... The Breakout Day

Close to Perth, and off South West Highway, past Serpentine and up into the escarpment, the Fawcett Orchard Farm had a magical hide-away clearing surrounded by bush, pine trees, orchard and the adjacent farm dam. A good turn out of rogainers, including a large number of novices and novice teams, gathered to prepare themselves for the 3 pm afternoon dash to spread out into the far flung areas of the Serpentine bush and hopefully return by the allocated 9 pm. (The generous course was large enough that several controls on the ‘South Side’ were not even visited...)

(This southern area was being prepared for Alcoa mining and this was the last opportunity to go to this
bush area before the mining occurs.)

There were some delightful thicketed water course controls as desirable 90 pointer controls which were there to tempt the adventurous...

For those interested in the competitive side of things: Ashley and Owen Horton, the winners, did a large loop around the Rogaine site and although they did not manage to return within the cut-off time of 9 pm and lost some points, they still emerged happy and triumphant.
Their course took them to almost the extreme southern reaches of the Rogaine area where up to 18 teams reached the intermediate southern Berkeley Road area (Nightingales sang in Berkeley Square).

Later that night, lost or late teams straggled in or were picked up close to the Hash House to the relief of the rescue teams and organisers.
Features of the course were the mainly bush site, stream locations, log crossings, the waterfall control, and even city and Indian Ocean glimpses from the furthest west controls. Broad features, broad knolls and some impenetrable gully thicket vegetation tested the mettle of all.

Shane had designed the course to spread out the teams, and also see if the pros could be tempted to extend themselves. Well done Shane!

Thanks to those who wanted moreQ and promptly went out to collect the controls either immediately after the days event; that night or... bright and early in the following morning.

Peter Beyer