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Day 1 Middle Distance

Despite an early forecast of light drizzle, there was a total of 81 competitors on Day 1. On arrival, they were greeted by a change in the weather to windy and rainy for the duration of the event with fine weather returning after the last competitor finished. People camping had a chilly night despite a huge bonfire kindly provided by landowner Russel Thomson.

Courses were set by Peter O’Loughlin who unfortunately was unable to be present on the weekend due to a medical

Despite the weather forecast and a Rogaine the previous day, almost 80 people came out to enjoy the courses set by Nick Dale and controlled by Ian Fletcher in some of our most challenging orienteering terrain. Many thanks to both of them. And the weather in the morning was delightful. Once the fog rolled away, we enjoyed beautiful autumn weather until after lunch. Even the control collectors only had a very light, occasional sprinkle to put up with.

Although it was showery when putting out controls on the Saturday, it cleared nicely for our mini mountain bike rogaine on Sunday morning. It was fantastic to see so many new families join us, and runners too.

A big thank you to Jack for managing all the entries and computer. The 100 km² map has been a huge undertaking by Duncan Sullivan and is WA's largest orienteering map. A lot of scouting trips were needed by Hadrien and Ellie to decide where to put the 63 controls for this score event.

Happily the Mt Billy event was held on Sunday after an interupted preparation due to Covid 19 lockdowns and restrictions. In the end with fine weather, there was a good turnout of 91 competitors who tested themselves on courses set by Matt Seward, Rachel West and Craig Dufty.

A huge tree trunk crossing Yarra Rd found on the Saturday prior to the event added some access concerns for the setters. Half the road was cleared Sunday morning when Jack Dowling used his 4WD to pull much of the tree

 Just over 100 people enjoyed the pleasant autumn weather for the event at Whiteman Park last Sunday.  There were many who were newcomers to orienteering and it was good to see a number of students from St Brigid's School attending as practice for the June Schools Orienteering Championships.

Well defined boundaries on the E and VE courses kept younger participants on course, while on the longer courses route choice was affected by the many fences that were topped with two strands of barbed wire! 

WA’s first multi-level Sprint was a mixed success, with opinions of experienced orienteers ranging from “too hard to be enjoyable” to “the best sprint I’ve ever done.”

On the positive side, most people nevertheless seemed to ‘enjoy’ the experience. The artificial barrier in the west quadrangle caused a few grumbles but the grumblers conceded that it did add considerably to route choice options. Everyone agreed that it was very challenging both mentally, with the tremendous amount of route

On the day before the predicted deluge associated with Cyclone Seroja, 39 people competed in the first MTBO of the year starting next to Bibra Lake and heading off into the surrounding suburbs on the hunt for 40 controls. The event was a score event and competitors had two hours to visit as many of the 40 controls as possible.

The course was set by Ben Coetzer and Brian and Anne Austen helped place the 40 controls on the morning of the event. Most of the controls were accessible by road or

A bright sunny autumn morning saw around 80 competitors make their way around some challenging and interesting courses.
The map is a nice mixture of buildings, open paddocks, some more vegetated areas around dry creek beds and some adventure game structures.

Results can be found here.

There were some fast times with Sten Claessens winning the long course in just over 18 minutes, while his son Ruben sprinted round the easy course in just under 17 minutes. The women's long course was quite

Today's event at the Perth Waldorf School was to be my final at setting in WA and I was ever so pleased that the school allowed us access. I had mapped the school in July last year and it was so very complex that I needed two field trips to get everything right and even then I found errors when out course checking (and sadly more when putting out controls but nothing major so I had hoped no-one would notice). The natural bush setting (and the occasional quenda or rabbit sighting) added to the

A windy but fine morning saw 65 people competing at the first NavDash of the year, starting in the pleasant grounds of the Gosnells Civic Centre and moving out to the riverside bushland of Centennial Pioneer Park and briefly into the Gosnells shopping area.

The nature of the area and the short time-frame available for planning meant there was limited scope for map updates and subtlety in course planning. In any case, the map offers few opportunities for detailed navigation challenges and

tRicky had been preparing for the Claisebrook event for quite some time, being a new and very complex map (for a Metro event) there were a lot of decisions to make about CP locations, probable pedestrian traffic and a number of busy roads through the map causing OOB headaches.  As it turned out there were more important issues to deal with such as a possible cricket final on the same night (avoided), then the lockdown (ended the day prior) and finally the remnants of a tropical cyclone passing

Saturday 23rd January

The MetrO event at Mullaloo was the last of 4 in the Joondalup area.  Weather was certainly different being on the coast in the afternoon - at best described as "a pleasant cool change with a sea breeze" - when sitting/standing around for a while, it was decidedly chilly.  The cricket match that had been set up next to the assembly area caused fewer problems than first anticipated.

Controls had been set out along the beach, and also throughout the parks and housing.  There

Saturday 30th January

At first sight Bibra Lake is an unlikely prospect for a MetrO event, with the land being strung out around the extensive swampland. However, it provides a variety of terrain and consequently some substantial route choice options. The Short course could be completed entirely in parkland but a well-chosen loop through the bush track network was about 500 m shorter. The shortest option for the Medium course required choosing an efficient route to visit all the controls in the

Saturday 16th January

A fun but challenging time was had by all in the heat of North Freo on Saturday. The course setter (Noel Schoknecht) sat out this event at home – in isolation, after returning from Christmas and New Year with his Mum in Melbourne, so it was left to Simmo and others to do the hard yards!

Saturday 9th January

After a scorching week the weather cooled down somewhat to allow the Shelley event to go ahead with 72 competitors / groups participating.  The course was set by junior Kate Braid with good feedback from the short course competitors who noted that all first four finishes took different routes for their 7 controls. Duncan Sullivan was first finisher on the short course with Ken Brownlie second who was closely followed by his grandson Archie Brownlie in 3rd. First female