Saw Mill Creek turned on a proper late-autumn challenge for our event on Sunday 24 May 2026, with cool, cloudy conditions and light rain making for a pretty miserable day in the bush.
Even so, we had 15 entries and a total of 21 participants out on the courses, including four juniors, which was a great effort in the circumstances. The wet weather certainly made things tougher, and several competitors decided discretion was the better part of valour and did not complete their courses. On the other hand, Jennifer having completed the easy course and being wet already (but feeling warm enough), decided she would head out again and find a few controls on the Hard course as a fun challenge.
The standout contest of the day came on the Hard 2 course, where the top three runners finished close together, with Don Barker taking the win in 63 minutes.
The Hard 1 and 2 course were the same for the first 5 controls and comparing time between controls on WinSplits shows that for Leg 3-4 Don (on Hard 2) was fastest, and for Leg 4-5 Tom (on Hard 1) was fastest.
Outstanding effort awards go to Eric who has had a hip replacement only 5 weeks ago and Don who has obviously recovered from his illness earlier in the year.
Many thanks to Maurice for his overall support, Tom for helping with setup, and Erica, Don and Jock for packing up at the end of the day.
Events like this only happen because people pitch in, rain or shine.

Sunday 26th April marked our 2nd club bush event for the 2026 orienteering season, hosted at Four Mile Creek TSR by Maurice Anker and Kristy O'Neill.

After an overcast and drizzly set up on Saturday 25th, the sunny, warm and low wind conditions on event day were a welcome relief. Perfect settings for long weekend orienteering.

Excellent turn out with 20 participants of all ages competing not only as individuals, but also several teams across our Moderate and Hard 2 categories.

Alongside many NTOC regulars, the event drew participants from as far as Coffs Harbour, Walcha, Tamworth and even road trippers from Sydney.

Hard 2 was by far the most popular category of entry followed by Moderate, Easy and Hard 1. It would appear not many were keen for the Hard 1 fence crossings with only 1 participant!

Course feedback deemed it fair, enjoyable and sufficiently challenging. There were no mis-punches on the day and everyone registered a successful finishing time.

Congratulations to the following people for fastest time in category: Kasimir Gregory - NTOC (Hard 1 - 35:04), Don Barker - NTOC (Hard 2 - 51:23), Dave Christie - Uringa (Moderate - 39:25) and Jennifer Strack - NTOC (Easy - 44:10). Complete results can be seen on our web site at https://ntoc.asn.au/results.

Thank you to Don Barker, Erica Smith and Kasimir Gregory for assisting with pack up.

Kristy

A perfect day (weather-wise) saw a great roll-up for the first bush event for 2026.

It was great to see some new faces - Jennifer Strack from Walcha has just joined NTOC, and Dave Christie, a Uringa club member, has just moved to Armidale from Sydney. We hope to see both of them at any more events!

It was also good to see a strong roll-up from Tamworth, with Bruce Haig and Di Pascoe being joined by the Schwenke family. Joel & Graeme Schwenke showed their bushwalking and trekking background by completing the very steep Hard 2 course in a respectable time.

The Easy course had the highest number of entries, but due to the
difficult terrain and the great amount of branches and trees brought
down by last years heavy snowfall, the course was much harder than would be expected at a typical club event. Not surprisingly, only the
youngest and fittest were able to complete the course (congratulations to Benjamin, Jack & Lucinda - and of course Jennifer).

The most competitive class was Hard 3 (at 3.3 km, it was the shortest of the Hard courses). Four participants finished within a few minutes of each other - Alex Eberli just held out a fast finishing Felix Burkhard
and Amanda Kmetyk - both of whom were quicker than Alex over the last 3 legs!

Thanks to Jennifer and Dave for helping me set up in the morning, and thanks also to Don, Erica, Jock and Kristy for helping pack up in the afternoon.

The results are on the club website (and on Eventor).

Alec Watt