2018 Autumn 12 hour Rogaine (Sat 28 April 2018)

Around Australia Day there was only one person listed on the volunteering list to set and vet the 2018 Autumn rogaine: Ian Spencer. Maybe the rest of us took pity on him but, for whatever reasons, suddenly he found he had four helpers out of the blue and things started to happen. Two of the helpers, Emma and Jo, had hoped to set the event near Katanning but, because the map data could not be obtained in time, the event had to be set on a site for which WARA already had data and the necessary permissions from land owners. So it was that once again we were headed for the Julimar State Forest and the adjoining farm land to set this event. The previous event at this site was the 2017 Upside Down 12 hour Bunuru Dreamtime event.

The Julimar State Forest offers a good range of terrain for rogaining: from quite flat land to steep(ish) sided gullies, from open woodlands to thickly vegetated, mostly prickly ground and from areas with few suitable features for controls to areas thick with features, many of them parallel ones. The tracks, where they go over steep ground, are badly eroded which makes driving a slow business. But on the flatter areas the tracks are quite good although there are a few tree falls with detours to slow progress.

Ian did an armchair set and armed with his map, Andre and Patrick found a cool enough day in the middle of February to visit the site and make a start. It would have been a good start except someone forgot to take the plates to hang at the controls so they had to content themselves with making GPS waypoints at likely spots and getting to know some of the tracks. Emma and Jo later did what the blokes should have done and hung the plates.

As it turned out, Jo and Emma could only visit the site at weekends, Andre and Patrick only during the weeks, and Ian unfortunately could not visit the site at all due to ill health and work commitments. In the end Ian had to pull out and Andre took over the responsibility for the map. We hope you get better soon Ian.

The four of us who could visit the site did not actually all meet up until the event. In the meantime, we communicated mostly by email. We ended up sharing the setting and vetting but, even then, some controls were only ever visited by one pair. A GPS waypoint was made for each control and then uploaded to the draft map. There might have been grizzles about some controls but no-one seems to have complained that any control was wrongly mapped.

Because of camping restrictions in the State Forest, we were forced to site the hash house on private land and we have to thank Eric Huuppponen for generously agreeing again to having us on his farm. The hash house was only 100 m or so from where it was for the Bunuru Dreamtime event. Perhaps we should have called this event the Déjà Vu All Over Again Rogaine.

By mid April John Herzfeld had given us the FCUs (field control units for those in the dark) and the corflutes to hang at the controls so we started visiting the 60 spots we had marked to swap plates for the real things. We managed to do that quite quickly and were just about ready for nearly 300 rogainers. By Friday evening we were ready.

The event went well. It was quite a warm day and we were undecided about a fire until late on in the day. The small fire we did have seems to have been appreciated. Thanks to all those who entered and a special thanks to the hash house and administration vollies, especially John H, who all did a great job.

Emma, Jo, Andre and Patrick.