Australasian Rogaining Championship 2025
On our drive up we noted that the mountains looked lovely but the vegetation was rather thick for walking. However Long Plains proved to be what they are named after, long pastures (it looked easy walking whilst driving through) surrounded by relatively low-lying hills covered with gum trees. Perfect rogaining country.
We met David Baldwin (one of the setters) on entering the still sparsely populated campground and a couple of disgruntled horse people leaving.
The Hearnden’s were already set up having arrived the night before. On David’s advice we set out after lunch to the Coolamine Homestead. Amazingly neat and beautifully reconstructed. A very isolated but gorgeous location. Nearby were the Cooleman Gorge and caves. Would very much like to revisit this spot and do the whole gorge walk one day.
We arrived back from our afternoon jaunt in time to greet Paul & Des, who camped by us and later, Jenny & Trent who arrived by bus.
Saturday
A coolish morning giving me some hope that we could do the event rather than just some nighttime training that I had been envisioning along the way.
Soon it was 9am and we got to see the map, 1:25000 scale with 5 metre contours, it was a large map but not quite the tablecloth I was expecting.
There were lots and lots of controls, David dislikes making the course doable as he feels it makes planning too easy, as you just join the dots without considering point value. He likes to make a route choice a challenge for all teams.