d had a very stressful trip from Paris with my wallet being stolen on the Metro, we were in a completely new country and very wary.  But everything was illuminated with fairy lights. The minarets glowed like pearls. The myriad of outdoor restaurants were overflowing with people and laughter. It was enchanted and magical, and held so much promise of what was to come.

Yesterday, Pete and I set off at 9am (Ian and Ilze having decided to forego this trip) for the long drive past Bendigo and up the Calder, into northwestern Victoria, where everything is flat and brown, punctuated only by silos and blink-and-you’ve-missed-it towns.  Obligatory stops in Wycheproof for pies, and Ouyen for vanilla slices. Crossing into South Australia, with the news of a new covid case flying from Perth  to Melbourne making us wonder if we’d be turning tail for home before we’d even arrived.  After a quick shopping stop in Renmark, we headed further west and onto the Goyder Highway. This is Big Sky Country – mallee scrub, river flats, twisted trees, sandy soil. Its not quite outback – you don’t get the brilliant reds and ochres – but the late afternoon sun softens the golds and greens, and the landscape goes on seemingly forever.  It’s liberating after spending so much time in suburbia, and makes you realise how where we live is completely untypical of most of Australia.  This is the real deal; although here, the scrub is punctuated by vineyards and citrus groves, and pistachio and almond farms; agriculture is big business up here.

We watched a spectacular sunset, before finally arriving at The Mud Shack – home for the next three days of orienteering across another state border (yes we are living dangerously once again). We pulled up in the dark and found our way inside.

All we knew about our surrounds was that there is a tiny cluster of houses along a back road, with a pub a bit further along, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.  Peering out of the window this morning, we discovered that we have orienteering terrain right on our doorstep. There are erosion gullies and hills – the perfect place for some “pre-match training”. If only we had the energy!  We had no idea we had all this lovely South Australian riverina bushland right next door. In fact the Murray River is just a hop step and jump away.

We are here for three days – the South Australian Middle and Long Distance Champs, and a Sprint on Monday which is being set by Lanita, one of our club members who has settled in SA for work; she loves it here, and I can understand why.

Today’s event was tucked in between the Murray River and the road leading north out of Paringa. It consisted of open, sparsely treed scrub, fairly flat though with a few hills here and there.  The terrain was incised by watercourses and erosion gullies, which you couldn’t pick from a distance; it wasn’t until you were almost on top of them that you could see how they broke up the ground, forming cliffs and mounds, and small side gullies.  Unlike Easter, the visibility was fantastic, and we all relished being able to move freely, but still dealing with complex navigational challenges.  The mapping was also much clearer, and the course setting excellent.

I zipped around the first 5 or 6 controls, picking them off with relative ease (though I had to pause to remove a bunch of prickles from my palm, after putting my hand on the ground whilst sliding down into a gully).  The mid section of my course required more scrambling, and as is always the case here, it is faster to get down into the bottom of the sandy creek beds, which are smooth and clear; the rocky bits are up high.  I got myself a bit entangled for a while, but emerged relatively unscathed, through the last section, and finished with a sub 50 minute time – the same distance at Easter would have taken me 30 minutes longer.

As we drove back to The Mud Shack, the late afternoon sunlight combined with light clouds against an otherwise clear blue sky; it was a joy to observe.  We rounded off the evening with an excellent dinner at the local, and polished off the rest of the vanilla slices.

Ian tells me it is freezing cold and very wet in Melbourne.  I’m feeling pretty lucky to be elsewhere.