"Nine of the ten most poisonous land snakes in the world" Hmmm. There's always a bit of tension at the start of an O-course. But these words creeping through the not-so-subconscious definitely boost the adrenalin rush. This was our experience at the starting line as we prepared for some bush orienteering in Western Australia last year. We spent 6 months in Perth, and orienteering was a great way to explore some of the local backwoods. We'd wanted to go for a long time. My sister lives there and desperately wanted someone to introduce her family to orienteering, so finally we relented, reasoning we could roll a family visit into the agenda somehow or other.
Have you noticed how the natives of a place, once they realise you are a newcomer, take a barely-suppressed delight in noting all the local horrors and hazards? "Oh, it's fine now, but in January..." "Well, if you come back in June, the flies are so thick, that...." and so on. In Perth the snake thing came up several times. It's true, too. They really do have nine out of the ten most poisonous snakes in the world. Tiger snake: deadly. Dugite, deadly. Death adder: guess what? All found in the hills and bushland surrounding Perth. Bounding through the trees and undergrowth didn't seem completely sensible. But we were reassured! There were four sizeable O-clubs..one of the bush-running veterans confirmed that in 25 years of almost constant O-ing, no-one had ever been snake-bitten. One reason is that they don't orienteer in the middle of summer when it's too hot in the bush, and that's when snakes are most active. But mostly, snakes feel the vibrations made by the thundering orienteer and get out of the way. Only one or two people succumb to snakes per year in the whole of Australia. There's probably more risk of death from mouldy peanuts or getting tangled up in dental floss.
We orienteered from August to October, through the austral winter and spring. Winter days were usually a rigorous 16-19 C, edging up to 20-25 C in spring. Our local club was the Kulgun Orienteering Club. Kulgun means "best path" in one of the local aboriginal languages. The other Perth area clubs are BO (yes, that- but also Bibbulmun, the name of a local aboriginal people), WOW, Wullundigong Orienteers of the West, where wullundigong means little men of the forest. They do claim however that "neither height nor gender prevent membership". Finally there is LOST, the central suburbs club. LOST was acknowledged to be a "meaningless acronym". The clubs take it in turns to be the lead organisers for events. Average turnout was about 150-200, quite a leap from our cosy little New Brunswick meets. Although the basic event protocol was familiar, the experience of navigating in the Australian bush was special because of the uniqueness of the landscape, wildlife and vegetation.
The maps the WA orienteering clubs use are spread around the southwest of the state. Most are in the Darling Ranges, a long range of old granite mountains, beginning inland as an abrupt escarpment which forms a backdrop to the Perth city area. There are plenty of steep river gorges to wear down the elite competitors. The whole region is covered with eucalypt forests of varying type and density. The climate is Mediterranean and bushfires are common in summer. Depending on how long ago the last one was, the understorey ranges from quite thick to virtually non-existent. And if you orienteer through recently burned terrain, you get very dirty.
Botanically, WA is unique. Plant dinosaurs such as cycads form part of the undergrowth, together with other bizarre, fire-adapted species such as grass trees, which live to vast ages. They ooze big gobs of dark amber resin and are topped with spiky fronds of thick green needles like punk hairdos. Visitors come from distant parts to see the spectacular display of spring wildflowers. The swathes of pink, yellow and white everlastings are especially famous. The forests are also filled with flowering woody shrubs of amazing diversity, as well as orchids, flowering creepers, sundews (the most species in the world), and many other species found nowhere else such as kangaroo paws (the WA state flower), banksias, and bottlebrushes. End of botanical rant.
We did notice a number of differences between the routine at Aussie O-meets compared with the NB scene. Their "B" meets are called "public events". These offer a range of 8 courses - take a look at the table. At major events (badge events, more or less equivalent to our "A" meets) and at championships, these are augmented by shorter or easier options in most of the main categories, so that there may be a total of 12 to 14 courses on offer.
No map bags were provided, and the favoured way of keeping the control card under control was threading it on a wrist strap or whistle/compass string. The procedure at the start was to move to the map-drawing area at the first whistle, then you had two minutes to mark up your map. Master maps were on boards under plexiglass covers. We never did make it to any badge meets, but competition was pretty fierce even at the public events. A gratifying scrum of filthy, scratched bodies, ragged O-suits, and haggard, sweating or agonized faces could normally be seen around the finish area. Some of these desperadoes were adorned with clamp-like devices on their heads with some sort of eyepieces on what looked like swivelling brackets. We never did find out what they were (any ideas?).
Our first outing was in August to the Avon Valley National Park, about 50 km NE of Perth. Perth stands on the Swan river estuary. Up in the hills the same river is known as the Avon: the original mapmakers (obviously not orienteers) thought it was two different rivers. In the Avon Park the river valley is steep, over 300 m from river level to surrounding hilltops. The O-map spans from gentle rolling hilltops (mostly white) to steep complex gullied peaks with lots of light and dark green. This is a granite area with an abundance of large boulder clusters and quite a few big patches of bare rock. At the start, the openness of the woods and excellent visibility were impressive. It looked almost too easy! It wasn't though. We whizzed off through a stand of open grass trees with dry leaves scrunching underfoot. Our various parties met up after half an hour or so.... "How are you getting on?" "Terrible, haven't found the first one yet!" "Same here!" It took a while to adapt to the local mapping, on which paths which seemed to us as if they should be elephant tracks were in fact barely visible nuances in the leaf litter. Keeping track of distance was very important. Being very runnable is OK, but lesson number one was (to us relative greenhorns) you can overshoot in a hurry. After a couple of hours we got the hang of it, but ended up going at wayfaring speed. There were too many interesting things to see anyway. Anne's group saw a kangaroo, as well as something-rumoured to be a dugite-disappearing into a log. The kookaburras laughed in numerous places. Normally their demented laughing call is highly infectious, but it isn't when you don't know where you are on an O-course. The second outing was to Boyagarring. This is in a sheep farming region about 80 km SE of Perth. The O-map was a hilltop area approx 5 km by 5 km, containing rolling to steep hills and gullies, covered with a kind of gum forest known as wandoo. The wandoo gums are tall and open, letting in lots of light. The main challenge here, for those of us not doing the elite courses at any rate, was navigating through the numerous very complex boulder piles and clusters, plus lots of cliffs, granite again. Some of the boulders were really monolithic. Again we adopted a plodding technique both to stay in touch with the map and allow the study of whatever biota happened to be about. While examining a tiny skink which had secreted itself under a rock fragment, we "discovered" a scorpion along with it. Surprisingly, it turned out not to be deadly poisonous. Someone saw an echidna but we missed it. At the end we lounged about eating our lunch on massive boulders bordering a virulently green field. It was a beautiful day.
The next O trip was to Spice Brook, 60 km or so north this time. The last leg of the route in to the start was an extended bush bash over seemingly endless miles/km of rutted, boulder-infested dirt road with aggressive vegetation raking the car both sides for a long time. Someone's Volvo got bogged - we had a laugh-the driver had cut us up on the main road earlier on. Eventually we emerged into an attractive clearing with a stream. This map was used for the state champs in 1989. Dark green along an extremely squiggly watercourse (Spice Brook itself), mostly white apart from that. Not much rock here but complex spur/gully terrain with indistinct cliffs and lots of gravelly outcrops. The day was cool and threatened rain which didn't come; majestic huge gum tree forest but with a lot of wiry, prickly underscrub. We split into several groups and did H4 and MH courses. There was a large number of small sub-tributary streams and it was difficult to keep track of these, even when going quite slowly. We thought it best to hold back a bit so as not to show up the locals too much. We succeeded in this, and when we got back and started tucking into lunch, it seemed that a lot of people had already headed off home. This time an emu's nest complete with clutch of teal green eggs was discovered. Again, it was Anne's team that found the best stuff.
October 8 came and off we went to Mount Billy, a quick 50 km excursion due east of Perth this time. Up in the hills again, Mt Billy being a 100 m or so climb from the Helena river. The Helena is one of six or so rivers which feed the upland reservoirs from which Perth gets almost all its water. Large areas of these water catchments are embargoed as far as bush access goes and may not be entered. But it appeared that orienteers were OK. The Mt Billy map (1:15,000, as were all the maps we used down under) was mostly white, once again with a good choice of steep and gentler terrain. The by-now-familiar boulder zones were there too, afflicting the map with grape-shot blasts of black. They must have loaded some shrapnel in that cannon too, judging by the number of black triangles. The surface was firm and gravelly but covered with plants nonetheless. This was getting towards the end of the bush season, warm and sunny, and the wildflowers were thick. Progress was leisurely as we examined the fuzzy, scarlet and dark green kangaroo paws, yellow sundews and orchids, and had to tread through carpets of everlastings. In the hole under a big rootstock we watched a large, spider-hunting wasp quartering back and forth for a while. Large and rapid, with striking orange legs. Harmless unless you are a spider. No snakes or wild pigs, which also inhabit the bush in this area.
When the western Aussies aren't out orienteering, they may be found rogaining. This concocted word is sometimes claimed to stand for "rugged outdoor group activity involving navigation and endurance". The Aussies claim to have invented this "pastime", usually 24 hours of gruelling score-type orienteering in suitably lumpy landscapes. Another theory is that the word is concocted from the names of the three founding members, who claim to be Roger, Gail and Neil. At any rate, there are apparently as many rogainers as orienteers in WA with an average of more than four events per year being held. In August this year, the second world rogaining championships were held in an outback setting 400 km north of Perth. Despite all this, the powerhouse of orienteering in Australia is to be found in the eastern states (sort of like Canada, really). In the east they get snow and so there's ski-O, and even snowgaines. Doesn't that sound like fun?
Lots of good orienteering awaits you should your wanderings ever take you to Perth. We didn't exactly set any new local records, but we had a great time. Now, for those whose winter training consists of desperately clicking a mouse button in the vain hope it will strengthen the muscle groups employed in squeezing the control punch, and assuming you are hooked up to the internet, direct your cursor to http://uwa.edu.au/rec/oawa/. You can then read more up to date stuff about the clubs down there, newsletters, maps and everything. There is also a nice page on rogaining at http://scorpion.cowan.edu.au/wara/index.html. They have a neat logo!