Reports

The 2025 Australasian Rogaining Championship - Murrumbidgee Wayfaring - proved to be a championship-level event, testing planning, navigation, route choice, and endurance. A large course had overall winners Tiaan Mckinnel and Jonty Mckinnel collecting 59 of the 91 controls on offer. Some may say the course was over-set, but if you watch the Strava flybys this meant that everyone really did choose their own route and went in all directions - 8 different first controls just for starters! This spread of routes was pleasing for the setters.

A thank you to Ron Simpson, Ryan Stocks and David Baldwin for awesomely accurate vegetation on the map. We know some of you still managed to find some challenging vegetation in the dark on the eastern side of Skaines Mountain and Tom O'Rourkes Peak.

A few random observations:

• Maps were handed out to all teams at 9AM within 2:30 minutes!
• We apologise for that muddy hole very near the finish that several of you fell in - we didn't know it was there!
• Some teams explored the Murray and Cooleman Caves on the course between 101 and 72. That's another good reason to carry a head torch.
• Nearly 1500 litres of water was used at the Hash House, another 1000 litres at water drops and probably lots more taken from streams on the course and purified using tablets supplied.
• Hot water at the HH from Friday to Sunday was mostly heated in a 40 litre urn using 21kWh of electricity from the organizer's EV - that's enough power to boil a kettle continuously for over 10 hours!
• All controls were visited (phew!).
• The European wasp presence explodes in March. There were almost none observed during hanging 3 weeks before the event. A wasp nest was found and eradicated on Friday less than 10m from the catering tent
• The large marquee was very popular for planning and post event gathering and presentations. Apologies to those people on Friday night when the inside was being mown with a line trimmer. It ran out of line after mowing the catering tent and new line only arrived Friday evening.

Andrew Cheffers has written an awesome blog post which is great reading as a report by first-timers to 24 hour rogaining.

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.

As reported in the NSWRA eNewsletter.

More than 100 NSW rogainers competed in the Australasian Rogaining Championships organised this year by the ACT Rogaining Association in the high-country of the Murrumbidgee River head waters.

Results are available here, with map overlay including GPS tracks of many teams.

It was a big field with 402 participants in 180 teams. There were more strong teams in almost all categories than in previous championships in the post Covid years. It was won decisively by a Kiwi team, Tiaan and Jonty McKinnell who scored 3640 points in 23hrs 43mins. Unlike a number of previous events up at 1500m, which have been very wet or very cold or both, this rogaine was warm and remarkably the temperature hardly fell overnight. Keeping hydrated and designing a route which matched climbing to fitness and making strategic use of the five water drops was the challenge.

The event was organised by champion rogainers Julie Quinn and David Baldwin who did an excellent job. The course was large, and David’s map to a very high standard complete with 5 metre contours allowed for placement of some controls on fine features which were challenging in the dark. There was however a remarkable full moon which shone most of the night. Had the event been two days later it would have been below freezing overnight.