Bendigo bush series

Lots of disruption

Words Craig Feuerherdt

The Bendigo Bush season started out well with a “rock” event on the fabulous Mt Korong map. The weather behaved and Melbournians were still allowed to travel, lifting numbers to a high of 70. All felt good. The season continued with a mix of venues from the rocks of Mt Kooyoora, the mining and tracks at Royal George, to the classic Bendigo spur gully maps of Sedgewick etc.

Then phase ‘whatever’ of Covid 19 lockdowns and moveability rules came back into force. A few events had to be cancelled, one at extremely short notice. The lockdowns ended for Bendigo – everyone sighed with relief – then they were back on again. Finally new rules came out for the regions.

Melbournians still were not allowed to travel to the regions,

Lockdown starts at 1pm

by Margi Freemantle

That was the message that was sent out around 11am, via twitter and a Dan announcement, which most people had stopped listening to. Bendigo would enter another round of Lockdown in 2 hours’ time. Of course not everyone heard it and people were already travelling to the Bendigo event at Kangaroo Gully from around the region. A lot of people arrived at 12 noon to hear the news and the fact the event could no longer be run as a competitive event. Very quickly people decided to run their courses anyway. The rules allowed for an hour leeway to get home, and for those who lived within 5km they could use their hour of exercise time. The SI units were already out there, so the start and finish units were placed on rocks so everyone could still have the sensation of running a course properly. It all felt a little weird actually. Everybody got home okay, no one was stopped and questioned, and for those of us that have a download unit at home, we could still calculate our split times.