MapLink MapLink Keeps Orienteering Alive During Melbourne’s Long Lockdown
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The call went out, and within no time, course setters were creating brand new courses; our MapRun team were setting up kml/kmz files at warp speed; we had a MapLink facebook page, an online virtual scoring system, and a Google docs library, which rapidly started filling up with maps. We were quickly spoilt for choice. People could use the MapRun smartphone app with their MapLink course, then share and discuss the best (or worst) routes, and sledge each other from a social distance, in fine Melbourne StreetO tradition. People took to MapLink with great enthusiasm, and it was good fun and very convenient. Without the need for large parking areas, we could start from previously unused locations in unfamiliar sections of some maps, giving a completely new feel to places we’d been many times. MapRun stats tell us that 2000 people used the app in Melbourne between April and September, and we estimate the same number again used MapLink without MapRun – that’s 20 people a day that otherwise would not have been orienteering.
The new Winter fixture was fresh from the printers, and we were putting the finishing touches on our annual summer Awards Night, when the first Victorian lockdown was announced. It was hard to believe we’d just hosted hundreds of orienteers from all over Australia for the Melbourne Sprint Weekend – soon to become a fond memory of better times. Knowing we’d need to get maps online quickly for people to exercise with, a small group sprang into action faster than you can say “vaccine”; and within 24 hours, MapLink was born. “Oh, that’s just another collection of old maps” you say. In fact, MapLink is so much more than a DIY Library (we rapidly built one of those, too – it now has over 700 maps from previous bush, park-street, sprint and MTBO events). Maps of previous events are all well and good, but, well, we’ve done them already. We have short attention spans! We want something new!!
Of course we were all desperate to get back together for real events as soon as possible. Our wish was granted in late May, when “training” was allowed for groups of 20. Online preentry and staggered starts quickly became our norm, replacing StreetO’s famously casual “rock up and chuck $5 in the bucket, and mass start at 7pm” approach. MapRun allowed us to have contactless punching. We wondered if anyone would want to come; after the first week we had to offer overflow daytime sessions to accommodate the numbers, and events were page 39
