Category Orienteering in Australia
Sydney City Race Weekend
Ian and I are in Sydney this weekend, purely for orienteering – specifically, the first Sydney City Race. It took them 5 years to copy us, but they have gone all out with a $1000 prize for the outright winner. We just had to come and run it, being the ones who introduced the popular […]
Day 3 – Vague
Today’s terrain was pretty much a repeat of the other two days, except it was less open, and scrappier scrub with smaller rock. Everything was vague. Vague contours, vague tracks that blended with the general sandy ground, vague fences that might or might not be standing, and vague vegetation boundaries where yellow gently graduated into […]
A Canopy of Giraffes, and an Elongation of Meerkats
With a relatively early finish (notwithstanding my 20-25 minutes worth of errors), we had time this afternoon to visit the no 1 tourist attraction – the Monarto Safari Park. This is an open range zoo with mostly African animals, and in what was a very appealing drawcard, you are driven around in an airconditioned coach. […]
Easter Day 2 – The Wheels Fall Off
My start time was 2 hours earlier, and I looked forward to a cooler morning; it was not to be, as the temperature quickly soared again into the mid 30s. The terrain was very much like yesterday’s, but with less shade on the course. Setting was similar too, with the first few controls on rock […]
Easter Day 1 – Putting on the Training Wheels
It was my first foray into the forest for at least 6 months, and my first Easter competition for 2 years. So it was with a little trepidation that I headed to the start, feeling very much like I needed my training wheels on. I was one of the last starters, and it was blazingly […]
Bound for South Australia (Again)
Once again, most of the Dipidydoo crew are back on the road; no planes this time, as we’re just across the border in South Australia. We left Captain K at home so he could keep an eye on Ian (though there seems to be some partying going on amongst my bear collection, and the Captain […]
Sprinting in the Sun
Yesterday we had rain, with short breaks of sun. Today we had sunshine, with short showers. This meant dry socks! The morning races were the Knockout Qualifiers (with a quarter final for the elite men). We were placed into random heats with 6-8 people per heat. The top three went through to the Semifinal; the […]
Sprinting in the Rain
This is what we came for – the first of two days of Sprint orienteering, with four races (or five in the highly unlikely event that I make it into the Knockout Final. Let’s assume that won’t be happening.) Unfortunately the weather turned overnight, and we have two days of showers ahead of us. The […]
Doing the Dunes
Today was a midweek social event, in the sand dunes which lie opposite Sea World. From the road, you wouldn’t even know they were there, hidden behind a veil of vegetation. It’s a small but complex area of knolls and depressions, flanked by the ocean. Apparently half of it was under water not long ago, […]
Easter Day 3
It seems normal now to get up at 5am, and we move efficiently around the house, doing what we need to do to get ready and depart at daybreak. Today, day hadn’t quite broken, thanks to a heavy fog that was hanging in the valleys, severely reducing visibility. Once we climbed up to the plateau, […]
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