On arriving back in Perth early last November, I noticed that no-one had volunteered to set the April 12 Hour so I took it upon myself to set it. With very little time to organise farmers, etc, I asked the committee if they had an area close to Perth - “all bush”. Wot Not (2005) area was just east and in no time flat DEC had agreed to allow us to use that area. It was about this time Mal Dennett said he would love to give me a hand to set but would be away at the royal wedding at the time of the rogaine.

There were a couple of cooler days in early December so we went out and set the bulk of the event and we felt quite pleased with ourselves
because “we now have a rogaine”!! However, in January, the Department of Water (in their great wisdom) decided we could use the area “but no camping”. We looked at other areas but, needless to say, we chose to stay put. The details of the next couple of months are best left there but I would like to thank the committee for their efforts to convince DOW to let us camp and I know there is still on going talks to solve this problem for future rogaines.

Because it was set in such a hurry and I had been given a job in Albany, it put a lot more pressure on me and I made quite a few “little” mistakes, the best being the circle in the wrong place for control 64 – for those still looking, it was 450 metres northeast of the circle. I forgot to transfer the change on to the finished map!!! A big thank you to Craig Dermer and Vicki Redden for helping to vet and hang out control and organise quite a lot of controls to be picked up after the event (they had just returned from tripping around also). Dave Muir came out to help us hang controls (many thanks Dave) and he told us that it took him 50 minutes to find the tapes for 64 and we still didn't pick up that it might be in the wrong place.

About 6 weeks before the rogaine, DEC graded the road and built a new bridge right at the hash site which caused all the bull dust we had to put up with (I was praying that it would rain and settle the dust). We also didn't count on all the bees at the water drops and I would imagine that it put the wind up quite a few of you. Nothing I can do about Mother Nature..... Also, Mother Nature turned on 36 degrees for you to run around in the bush which caused quite a few problems with heat exhaustion and heat stroke. I hope everyone has recovered. While driving out to check the water I had to make two emergency trips back to the medical tent which meant one water-drop ran out of water before I could get there – I hope that not many people got caught. Craig, Vicki & Warren Smith also wandered around the water drops topping up people who had run out of water between water drops. Just another tip – take out more water than you think you might need, the team running the rogaine had to fill up people all the way around the course because they went out with too little water. Mother Nature also saw to it that there were thousands of ticks out there for you to share around so I hope all the itching has stopped and the swelling going down.

I am still “blown away” by the number of people that still turned up for the six hours, how many families with small children turned up and even more surprised at how many of you went out and collected controls – THANK YOU ALL. A special mention goes out to John and Daniel who collected control 61 in the dark with just an iPhone for light. Who needs new bright lights when you have good navigation skills?? Thank you also to the truck driver and the packers and un-packers, the admin crew, the first aid officer and all the people that helped to pack up. With all the disappointments and trepidations it still turned out to be a great rogaine.

ROGAINING IS FUN

Mal, Craig, Vicki, Warren, Dave and Vince