Event Review

Twelfth Night Upside Down Rogaine, 15/16 February, 2003

The Twelfth Night was a rogaine that nearly didn’t happen. We agreed to set the event at the preceding Spring 12 hour event after the original setting team pulled out. This gave us 4 months until the event, 2 months short of WARA’s setting guideline.

At that time we had no ideas on a specific site but I thought a beach location for a summer night event would be nice. After some initial enthusiasm for a Margaret River event, suggested at the Post Rogaine BBQ in October, this idea was squashed by the committee as being too far to travel. Next we looked at a Preston beach area including the Yalgorup National Park and mature pine forest to the east, but we could not find a big enough area, partially due to logging activity in the pines. Then we moved on to the Fairbridge Farm and adjoining Alcoa farmlands and forest and simultaneously investigated an area near Muresk Agricultural college and farmland used for the Waterfall 6 hour event. A major landowner in the Muresk area declined our access request and others were a little reticent so we focussed on Fairbridge.

Fairbridge was not beach but we did have a lovely HH site on the scarp with ocean views. Fairbridge were happy to have us, CALM and Water Corp were happy, and Alcoa tentatively approved the event subject to sorting out details of out-of-bounds areas, so with just 2 months to the event we gambled on getting approval for an adequate area and ordered the map data. With just 60 days to the event, Alcoa responded to our written access request with a ‘yes but it will take 12 months for us to define all the exclusion areas’. The problem was due to numerous forest research projects and aboriginal and heritage sites.

With just 7 weeks to go there was insufficient time to find a new area and start landowner negotiations so we went for the Avon Valley National Park which had already been selected as the fallback site. It had no farmland but a track network and only one landowner to deal with. CALM had already indicated that it was available for the event.

In spite of it being the Christmas period, the DOLA map data and formal CALM approval came through quickly and by 10th January we had a site approved and map data. Unfortunately the formal CALM approval excluded a large piece of the best area due to the recently proclaimed unexploded ammunition exclusion area. A small area of farmland to the NE of the park that was used in the previous Avon Valley Tourist Trek rogaine was also unavailable for this event.

20 days later we sent the map to the printer. Fortunately, the setters and vetters were not restricted to weekends for field work. There were a few long hot days in the field.

All controls were visited by between 5 (7.5%) and 49 (75%) teams and there were no anomalous visiting patterns. The top teams went to all areas of the course but were well short of visiting all controls. We expected the top teams to come closer to getting all controls and were very surprised by the number of teams that took cross country routes in preference to track options. Some were lucky with their off track routes, some were not.

There were a number of comments on the positioning of controls but no consistent comment on any particular control. The navigation was a bit trickier than some expected and some teams were led astray by small erosion gullies, very apparent to the night time walker but too small to show on the rogaine map.

Lack of setting time forced us to use some control sites that we would rather have not used and to skimp on the usual procedure of independent setting, checking and vetting. We think all controls were eventually correctly and fairly placed, but one was moved as late as the morning of the event.

It was a very warm night, particularly when in sheltered areas with no breeze. Some teams found the heat too much and retired early and several men were seen out on the course shirtless. In spite of the heat, water consumption at the patrolled water drops was low with only 80 litres being used on the entire event.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Gary Carroll for efforts in cajoling DOLA into providing map data during the busy Christmas period and efficiently processing it to provide the base event map; to Jamie Ridley of CALM for rapid processing of a very late land access request; to Jim Maher, National Park Ranger, for allowing vehicle access to all parts of the park and generous entry fee discount; to vetters, Sandra Swain and Kerry Cowie, for very efficiently vetting; to Sandra Swain for the clue sheet sonnet (that many participants did not heed), and finally to Vicki Reilly and Craig Dermer for hours spent collecting a setting plate in the far eastern Parrot bush in spite of a staked tyre.

Phil and Penny Dufty. Setters. 3 March, 2003.