Rogaining often seems to bring out the worst in the weather. After the deluge at the Hamilton Heritage rogaine in November, fortunately the rogaine weather gods were smiling on us at the Kingborough Metrogaine. 139 entrants in 52 teams enjoyed perfect sunny conditions in which to explore the beaches, cliffs, bush, playgrounds, pathways and streets of Kingston and Blackmans Bay.
We were certain no team would be able to visit all 46 checkpoints, but with Darryl Smith - the winner of the three previous rogaines - as our vetter, we knew we needed to give him a bit of work to do. We were surprised and pleased that every checkpoint was visited by at least one team. Checkpoints 20 and 66 were most popular with 36 visits each, closely followed by checkpoints 24 and 52. The checkpoints in the north-west corner of the map were the least visited. The ATM letterbox (40) checkpoint was perhaps the favourite.
The overall winning team of Jemery Day and Allan Hood visited 28 checkpoints and covered 27km. In second place overall, and the winners of the Mixed category were Mandy Giblin and Tony McIntyre, who were closely followed in third place by Sara Brain and Bernard Walker. In fourth place overall, and the winners of the Women’s category, were Karen Wild-Allen, Carolyn Davis and Lisa Harvey-Smith. At the other end of the results list were the Women’s Ultra Veteran team of Sally Salier and Janet Bush, who, with nothing left to prove after some 60 years of rogaining experience between them, enjoyed a pleasant 1.5 hour stroll.
Twelve family teams took part, and judging by the sticky faces that appeared at the finish, many had taken the time to find an icecream along the way. Team Carroll, with 78 years between the youngest team member Sean and his grandmother Joan, were particularly impressive. Owen and Roger Mulcahy, competing in their first rogaine, were pleasantly surprised to win the Family category.
The Junior Men’s category was very closely fought with the Poortenaar brothers Tom and Ben edging out Joshua Allen and Harry Driessen by only 10 points. By contrast, we suspect the winning Junior Women’s team of Anna and Zoe Dowling (who’ve both represented Australia in orienteering), weren’t trying too hard, as they were beaten by another pair of sisters – their mother and aunt.
Winners of other categories were:
Women’s Veteran: Janet Hancock, Sue Hancock
Mixed Super-Veteran: Diana Cossar-Burgess, Sebastian Burgess
Women’s Super-Veteran: Anne Briggs, Hilary Cane
Mixed Ultra-Veteran: Jim Laver, Barbara Tassell
Men’s Ultra-Veteran: Ross Kelly, Julian Roscoe, Ian Woolford
Women’s Ultra-Veteran: Sally Salier, Janet Bush
Full results can be found at https://rt.asn.au/index.php/event-results
Thanks to Meisha Austin, Mick Cooper and the team from the Orienteering Juniors for providing an excellent afternoon tea. Thanks to Kingborough Council for providing use of the hall and promoting the event. Thanks to Gary’s Dad, Bill, for joining the highly stressful results processing team.
The Three Wise Organisers