Teapot Creek

Scale 1:10,000 Contours 5m

2023 Australian 3 Days – Day 3 deficit into a win on the last day in W12A.Two early junior leaders who weren’t caught were Katy Hogg (W14A) and Hayden Dent (M14A), who both set up their overall results with big opening-day wins.

Apart from M10A, the other three classes to be decided by less than a minute were all in women’s masters classes, with two successful comebacks and one falling just short. Emily Walter looked to have W50A well under control when she led by 7 min after two days, but lost most of that on #6 on the third day.This set the stage for a close second half of the course but Cathy McComb fell 26 s short of running her down. In W65A, Jenny Bourne lost 7 min at #7 on the first day and needed most of the three days to get that back in a tight contest with Debbie Davey, but came from 3 min behind to take the lead by 31 s, while Valerie Brammall came back from a similar margin in W80A to take the honours by 50 s from Ann Ingwersen.

Warren Key struck opening-day trouble in M60A at the same control as Jenny Bourne had done, and for two days it seemed likely that Simon George would break through for a major national win after being well clear on day 1, but Key’s quality came to the fore on the last day as he went from being 5 min behind to 5 min ahead. Simon Louis did similarly in M40A after Steven Todkill won the first two days.

The M45A class was much anticipated before the start of Easter, being well stacked with former WOC team members (including Tom Quayle, on a visit back from Sweden). It lived up to expectations on the first day, with Quayle, Rob Walter and Grant Bluett separated by less than 20 s, and the top six by less than three minutes, but Walter took control after that and won comfortably. Bluett, eliminated from overall contention after losing an SI card on day 2, took a final-day win to make it one of five classes with three different day winners, along with M60A, W50A, M50A (where two of the three day winners missed at least one of the other two days) and W16A, where Maggie Mackay won easily overall after putting three days together where others could not. At the other end of the scale, seven did a clean sweep of all three days in contested A classes. Particularly impressive was Euan Best in M16A; having first come to prominence nationally with two individual wins at the Australian Schools last year, he completely dominated at Easter with no-one getting within 25% of him on any day. Paul Liggins made a welcome return to the national competition scene with a dominant performance in M55A, whilst the others who went three out of three were all familiar names at the top. Jo Allison was well clear of a strong W45A class, and Alison Radford (W70A), Jenny Hawkins (W75A), Geoff Lawford (M65A) and Alex Tarr (M80A) all added the event to a long list of titles. W70A did have the closest finish for a minor placing, when Carol Brownlie edged Lynn Dabbs out of second by 2 s. The weekend saw the continued return to normality of the Australian orienteering competition scene. For a significant number, the next major event will be in Europe, either as part of a national team or making a return to the northern hemisphere summer circuit which only a handful ventured to last year. For everyone else, next stop for national carnivals will be in Western Australia in spring.

Ron Pallas – Extracts from Uringa News blog

The carnival kicked off in Canberra with the Friday sprint. This was to be run at Jindabyne Sport and Recreation Centre however, a rather large renovation project put paid to that. The venue was quickly swapped to the often used but very complex ANU.

The next two days were just south-east of Nimmitabel. For the drivers it was very much a case of dodge the potholes as the bitumen in places was badly eroded. The best part of the drive was a long dirt section which was smooth as!

The arrival at Highlands meant stepping out of the car and with the temperature around 4 degrees it was not exactly conducive to socialising. At around 1000 m above sea level the scuds of rain certainly made it chilly. Most competitors had a 1.6 km walk to the start and so the clothing return was a huge pile of warmth. The terrain whilst not particularly steep was a real challenge. Fallen timber made going slow in places and the soggy conditions made for a slip or two. As can be seen on the map there was lots of rocks. The smaller stuff was not mapped which made it harder as you looked and pulled out a tape measure - greater than or less than 1 m! All things considered it was great challenge and whilst in the forest the cold conditions (read “freezing”) were quickly forgotten.