TOP END CHAMPIONSHIPS
Jeffa Lyon helps with the results
Sunset at East Point after the warm-up event.
Trewin, Haarsma inaugural NT Champions The very first Northern Territory Championships went off very successfully in early July, with about 120 competitors gathered from all parts of Australia and beyond (including a significant New Zealand contingent). It was a new Orienteering experience for all the visitors – which is why most of them were there. It was also a very enjoyable one for most, although many found the courses long, particularly as the weather, in addition to being as hot as everyone expected it to be, was also rather more humid than is usual for the middle of the “dry” season. Blair Trewin reprts: 28 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2005
NT Champs course setter Jon Potter presents land custodian Speedy McGinness with an orienteering map of his land (holding it upside down though)
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HE action opened with an afternoon event at East Point, a popular Darwin reserve, which gave competitors their first chance to experience the local forest, as well as mangroves and mudflats (neither as formidable as they looked at first glance, but it was the middle of the “dry”). The real reason most were there, though, was the Championships event the next day. This was at Lok Cabay, about 100 kilometres south of Darwin, and provided an interesting variety of terrain – low rocky ridges typical of much of the Top End, flat blacksoil plains in between (with some very big termite mounds – anything shorter than 2 metres didn’t rate as worthy of the mapper’s attention - some were up to 3.5 metres), and in the middle of it all some very complex areas of stromatolite rocks. In addition to being highly interesting from a geological point of view, these made for some good Orienteering, being large detailed boulders in the middle of essentially flat terrain. Overlaying all of this was standard Top End vegetation – a dense grass understorey everywhere that wasn’t burnt. About 90% of the area was burnt (something normal in the Top End, where most areas experience a burn of some kind every dry season), and some competitors who took a straight line across some light green on the way to the last control were left wishing they hadn’t!
