THE FIRST EVENT

not racing, but behind the scenes. Mum was passionate about mapping. She thrived on it, making many maps in SA, to the extent that the SA calendar is dominated by events on her maps. Certainly her maps provide an amazing legacy to her contribution to the sport. Mum and Dad were mad keen birdwatchers; on every map she ever made, she included a bird native to the area – woe be the cartographer who did not draw the bird correctly! Mum and Dad volunteered many weekends at the Birds of Australia “Gluepot Station” in northern SA. Mum made a map for them and Dad helped coordinate a mallee fowl count. Thank you to all those who generously donated money towards Gluepot in memory of Mum and Dad in lieu of flowers. A new accommodation shelter will be named after them. When Mum and Dad moved from SA to Victoria in 2003, their main criteria for a place to live was it had to be good for orienteering, cycling and bird watching. Dad would often ride out to events to meet up with Mum. At one event, Mum caught sight of a “hot” guy on a bike. She was amazed that he rode right up to her and shocked when he turned out to be Dad! Mum and Dad were so much in love after 36 years of marriage. Although they were too young to die, they died instantly, together, doing what they loved – travelling about the countryside on yet another Orienteering adventure. They are buried back in SA, in a small cemetery next to a conservation park. As their coffins were being lowered, two sulphur-crested cockatoos flew over, screeching raucously – Mum and Dad laughing no doubt! Once again, thank you to our Orienteering family for your friendship. Hopefully we will see you at the SA Champs, being held near Burra on Mum’s last map, “Twigham”. Mum claimed that the terrain was better than anything she had mapped before so it should be great orienteering.

Love Miriam, Heather and our families (Miriam Whittington)

Your magazine

Congratulations Ian Baker on a job well done!

UNDER your editorship The Australian Orienteer has gained the reputation as one of the best orienteering magazines in the orienteering world, and one of which all Australian orienteers must feel proud. I am very much aware how over recent years Ian fought doggedly for the magazine and succeeded in persuading the Council of Orienteering Australia to maintain it as a publication to which all Australian orienteers subscribe. It would not be the fine magazine it is now if that battle had not been won! Thank you Ian for making our magazine such a professional publication, and (in your words) always such “a good read”.

John Brammall (Tas)

John Brammall is recently retired President of Orienteering Australia. See page 40.

Great event – poor turn-out

SPORTIDENT is certainly making for economical coursesetting and use of terrain. At the end of July I went to the Victorian State Series event at Whroo. My 4,500 metre course with 11 controls was all within an area of 1,350 by 900 metres, just 1.2 square km. Turnout was very low for a good event. Reasons have to be the long drive two hours from Melbourne and the fact that there was another long journey to Bendigo only two weeks before. The remedy is in event scheduling. Keep distant events well separated on the calendar and make the trip worthwhile by scheduling double-headers with quality events on both Saturday and Sunday. Otherwise members will vote with their wallets and just say it's not worthwhile.

Ian Baker (Vic)

Orienteering in 1954 - South Australia

Jeffa Lyon (SA)

IN 1921 Lembed Jarver was born in Tallinn, capital of Estonia, an only child. At school everyone took part in Orienteering - that meant being one of a team of six (five had to finish), to locate two controls using a map and return to base.

In 1936 the other students said that Lembed could run like Jesse Owens, famous for winning three Gold Medals at the Berlin Olympics. This talent led Lembed to university studies in Sports Science. Then came World War II. When Russia annexed Estonia, Lembed avoided conscription in the Soviet Army by hiding in the forests and swamps. When the Germans advanced and took Estonia in 1941, he joined an Estonian unit in the German Air Force. But in 1944 the Russians came again so Lembed had to get out.

He went west across some islands towards Sweden. With the Russians on his heels he was lucky that a German minesweeper picked him up from the last bit of that island coast. The fate of anyone caught was to be shot. The minesweeper took him to Schleswig in northern Germany where he worked as a waiter till the war ended. With Russia in control of Estonia he could not return; his father had been shot and his mother sent to Siberia. So he went to the Displaced Persons' Camp in Augsburg where he stayed for four years waiting to be processed.

While there he met and married another Estonian in the camp and also found his erstwhile Professor of Sports Science who gave him written evidence of his studies, invaluable later when he was able to use his training. After that four-year wait, Lembed and his wife Aita were allocated berths on the "Oxfordshire" to go to Australia. They were each given $US5 spending money but no papers so they were never allowed ashore during the journey because they were stateless persons. Their accommodation in this ex-hospital ship was in separate dormitories.

That segregation continued when ‘Jess’, as Lembed had become - from that 1936 likening of himself to Jesse Owens - was sent to work "making nuts" while his wife was given a job elsewhere. He worked as a builder's labourer while waiting for a job more suitable to a trained athletics coach. In 1952 the National Fitness Council advertised for a training officer. Jess got the job. He set up boys and girls mixed clubs to whom he taught running, tumbling, vaulting etc. He also coached individuals from the Harriers or the Sth. Australia Western Districts Athletics Clubs. Jess decided that these groups could do the same as he had done at school, orienteering, as a different form of running training.

So, in 1954 the first Orienteering event in SA, and indeed the whole of Australia, took place. This beginning led to the formation of the Sth. Australian Orienteering Club in 1956. But by then Jess was moving on to establishing "sweat tracks", to an involvement in setting up the Heysen Trail and the Youth Hostels Association and to journalism. Now, at 82, Jess still translates sports science articles from Russian or German.

Records were carefully kept of those early years of Orienteering, even through the lull in activities from 1961 to 1974. The when, where, and how of those early orienteering days will be recorded in the archival history on which OASA, and particularly John Williams, is working.

1969 is generally regarded as the year of the event from which Orienteering, as we know it today, developed. Instigator was Tom Andrews, now principal of Silva Compasses in Australia. Tom originates from Lithuania and also spent time as a child in a displaced persons camp in Germany before being resettled with his family in Tasmania. Ed.

It all started 35 years ago

IT was 35 years ago last month when the event which started Orienteering in Australia was held. On August 23, 1969, Tom Andrews and Peter Wills-Cooke of the Richmond Harriers in Melbourne organized the first event at Upper Beaconsfield, some 40km east of Melbourne. The terrain was private orchard country situated just 2km south-east of the current Cardinia Reservoir Park map. Assembly and starting point was the Pine Grove Hotel on Stoney Creek Rd. – and it’s still there (Melway 210J9 for Melburnians). The map was black & white, hand-drawn with a scale of about 1:20,000 (with the emphasis on ‘about’). Controls were 4-gallon drums painted red & white – much later we graduated to orange buckets hung from trees (see photo). The course was just 6.8km but competitors’ times were comparatively slow due to much running in the wrong direction. Ron Frederick (now of Nillumbik Emus) won the event in 1hr 45:52. Graham Moon was third, David Hogg fifth and Mike Hubbert eighth. A young Robbie Wallace finished tenth – his nearly 4 hours on the course must have given him a good grounding because he went on to represent Australia in the marathon. The Richmond Harriers formed an Orienteering club which soon changed its name to Red Kangaroos. Much later they merged with the Bayside club to become Bayside Kangaroos. And so it was fitting that Bayside Kangaroos held the 35th Anniversary event last month, not at Beaconsfield but at Bostock Reservoir near Ballan, west of Melbourne. In keeping with the long times taken by participants in 1969 the anniversary event was a Blodslitet with options for courses of 15km, 10 and 5 (for the ‘ancients’ amongst us). Mike Hubbert set the courses in compact loop formats enabling participants to return to the map change several times where they could recharge their energies on fruit cake and oranges. Ron Frederick (the original winner) was there to tackle the terrain and found things much easier this time around. Perhaps those 35 years of training have been worthwhile. All agreed that we shouldn’t forget that first event which started it all and are now looking forward to the 40th Anniversary in 2009.

A bucket style control marker from an early event.

Ron Frederick reminisces

THIRTY-FIVE years ago last month, Ron Frederick won the first Orienteering event held in Australia. He competes for Nillumbik Emus (NE) in Victoria and has been President of that club since 1999. The Australian Orienteer spoke with Ron about that first event and his achievements since then.

upturned red buckets as controls. It snowed heavily that morning covering the tops of the buckets so competitors couldn’t find them. A more recent highlight was the 1985 Australian Championships which my club organized at Crocodile Reservoir. We had more than 1200 entrants which I think is still a record for any event in Australia.

AO: Your club started as MUMC (Melbourne Univ. Mountaineering Club) and now it’s Nillumbik Emus. What were its other incarnations?

Ron F: Yes – MUMC and Richmond Harriers were the first clubs. MUMC became EMU (which meant ex-Melb. Univ.), then we absorbed St. Leo’s/Navigators and later Rockhoppers. More recently EMU merged with Nillumbik to become NE. The club has quite a complex history.

AO: Dave Lotty leads the all-time events table with about 1940 events. How many have you run?

Ron F: Nowhere near that many!! I guess I’ve averaged about 10 bush-O events per year over 35 years and perhaps 5 to 10 Park & Street-O events in more recent years. I haven’t kept a tally.

AO: How long will you keep orienteering?

Ron F: My health and fitness are still good so I’ve no intention of retiring for a long time. My family has a history of longevity so I expect to be an M80 at least.

AO: Any major events or trips planned?

Ron F: Looking forward to SnowE’05 next Easter.

Ron Frederick was a law student at Melbourne University. He now practises as a solicitor.

AO: What memories have you of that first event?

Ron F: I dropped my control card between the last control and the finish. The organizers recorded my time then allowed me to go back and find it without any penalty. I remember one control description was “The clearing with a good view” – I spent quite some time checking the views from various clearings before I found it. Other check points had very helpful control descriptions such as - “In the scrub” and “An old log on the hillside”. I was impressed by the way orchards had been mapped – there was a dot for every tree.

AO: Have you orienteered continuously since then?

Ron F: Yes, although when the kids were young my attendance was spasmodic.

AO: Any highlights over the time?

Ron F: Winning that first event was probably my highlight. I did go to APOC’86 in Hong Kong and remember having to avoid stepping on fresh graves along the course. I became the first Treasurer of the combined VOA/OFA in 1970. Those early meetings at Tom Andrews’ office in Castle Jackson certainly opened my eyes to the corporate way of doing things. I particularly enjoy Easter events – they take you to parts of Australia you would never otherwise visit. I was in the 1971 Australian team which competed against New Zealand in ACT. I still have the team badge. I also competed at Lake Mountain (Vic) in the first Ski-O event about 1980. The Frederick family ran the Sweet Control stall for some years – that certainly taught the kids about profit and loss. Another memory is of an early MUMC event at Bullarto (in Ron’s Australian Team badge from Victoria) when we were using 1971

First Orienteering Event

In 1897, the first ever public orienteering competition was held in Norway. During its first century orienteering developed from an activity invented in a small corner of northern Europe to a modern, high-technology sport practised by more than one million people in countries all over the world on five continents. World Orienteering Championships have been organized since 1966. Teams from 41 countries participated in the most recent World Orienteering Championships in Switzerland.

w e b s i t e

Recent additions to the OA website:

• Selected teams for 2004 WOC and 2004 JWOC on the

National Teams section of the

Foot-O page. Added and available for download are: • A new EIG-Ansvar logo for download and inclusion in all State Newsletters, event promotions, etc. • Information and syllabus for the Level 1 Controller

Accreditation course. • Updated Foot-O Competition Rules (effective

July 1, 2004). • The 2004 version of IOF Control Descriptions. (Visit the ‘What’s New’ section for easy access to the above downloads.)

www.orienteering.asn.au