Hi All

A beautiful day and fantastic conditions for our Orienteering event at Saw Mill Creek, east of Hillgrove. Sadly only a dozen people made it, but those that ventured out all appeared to have had a good time…

Thank you to all for coming and special thanks to Nathan Jeffrey who set the courses and organised the event.

The next event is on Sunday 15 October 2023 at Kooringle, 25km west of Armidale (to be confirmed). Look out for an email in the 2 weeks leading up to the event.

There were 20 Orienteers at today's event at West Newholme, NW of Armidale. The weather was fantastic and provided ideal conditions: after a cool start the sun warmed up temperatures for a sunny day with very light wind.

An easy, moderate and 2 hard courses were on offer and all courses were popular and contested.

The long hard course (5.4km) was won by Jock Mitchell, 12 seconds ahead of Don Barker, who fixed a flag on a different course that had dropped on the ground. He would have won by at least the same margin. Thank you Maurice for relocating a misplaced flag. And also on the course Fiona, welcome back after your break!

The short hard course (3.6km) was won by Alec Watt. Not much behind was Sandy Watson, who put in a great result. For those interested in the WinSplits, on Hard 2 legs Start 1, 1-2, as well as 5-6 = 8-9 were the same on the Hard 1 course.

The moderate course (4.1km) was won by Sue Gooley in good time. We welcome the Pezzutti-Kmetyk family with 2 young children, who were very enthusiastic about orienteering. Despite taking their time on the course, they managed to score the best time on their course for the 7-8 leg. We hope they will become regulars in our club.

The easy course provided a challenge for both participants, with control 38 being quite hidden. When collecting the flags, I was able to spot it from the track, but I admit it wasn't as easy as it could have been.

A special mention goes to Michael Williams, who did not have much luck on his course but cycled all the way from his residence on South hill to the event start. Well done!

Thanks everyone for venturing out today

Felix

It was fantastic to see so many come up from the coast (from both Bush and Beach and from HOGS) to run in our event - we hope our courses provided a suitable challenge to make it worth the trip. Congratulations to Oscar - sorry if the course was a bit short. I was pleased to see that Matt completed his course, congratulations! You win the Perserverance Trophy (a Qld tradition) - your refusal to give up on Control 4 is the stuff of legends!

A huge thanks to Jock, who brought in half the controls; all flags & SI units were in before sunset and the event tidy-up was complete (not counting my house and car).

Finally, thanks to Karen, Karen and Kathleen for finding a car key - the owner was very grateful to get it back (after spending about 2 hours looking for it)!

Alec