It was a beautiful day at Boronia Park, Garingal's Come and Try It event on 31 July. Anthony and son Will came for a trot around the rather muddy course, as did Dave Lotty, who managed despite wearing running shorts, to have pristine legs at the end of his run - did he run so fast that he skimmed over the muddy puddles? Not natural! Ian was at his last event before going off to the Scottish 6 days to join both his parents and the other hardy Uringans near Oban. Mary Jane has organised a rota to use the club tent loaned by North Gloucester Orienteering Club so it should be a jolly affair even if it pours with rain -and lets be honest, the heather doesn't grow when it is dry and the hills are covered with the stuff! The wily NGOCers are looking forward to an Orienteering Ashes so I hope they all run better than Ian did today:)

WMOC- LONG FINAL

The advertised temperature was tipped to be 35 degrees and it was pretty darn close to it although there was a cooling breese today. Where as on previous days no escape from the sun, today we were fortunate to grab - that is the ANZAC alliance- some shade which stayed with us most of the day. When it disappeared we ended up in the bush.

Uringans once again did battle in their respective finals. Readers of the previous posting will remember my moaning about the green, well today we had the sort of forest that was promised. Reasonably open fast and fun. The sink holes were huge and it was always interesting as to how you approached the area. The holes were not symmetrical and it was always easier to go in on the slightly less sloping side.

The weather played a part in performances as the heat was debilitating. Needless to say the A Final winners absolutely flew and Km rates were very very fast. Thankfully at the end of the race the local fire brigade had a hose set up which sprayed you with a drenching of cold water. This drenching certainly reduced your core temperature in a hurry.

The beer tent was doing a roaring trade and whist there was no pig on a spit, as there was the previous event, the food was varied. Mind you the gelato ice creams were melting faster than could be served

Results

M50 B Final - Nick Wilmott 64th

M55 D Final - Ron Pallas 19th

M60D Final - Ian McKenzie 22nd

M65C Final - Dick Ogilvie 41st

W50C Final - Margaret Wilmott mp

W55C Final - Gayle Shepherd 15th

The highlight of the week was the fantastic 2nd place and silver medal for South Australia's Susanne Cassanova. It was a delight to see her perform so sonsistently over the week. Sister Jenny also did well with a top ten performance, Both girls were running in W35. Somewhat coincidently it was Susanne's birthday.

After each run you were given a brand new map, not printed on tear proof paper. There were the tragics who were going through collected maps later in the day looking for their map.

Perhaps the only aspect that one could criticise organisers was in the organisation of busses. The concept of forming an organised queue seems to be totally lost on organisers and many orienteers. They seem to feel that people who were there early are meant to be swamped by late comers. It is amazing what can be done to block a bus doorway to ensure easy access for early arrivals.....

Mind you no aussie reported having their map snatched this year so maybe things are changing!

Next year will see WMOC in the Harst Mountains in Germany. Tempting but I want a guarantee of cooler temperature.

For Nick and Marg it is off home via Hong Kong, Dick is off to Oringen and Gayle and I are heading for Croatia to take in the beaches and beer halls and have a good time.

WMOC Long Qualifiers

Long Qual 2

Long Qual 1

Shooting Hide

Down into a sink hole

Clear open and runnable note the tracking

The greenest spot we found

Those sink holes were deep and cavernous

Well it was like this we went to the Long Model event and we were dished up terrain that bore some semblance of similarity to that of the qualifiers.

Where the model had these beautiful sink holes open terrain etc ( see photos) the Long Qual 1 had deep ravine like gullies and no sink holes and Long Qual 2 had sink holes and plenty of vegetation in around and about!

And so we travelled out to Long Qual 1. I must say the organisation has been brilliant and nothing is left to chance.

Petocz was the venue for Long Qual 1. The assembly area was in open ground ( no shade) around a mine ventilation shaft. Nothing to be concerned about except for the nuclear warning signs around as the mine was a uranium mine.

The terrain was crisscrossed with many tracks which made navigation easy and hard if you know what I mean. The toughest part was that the gullies were very steep, hard to get into and hard to get out of. In general the vegetation was easy to cope with although the course setter did like sticking controls into green gullies or green knolls. I was lucky and had an early start as the day proved to be quite hot and so we were on a bus at 7.45am for an 11.10 start. Gayle was off after 12. By the time we got a lift with Nick and Marg back to Pecs we had had 6 hours out in the boiling sun.

Dick was the standout Uringan at this race finishing 15th in his heat. The rest of us were well down the list but not disgraced at all

Long Qual 2 was at Orfu with the assmbly just 600m from where Nick and Marg were staying. Gayle and I had early starts and again it was the early bus. Georgieu, our hotel host just loves 6.40am breakfasts. The area is very scenic and a feature on all courses was the "Man from Snowy River" descent in the final stages of the courses- I went down 22 contours on my descent. I felt rather sorry for some who missed their control on the way down and had to head back up the hill. It would have been soul destroying. Fortuntely Gayle and I along with Dick, Nick, Ian and Marg we made it down unscathed.

For me this day was my waterloo and I struggled. I lost confidence after a ridiculous miss at control 2 and I went from bad to worse. In the end I just took easy route choices to avoid more errors which in many cases added distance and climb. Dick had problems with a period of reading his course upside down and backwards whilst gayle had a run with only one frustration. Nick loved his course but agreed that he lacked speed and so was a good 25 minutes off the pace whilst Margaret was on target for the majority of her course.

And so we look to the finals and hopefully a better performance by some of us

Nick Wilmott- M 50- 24th 27th overall 27th B Final

Ron Pallas - M 55- 60th, 61st, 60th D Final

Ian McKenzie- M60- 44th, 43rd, 44th D Final

Margaret Wilmott- W50- 39th, 49th, 47th C Final

Gayle Shepherd - W55- 37th, 48th, 41st C Final

WMOC Sprint Events

Sprint Qualifier in Pecs

Komlo - sprint Final- sorry about the quality but you will get the idea.

Opening ceremony - look far right in crowd for Uringa heads

Nick powering down the stairs to the final control

Nanospeed nanna in the finish straight

Marg heading home

Nick and Marg catching up with O/S aquantainces

Well Uringans didn't trouble the scorer by reaching A finals

The qualifier was run in the old part of Pecs and was very tricky - trying to find a way through between streets so that you didn't meet dead ends in courtyards etc

It was fun and what was also great was that you ran through the streets and the every day rhythm of the city was unchanged. picnics, sight seers, dog walkers, wedding parties all went on around oblivious to our endeavours.

The level of competition is huge with mens 55- 65 each having 4-6 heats. You coughed and you were out of A final calculations, and if you paused to breathe well there goes B final aspirations and if you are like me I was very happy to make D final! (there was no lower).

The opening ceremony was held that afternoon and was as usual rather long with some classic folk dancing that could have been a bit shorter.

Pecs is the gelato capital of the world- never seen so many gelato bars..

Sunday saw us in Komlo a mining town established in the 20th century. Very ordered and almost symmetrical in look. The challenhe here was that whilst Pecs had some climb - there was plenty in Komlo where Pecs had the occasional park Komlo had forests and parks. So you had to switch between thinking processes. It was fun and a challenge but no where near the same as Pecs.

We did okay in the finals:

Ian McKenzie M60D - 45th out of 64

Dick Ogilvie - M65B 21/80

Margaret Wilmott W50B 51/77

Nick Wilmott M50B 37/81

Gayle Shepherd W55C 8/48

Ron Pallas M55D 9/39

Greetings from Hungary

Parliament House

The last monument to communism- left as part of the pull out in 1991 is strangely located directly outside the heaviestly guarded building in Budapest - Yes the US Embassy

Dinner Uringa style

It is indeed a small world when you climb a hill to Castle Buda and there standing on a street corner was Ian McKenzie studying the map of the castle intently. Well let us make it even smaller by tossing in Nick and Margaret with whom we shared dinner on a couple of nights and then as we were waiting to tour the ""Underground Hospital" who should walk out on the previous tour none other than Mr Summer Series - Ross Barr.

There is no doubt that travelling to Eurpoe is mind numbing. Even with a magical personal entertainment system spitting movies at you and some great foo,. 30+ hours of sitting bolt upright in a far from comfy chair is not my idea of fun especially if you do not sleep. Mind you it is a means to an end.

The beds at our hotel are not exactly soft and lush but by goodness when the head hit the pillow and the body became horizontal on the first night here there were plenty of zzzzzzzzzzz!

Budapest is a beautiful place. The contrast on the river flats - boy did they have some fun with floods over the years, and the hills on the Buda side of the Danube make it a very picturesque city. There is history and charm dripping from every corner. There is a marked constrast with some buildings having had centuries of grime cleaned from their stonework and others still a very black looking grubby appearance. Some buildings have only the bottom floor cleaned - that is because the rich live on the bottom floor and only they can afford to get the building cleaned.

The transport system is far easier to master than the names of the stops.

Food is good and cheap and beer is very good and cheap. Yes they have bananas at $1.25kg and tasty they were and I can tell you we will be eating more than our fill over the next few weeks.

Lots of walking and yes blisters are a part of life for someone( not me).

I can recommend the "Free Communist Walking Tour" great info and an outstanding guide who had experienced life under communism. Life here is still subject to corruption that became the norm after the carve up of communists owned utilities.

We are now heading for Pecs home of WMOC.

Stand by for chapter 2 -Peaking at Pecs (pronounced paish)

Centennial Park CATI and Junior Series

Maggie Jones (OANSW's New Communications Officer!) will be writing

up the event for the OANSW web news in the next days.

In the meantime, here's some photos of a

most enjoyable, sunny and successful orienteering event set by Sarah Garnett.

QBIII 2011 - a few notes from tortoise Mary Jane

The annual Queen's Birthday Orienteering Three Day Event is one not to be missed, no matter what the weather. Fortunately, though it was cold, it was pretty much not wet ... when we were all out in the forest. The time for exploring Lithgow and environs, well that was another matter and wet certainly did feature.

There are a lot of photos linked to the event website, which give an inkling of the experience. The Uringa social outings aren't included there, though, so here's just a quick one from Saturday night at the Workies. Unfortunately, my closeup photos of the kid's table and of the teenager's table weren't good enough, but you certainly can get the big picture of Uringa and Garingal taking over a neatly set out room of small tables and rearranging to suit!

What about the 'tortoise'? I just have to share how successful my tortoise strategy turned out to be. QBIII is a three day event (with each day also a separate NSW State League event). The top three on each course over the three days are awarded a patch. When I moved up to red courses my only goal has been to finish the course and, maybe, not be last. No patches expected! Over three days this time, however, mispunchi

ng, course setting (one of the hares in my age class) and injury left only two of us standing... and so for the first and perhaps only time in my orienteering career I received an A course patch. Persistence can have its reward. (The emblem plays on the history of the Lithgow Flash.)