Lerderderg 15hr Rogaine

A few weeks ago, Cecilia and I were on our way home from canoe polo at the campus pool when we bumped into Dan.  I didn’t know Dan, but Cecilia did – presumably because they’re both exchange students from the states.  During the course of our brief conversation, Dan said he was keen on the idea of Rogaining.  I had been out of contact with my rogaine partners from last year, so I did my best to etch Dan’s contact details on a banana I had in my pocket with my keys (in lieu of pen and paper).  It turned out that he gave me the wrong phone number, but we set the record straight with facebook.

I sorted out entry and payment for our team of two, Dan hired out camping gear and whatnot from the bushwalking club and found us a ride to the event.  Unfortunately our driver did her ankle at a netball game the Thursday before the rogaine and pulled out, so I found another ride at the last minute.

Greg met us at 8 on Saturday morning, we made it out to the hash house by about 10:30 after a wrong turn, a stop to pick up Greg’s partner Mick, and a coffee break at a fantastic small-town bakery along the way.  Dan and I pitched the tent, checked in, collected the map and made a flight plan.  We left at noon – Dan was the pack horse and I was the navigator.  Not how it’s usually done, but this arrangement turned out to be quite effective.

The first couple of checkpoints were quite crowded, as is to be expected at the start of an event.  At one of the early checkpoints, two older women arrived as we were writing our particulars on the marker.  The lady in front, while explicitly stating that she didn’t mean to be pedantic, pretty much accused us of trying to sabbotage their game by taking too long at the checkpoint.  Bitch!  I mean, waiting 15 seconds for us to finish isn’t going to make much of a difference over a 15 (or 24) hour event.  We were determined to get more points than the older women.

It was pretty smooth sailing all afternoon with few navigational errors.  We occasionally referred to features on the map more nerdily as things like ‘local maxima’, ‘local minima’ or ‘places with a maximised directional derivative’.  Steady progress was made in a southerly direction, away from the hash house to where all the high-scoring checkpoints were.  We met some older bush walkers from Tasmania at around 4:00, and then again before dark.  Nice to talk to, but they’d bite your ear off when given a chance.

We got lost on dusk (Mick told me later that’s what usually happens) – turned off the road too early and went up the wrong hill.  Oops.  By the time we went back down that hill and up the right one to the checkpoint, it was time to put our headlights on.  It was the first time I had done night navigation, and to my suprise we were spot-on most of the time.  We made it to a water drop at about 8:30 to find not only the usual supplies of water and fruit, but sandwiches too!  A fine selection of jam, vegemite and peanut butter we had to choose from.  Dan ate about half a dozen, but then again he’d been carring the backpack for the two of us from the start.

Tiredness made for some delusional conversation for the hour or two before we got back to the hash house at 10:30.  Soup!  Stew!  Cous cous!  Chocolate custard and stewed pears!  The hash house always has a top-noch meal for returning rogainers.  The catering team ran their first-class volunteer operation from a farm shed, all night long.  In addition, there were a number of camp fires to choose to warm ourselves with; the flames and a warm meal seemed to facilitate communication as tired rogainers swapped stories from the day.

Woke up around 7:00 the next morning, had a quick bite to eat left within half an hour.  I found the early moring walk a relaxing experience, perhaps even magical; the air was crisp and sweet as the dirt road – clearly less traveled than it once was – took us on a tour of crumbling houses, rusting machinery and vintage trucks with vines poking out of the cabin.  The odd pile of hay bales indicated that someone still used the land, but whoever they were they were nowhere to be seen.

This tree managed to catch my attention, for it had clearly suffered a traumatic experience earlier on in life.  Nevertheless, it manages to maintain a carefully balanced perfection, smooth, seamless, stable.  Do trees know about center of mass?

We made it back to the hash hous a couple of minutes before noon.  I experienced the most amazing cheese toastie ever.  Monash actually won the university competition, so we (along with two other teams) were recognised during the presentation and awarded our choice of chocolate bar.  I was quite pleased with our team score of 1420 points (unofficially, as one checkpoint wasn’t counted for some reason).  Packed up camp and headed back home.

We stopped at the same bakery, this time for a vanilla slice.  A top-notch vanilla slice is characterised by a crispy pastry and light custard filling; where I live most bakeries are run by Chinese bakers who have little appreciation for the humble vanilla slice.  I am pleased to report that this particular slice was top-notch.

I was sore and stiff for two or three days afterwards, but the weekend away was completely worth it.

Apparently there are rogaining events run in Europe, Japan, North America and North Queensland, so there’s really no excuse not to try it out.

Easter Break

I spent the first few days getting some work done so I could do nothing for the rest of the week.  Met up with David and Alita at an outer-suburban train station and went straight up to see Karl and Gladys.  David and Karl are brothers; I’m their second nephew.

We stopped at a small town – Yea, I think it was – and took a brief survey of the lunchtime dining options available.  Takeaway.  Four bakeries.  Pizza.  Small-town Chinese takeaway.  Up-market beer garden.  Quaint rustic cafe.  We really couldn’t decide, but eventually it all came down to David’s desire to sample the local pie scene.  We chose the cafe with the most customers over the cafe with the Best Pie Award for three years straight – because the more people there are the better the shop must be.  Supposedly.  David’s verdict?  Not the best he’d had, but respectable nonetheless.

The Yea offerings only served to remind me of the shocking pie experience on campus: a choice of four refrigerated varieties, microwaved on demand to a steaming, soggy mess that remains too hot to eat for over 10 minutes – and falls to bits thereafter.  After the Yea episode, I have decided that never again will I indulge in what Monash has on offer.  I didn’t intend to write a comparative review of pies, nor a whinge about Monash Clayton’s uninspiring campus atmosphere, so back to the story.

Karl & Gladys’ place was on the top of a hill, surrounded with cow paddocks and eucalyptus forest, the mountains in the distance not yet capped with snow.  The air was crisp and clear, in contrast Gladys’ sharp, warm cooking.  I can’t remember meat-and-three-veg ever being this good.  Gladys informed me that the bull we were eating was called George Bush, for his eyes looked just like those of a past American president.  Every day on dusk, David and Karl would make a trip to the ‘bottle-o’ (actually a well-stocked tin shed at the bottom of the hill) to select the night’s wine list.  There was a dog called Blogs, and a dozen brown hens in a multi-million dollar security complex (to keep foxes out) and some lovely black cows.  Home?

Alita and I spent one lazy morning walking to Power’s Lookout so we could check for troopers.  This particular lookout was named after Harry Power, mentor in bushranging to Ned Kelly, who took advantage of the site’s well maintained steel stairs and lookout platforms to watch for adversaries pursuing him up the valley.  Additionally, Power decided from time to time to use the lookout site as a base camp of sorts.  I’m sure this was because the undercover fireplace, numerous camp oven sites and composting toilets provided all the mod cons a man on the run could ever dream of.

Another quarter day adventure was spent trying to locate a waterfall on the edge of the property.  Alita and I thought we found it, but as there was no water flowing at the time, it was a bit hard to tell.  What do you call a waterfall with no water?  Our suspicions were confirmed a few days later when Karl took us back to the same spot and said it was indeed the waterfall.

The house features a wood fired heating system, so every autumn Karl stockpiles a shed full of dry wood to stay warm over the cold, wet months to come.  There was also bracken fern to slash in the cow paddocks.  I am happy to report that I remembered how to cook crepes, much to the satisfaction of everyone else at the dinner table.  We ate them with Cointreau-soaked strawberries and icecream, and rum and brown sugar (something I hadn’t tried before).

The train ride back to Melbourne reminded me of how nice rail travel can be, for nice is something the suburban rail experience in Melbourne is not.  Soon after we left, one of the hosties approached the lady in front of me.  “Nah, sorry luv we’re runnin a bit behind schedule so unfortunately we can’t stop to let you have a ciggie break orright?  Yeah, sorry but we jus’ can’t do it yunno.”  I like the idea that the train could have make an unscheduled stop to let its passengers smoke their tobacco, it was an indicator of how relaxed the journey was.

Later on, a little girl was dragged up to the front of the carriage by her mother for a couple of stern words.  Evidently the girl was guilty of not putting on her sock, and continued to protest until tears came out.  At that point, another girl not much older than the first decided to go up and ask the young demonstrator if she’d like some gummy snakes.  The mother quickly replied that her daughter was content, thank you anyway.

What a great week away.