2003 ACT Championships
2003 ACT Championships 8/24hr Rogaines - Kybeyan/Undoo Range Area and surrounding district, east of Cooma - 10 May 2003
ACT Champs Story #1
Adrian had said to me beforehand that the course was definitely a runner’s course. What he should have said was that it was a mountain runner’s course.
Before the start Emma Murray and I stood on the small knoll at the HH and worked out what direction to run off in (always important when there is an audi¬ence) - we could see our first control! We ran off over the paddocks in front of most people and into our first obstacle - those darn rabbit proof fences. I’m not the best fence climber around and it must be pretty entertaining to see me wobbling around on the top of a barbed wire fence going nowhere. We stuffed around a bit in a shallow and wide gully looking for our second control (41) which turned out to be slightly higher up than anticipated. It was a good reminder not to get too slack about just tripping over the controls. Later we saw some Glossy Black-Cockatoos with beautiful red tails and “tarr-ed” calls which was pretty special.
We dropped down and around to the northern end of Mt Numeralla. This would have to be close to the steepest climb on the course. We traversed the ridge together with lots of other teams - many of the 8hr competitors chose to come up here too. Emma commented while admiring the view, “it’s a pity Numeralla doesn’t have a pub that we could call into later...” It’s good to have a partner not taking things too seriously!
Along the ridge, past the trig and off to the side, swing¬ing north again up and down a few hills. There were some really steep slopes in this NW area but it is pretty open under the trees and made for fast travel. At the northern wa¬ter drop about 4 pm, we pushed on hard to see if we could get to the next water drop to the south (49) before dark - and just made it. I pulled out my pre-made pasta snack and sat down near Steve Barry who pulled out sushi and a small bottle of soya sauce, taking the prize for the best rogaine food and true style.
After the break we made one of our more costly mistakes, ambling up the road chatting and not paying attention to how far we had gone before heading off to the saddle and the checkpoint. We ended up going too high and fluffing around for a while before realising what we had done. After finding it we trotted off along the ridge towards the Kybean River. At the bottom was a large pool so we headed along the river to see if there was somewhere to cross without getting wet feet. I fumbled through some bushes and to the river bank...but the water was so clear in the dark I failed to see it and stepped right in.
Up the creek and over the little saddle to 36 which after heading up and down the gully required us to pull out the secret weapon - my 15 watt bike light. It had limited battery power but very useful for control spot¬ting. It saved a lot of thrashing around here and a few other occasions during the night. Next we contoured around to the spur leading up to Mt Pleasant. High on a rocky outcrop we admired a big pool at the bottom of the hill, perfectly reflecting the moon and stars. The moon looked like a torch in the river!
We headed up the spur, picked up 78 and grunted on up towards the top. Bearing in mind the warning about the heather Dave had given at the briefing, we promptly stumbled into it! It always seems you can walk into a thick patch at night even if it is clear a few metres away. Luckily after a hundred metres we were clear of the scrub again.
From the top of the hill we went along the ridge top and did an out-and-back to 85 and then to 77. Further along heading south we bumped into David and Trevor, the pre-event favourites. They told us of the fun they had had in cassinia at the next control (48). Unfor¬tunately, the dark and vague ridge-top took us right into the same scrub so we thrashed about for a while before pulling out the secret weapon and stumbled on the control.
Around this time the moon went down - even though only a half-moon it was incredibly useful. It got so dark that we couldn’t even see the outline of the ridge top. We swung over a nice knoll in the SW corner of the course and could vaguely see mist in the valley floor - there would be a great view, if only we could see it!
At 3 am it tends to take most of my concentration to pace count so not much conversation goes on. But we were talking as we walked up the spur and it messed us up on the way to control 57. As we set a new bear¬ing off the spur the slope didn’t fit. A bit of head scratching established we’d gone too far up the hill. In the middle of the night you need to keep up the concentration! A quick road bash then we picked up two controls (47 and 84) as out-and-backs. By the time we got back it was looking like dawn - thank goodness, it had been a long night.
Now it was light again it was time for a change of pace and to work some different muscles. We decided to do a zigzag up through the farmland in the last 5 hours and try to do a fair bit of running. I was pretty pleased to be able to trot along at this point in the rogaine but no match for Emma.
Across the valley in the farmland and up to a knoll where the many layers we had on overnight started to come off in the morning sun and with the running. As we headed up the hill to control 83, we came across a rock about person height with a corner taken out (cracked). In the hole was a massive nest of a large bird, made with large sticks and snugly lined with moss - possibly an eagle. Pretty amazing so close to the ground.
At the end we had a big dilemma whether to go for the 70 pointer an extra km or two away. The weary bodies won in the end and we decided to only collect the 50 and 40 points closer to the Hash House and settle with that.
Adrian and Dave did a fantastic job in choosing an area for the rogaine. They did a great job contacting and convincing all the landowners. It was a great mix of a bit of tricky farmland, fast running and beautiful open bush. The Kybeyan River was just lovely too. I just wish we had been able to see a bit more from the ridge tops in the dark.
Julie Quinn
ACT Champs Story #2 - "Putting the rogue back into rogaining”
Richard and I had agreed well in advance that we wanted to get a reasonable amount of sleep during this event, so the early moon setting time was a convenient time to aim to get back to the Hash house. Richard used a much more scientific method in route planning than me, actually measuring the total distance of our planned route (and cutting bits off!) before we had a flight plan - Saturday in the south-west, Sunday in the north-west, hoping to get some of the easy points in farmland in the south-east in the dark on the way home.
The start of the event was marked by an icy, bone-chilling wind and threatening clouds. Fortunately the downpour never eventuated - the most we had was a few minutes of “mizzle” on the way up Mt Pleasant. A large bunch of people had the same first control as us, but a gentle jog saw me first to punch this control. From then on we did not see a soul for the entire day, apart from one team in the river bed - at which point I almost wondered why there would be other people in the bit of bush where we were having such a lovely walk. This was a stark contrast to the masses on the entire course of the PP 6 hour recently. The scenery was magnificent, particularly along the creeks with running water, something we haven’t seen for a while in Canberra, waterfalls, cliffs, beaches and lovely trees.
The sun set as we slogged up the third big hill of the day, and complete darkness descended as we struggled back up the other side of the river through thick undergrowth on a very steep slope. Navigational difficulties increased in the dark, especially as one road did not exist (!) and one control seemed to be wrongly placed - much further down from the saddle than marked on the map. At least the wind had dropped and the stars were out. Dinner at the water drop was lovely although we cooled down fast once we stopped moving, and it was a relief to get out of the bush and into farmland at last at around 9 pm. There was enough moon that torches were unnecessary except to actually punch the controls, and this section was very pleasant - apart from the fences! An amazingly large number of the taughtest fences ever built were scattered through the farmland, some of which were impossible to cross without using the contacted map to protect hands and inner thighs from barbs and electric shocks.
Our only error was marching right past a “creek junction” in the dark, as we were moving much faster than we thought - by the time the barking dogs let us know we were at the farm house, it was too late to go back for it. Two easy controls just before the moon set saw us hit the hash house right on 12:30, and the hot soup went down very well. 6 hours later we were raring to go again - a great breakfast of pancakes and eggs on toast got us out of camp at 7:20 on a beautiful, crisp morning.
The loop on Sunday was remarkably easy and again very scenic, and once again we barely saw anyone, in spite of doing what we thought was a very logical route.
Overall, a fantastic rogaine - good terrain, good route options, good food, no company and no aches or pains afterwards. Thanks to the organisers for a great weekend.
Madeleine Schultz
ACT Champs Story #3
It was with considerable trepidation that I agreed to partner Dave Baldwin in this event. I’d been in a few 6 hour rogaines with Adrian, and somehow managed to survive the floggings that he handed out, but would this be worse? Much worse?
Got up early Saty, missing the usual sleep in (drats), and caught the bus to the start. I don’t remember much about this trip because we were all so excited and busy poring over the maps! Dave and I took our time working out an “optimal” route, covering the whole course, but not really believing that we could clear it unless the steep and rough sections were not as actually as bad as they looked on the map.
Off we go, after stuffing an unbelievable amount of goodies into out backpacks.... But guess we’ll need it all. I wasn’t sure what sort and range of clothing to have, but that turned out all OK with no bad mistakes being made on that front!
We made great progress in the first 6 hours of daylight, clearing out all the easier territory in the SE part of the course. Our overall plan was to go hard til dark getting as much as the easier stuff out the way and then dong the rougher stuff at night where the going would be slow whether it was day or night. Then getting the higher scoring more open country to the NW and Nth in the morning. Good plan but...
Some of the fences in the SE bit were pretty difficult to negotiate, especially those with electric wires on both sides and rabbit proof wire in the middle making a foothold v hard, as well as wobbly star pickets! I didn’t find out til much later that Dave B came to grief on one of these and hurt his ribs abdomen - but he’s v tough and made no complaints and powered on anyway. We had a lot of trouble finding 93 in the far SW corner - until we discovered it a few hundred metres to the north of the marked position. But no worries, we had time in the bag we thought cos of the earlier pace.
But once it got dark and we were negotiating the SW and Western parts, the going was very slow. The time between controls dropped a lot from 11 mins or so to between 30 to 60 mins. There was no way we could clear the course now. We started to work out how best to drop some controls so as to get up into the higher scoring NW area early enough. On the way north to W56 Dave pulled out the pot of pasta and gulped it down in about 10 secs flat! I followed suit but it took me about 1/2 hour to get it down. There must be knack to that, which I seriously need to learn!
The night rogaining was a real lesson for me. I kept wondering what the heck Dave was doing looking up into the trees from time to time. I realised after a while that he was looking for trees etc on the other side of features to help work out where the heck we were - I only had a bit of a vague clue really most of the time, and tried to help but probably didn’t much! It puts a big load on an individual to have full responsibility for navigating for practically all of the time!
We sat down for a while to have a good feed on the way north along a ridge to control 48. As we sat there Julie and Emma marched out of the bush and had a good laugh at us slacking off. They looked great and were obviously going really strongly. Geez - we’d better get cracking again!
We decided to give controls 69, 38 and 59 a miss and go straight from 58 to 36, and then onto 78 and 86. We had a bit of trouble finding 37 even though it was on a well defined ridge - as the control seemed to be a bit further north than on the map (?). Anyway we got it after a bit of back and forth motion up there on those funny sloping rough rocks.
Then the unbelievable happened to me - somehow, and I’ve got no idea how, I dropped my map on the way to 78. I recalled falling over a few times and eating some goodies on the run, and could only think I must have dropped it then sometime. We went back for 5 or 10 mins before giving up on it. But I must admit, it felt really good to be moving along without holding onto it!! That was how I realised - I thought to myself, why does it feel so good? Oh my god - its because I’ve got no map!! So then it was well and truly almost completely up to Dave to plot our way through the rest.
Dawn came and for the next 6 hours we found many weird and wonderful ways of stuffing up! I was about as usual as tits on a bull, and Dave was trying real hard but had obviously largely lost the plot too! We bumbled about in the NW area for ages not bagging much. We were making great really sensible plans (at least, that’s what we thought!) but the factual outcomes was for example, losing heaps of time trying to find control 40 in totally the wrong place. We lost bulk time looking for it in a gully about 400 m south of where it actually was (we think in retrospect!). So we gave up! That was the first one we gave up on - bad sign - but we were getting pretty tired.
We didn’t really know where we were, having missed no 40, so we headed off north to get our bearings from the road as a good feature we couldn’t stuff up on! But just after Dave told me that you never accidentally bump into controls out of the blue - we did! We came across control 80 - yes! We’re back in business.
The pace picked up hugely for a while - we flew off to get 60 and then on towards 61. But we got so excited that we got it massively wrong by following a wrong ridge without checking the bearing! Bad move! So we went way off course and spent an hour recovering!!
Once we realised our huge blunder, we moved very slowly again - funny how the spirits go up and down when you are so tired!
The last few hours went past fast, and we collected a few more on the way back to HH. This was just as well because as we learned later, Julie and Emma had a really solid event and moved solidly and smoothly the whole way, unlike us! They were only a few points behind us at the end of the day!! Phew!
We got back to HH with about 15mins or a bit less to spare, contemplating briefly charging off to squeeze in another before the end - but decided we couldn’t be bothered, and probably didn’t have time anyway.... So that was a relief to just end it off a few mins early - relieved a lot of pressure and it felt great to sit down and take it easy!
So - all up, it was a truly amazing event for me - one of a kind. I learnt heaps about navigation (with and without a map!), pacing, eating, resting, concentrating, feeling crap, then feeling good. It’d be good to do another one to try and finish off better without losing the plot so badly.
The sleep on the bus back to Canberra was pure bliss - you nod off very quickly and the warm sunshine felt magnificent.
Cheers, and hope to see you all out there again sometime!
Trevor Jacobs
Read MoreACT Champs Story #1
Adrian had said to me beforehand that the course was definitely a runner’s course. What he should have said was that it was a mountain runner’s course.
Before the start Emma Murray and I stood on the small knoll at the HH and worked out what direction to run off in (always important when there is an audi¬ence) - we could see our first control! We ran off over the paddocks in front of most people and into our first obstacle - those darn rabbit proof fences. I’m not the best fence climber around and it must be pretty entertaining to see me wobbling around on the top of a barbed wire fence going nowhere. We stuffed around a bit in a shallow and wide gully looking for our second control (41) which turned out to be slightly higher up than anticipated. It was a good reminder not to get too slack about just tripping over the controls. Later we saw some Glossy Black-Cockatoos with beautiful red tails and “tarr-ed” calls which was pretty special.
We dropped down and around to the northern end of Mt Numeralla. This would have to be close to the steepest climb on the course. We traversed the ridge together with lots of other teams - many of the 8hr competitors chose to come up here too. Emma commented while admiring the view, “it’s a pity Numeralla doesn’t have a pub that we could call into later...” It’s good to have a partner not taking things too seriously!
Along the ridge, past the trig and off to the side, swing¬ing north again up and down a few hills. There were some really steep slopes in this NW area but it is pretty open under the trees and made for fast travel. At the northern wa¬ter drop about 4 pm, we pushed on hard to see if we could get to the next water drop to the south (49) before dark - and just made it. I pulled out my pre-made pasta snack and sat down near Steve Barry who pulled out sushi and a small bottle of soya sauce, taking the prize for the best rogaine food and true style.
After the break we made one of our more costly mistakes, ambling up the road chatting and not paying attention to how far we had gone before heading off to the saddle and the checkpoint. We ended up going too high and fluffing around for a while before realising what we had done. After finding it we trotted off along the ridge towards the Kybean River. At the bottom was a large pool so we headed along the river to see if there was somewhere to cross without getting wet feet. I fumbled through some bushes and to the river bank...but the water was so clear in the dark I failed to see it and stepped right in.
Up the creek and over the little saddle to 36 which after heading up and down the gully required us to pull out the secret weapon - my 15 watt bike light. It had limited battery power but very useful for control spot¬ting. It saved a lot of thrashing around here and a few other occasions during the night. Next we contoured around to the spur leading up to Mt Pleasant. High on a rocky outcrop we admired a big pool at the bottom of the hill, perfectly reflecting the moon and stars. The moon looked like a torch in the river!
We headed up the spur, picked up 78 and grunted on up towards the top. Bearing in mind the warning about the heather Dave had given at the briefing, we promptly stumbled into it! It always seems you can walk into a thick patch at night even if it is clear a few metres away. Luckily after a hundred metres we were clear of the scrub again.
From the top of the hill we went along the ridge top and did an out-and-back to 85 and then to 77. Further along heading south we bumped into David and Trevor, the pre-event favourites. They told us of the fun they had had in cassinia at the next control (48). Unfor¬tunately, the dark and vague ridge-top took us right into the same scrub so we thrashed about for a while before pulling out the secret weapon and stumbled on the control.
Around this time the moon went down - even though only a half-moon it was incredibly useful. It got so dark that we couldn’t even see the outline of the ridge top. We swung over a nice knoll in the SW corner of the course and could vaguely see mist in the valley floor - there would be a great view, if only we could see it!
At 3 am it tends to take most of my concentration to pace count so not much conversation goes on. But we were talking as we walked up the spur and it messed us up on the way to control 57. As we set a new bear¬ing off the spur the slope didn’t fit. A bit of head scratching established we’d gone too far up the hill. In the middle of the night you need to keep up the concentration! A quick road bash then we picked up two controls (47 and 84) as out-and-backs. By the time we got back it was looking like dawn - thank goodness, it had been a long night.
Now it was light again it was time for a change of pace and to work some different muscles. We decided to do a zigzag up through the farmland in the last 5 hours and try to do a fair bit of running. I was pretty pleased to be able to trot along at this point in the rogaine but no match for Emma.
Across the valley in the farmland and up to a knoll where the many layers we had on overnight started to come off in the morning sun and with the running. As we headed up the hill to control 83, we came across a rock about person height with a corner taken out (cracked). In the hole was a massive nest of a large bird, made with large sticks and snugly lined with moss - possibly an eagle. Pretty amazing so close to the ground.
At the end we had a big dilemma whether to go for the 70 pointer an extra km or two away. The weary bodies won in the end and we decided to only collect the 50 and 40 points closer to the Hash House and settle with that.
Adrian and Dave did a fantastic job in choosing an area for the rogaine. They did a great job contacting and convincing all the landowners. It was a great mix of a bit of tricky farmland, fast running and beautiful open bush. The Kybeyan River was just lovely too. I just wish we had been able to see a bit more from the ridge tops in the dark.
Julie Quinn
ACT Champs Story #2 - "Putting the rogue back into rogaining”
Richard and I had agreed well in advance that we wanted to get a reasonable amount of sleep during this event, so the early moon setting time was a convenient time to aim to get back to the Hash house. Richard used a much more scientific method in route planning than me, actually measuring the total distance of our planned route (and cutting bits off!) before we had a flight plan - Saturday in the south-west, Sunday in the north-west, hoping to get some of the easy points in farmland in the south-east in the dark on the way home.
The start of the event was marked by an icy, bone-chilling wind and threatening clouds. Fortunately the downpour never eventuated - the most we had was a few minutes of “mizzle” on the way up Mt Pleasant. A large bunch of people had the same first control as us, but a gentle jog saw me first to punch this control. From then on we did not see a soul for the entire day, apart from one team in the river bed - at which point I almost wondered why there would be other people in the bit of bush where we were having such a lovely walk. This was a stark contrast to the masses on the entire course of the PP 6 hour recently. The scenery was magnificent, particularly along the creeks with running water, something we haven’t seen for a while in Canberra, waterfalls, cliffs, beaches and lovely trees.
The sun set as we slogged up the third big hill of the day, and complete darkness descended as we struggled back up the other side of the river through thick undergrowth on a very steep slope. Navigational difficulties increased in the dark, especially as one road did not exist (!) and one control seemed to be wrongly placed - much further down from the saddle than marked on the map. At least the wind had dropped and the stars were out. Dinner at the water drop was lovely although we cooled down fast once we stopped moving, and it was a relief to get out of the bush and into farmland at last at around 9 pm. There was enough moon that torches were unnecessary except to actually punch the controls, and this section was very pleasant - apart from the fences! An amazingly large number of the taughtest fences ever built were scattered through the farmland, some of which were impossible to cross without using the contacted map to protect hands and inner thighs from barbs and electric shocks.
Our only error was marching right past a “creek junction” in the dark, as we were moving much faster than we thought - by the time the barking dogs let us know we were at the farm house, it was too late to go back for it. Two easy controls just before the moon set saw us hit the hash house right on 12:30, and the hot soup went down very well. 6 hours later we were raring to go again - a great breakfast of pancakes and eggs on toast got us out of camp at 7:20 on a beautiful, crisp morning.
The loop on Sunday was remarkably easy and again very scenic, and once again we barely saw anyone, in spite of doing what we thought was a very logical route.
Overall, a fantastic rogaine - good terrain, good route options, good food, no company and no aches or pains afterwards. Thanks to the organisers for a great weekend.
Madeleine Schultz
ACT Champs Story #3
It was with considerable trepidation that I agreed to partner Dave Baldwin in this event. I’d been in a few 6 hour rogaines with Adrian, and somehow managed to survive the floggings that he handed out, but would this be worse? Much worse?
Got up early Saty, missing the usual sleep in (drats), and caught the bus to the start. I don’t remember much about this trip because we were all so excited and busy poring over the maps! Dave and I took our time working out an “optimal” route, covering the whole course, but not really believing that we could clear it unless the steep and rough sections were not as actually as bad as they looked on the map.
Off we go, after stuffing an unbelievable amount of goodies into out backpacks.... But guess we’ll need it all. I wasn’t sure what sort and range of clothing to have, but that turned out all OK with no bad mistakes being made on that front!
We made great progress in the first 6 hours of daylight, clearing out all the easier territory in the SE part of the course. Our overall plan was to go hard til dark getting as much as the easier stuff out the way and then dong the rougher stuff at night where the going would be slow whether it was day or night. Then getting the higher scoring more open country to the NW and Nth in the morning. Good plan but...
Some of the fences in the SE bit were pretty difficult to negotiate, especially those with electric wires on both sides and rabbit proof wire in the middle making a foothold v hard, as well as wobbly star pickets! I didn’t find out til much later that Dave B came to grief on one of these and hurt his ribs abdomen - but he’s v tough and made no complaints and powered on anyway. We had a lot of trouble finding 93 in the far SW corner - until we discovered it a few hundred metres to the north of the marked position. But no worries, we had time in the bag we thought cos of the earlier pace.
But once it got dark and we were negotiating the SW and Western parts, the going was very slow. The time between controls dropped a lot from 11 mins or so to between 30 to 60 mins. There was no way we could clear the course now. We started to work out how best to drop some controls so as to get up into the higher scoring NW area early enough. On the way north to W56 Dave pulled out the pot of pasta and gulped it down in about 10 secs flat! I followed suit but it took me about 1/2 hour to get it down. There must be knack to that, which I seriously need to learn!
The night rogaining was a real lesson for me. I kept wondering what the heck Dave was doing looking up into the trees from time to time. I realised after a while that he was looking for trees etc on the other side of features to help work out where the heck we were - I only had a bit of a vague clue really most of the time, and tried to help but probably didn’t much! It puts a big load on an individual to have full responsibility for navigating for practically all of the time!
We sat down for a while to have a good feed on the way north along a ridge to control 48. As we sat there Julie and Emma marched out of the bush and had a good laugh at us slacking off. They looked great and were obviously going really strongly. Geez - we’d better get cracking again!
We decided to give controls 69, 38 and 59 a miss and go straight from 58 to 36, and then onto 78 and 86. We had a bit of trouble finding 37 even though it was on a well defined ridge - as the control seemed to be a bit further north than on the map (?). Anyway we got it after a bit of back and forth motion up there on those funny sloping rough rocks.
Then the unbelievable happened to me - somehow, and I’ve got no idea how, I dropped my map on the way to 78. I recalled falling over a few times and eating some goodies on the run, and could only think I must have dropped it then sometime. We went back for 5 or 10 mins before giving up on it. But I must admit, it felt really good to be moving along without holding onto it!! That was how I realised - I thought to myself, why does it feel so good? Oh my god - its because I’ve got no map!! So then it was well and truly almost completely up to Dave to plot our way through the rest.
Dawn came and for the next 6 hours we found many weird and wonderful ways of stuffing up! I was about as usual as tits on a bull, and Dave was trying real hard but had obviously largely lost the plot too! We bumbled about in the NW area for ages not bagging much. We were making great really sensible plans (at least, that’s what we thought!) but the factual outcomes was for example, losing heaps of time trying to find control 40 in totally the wrong place. We lost bulk time looking for it in a gully about 400 m south of where it actually was (we think in retrospect!). So we gave up! That was the first one we gave up on - bad sign - but we were getting pretty tired.
We didn’t really know where we were, having missed no 40, so we headed off north to get our bearings from the road as a good feature we couldn’t stuff up on! But just after Dave told me that you never accidentally bump into controls out of the blue - we did! We came across control 80 - yes! We’re back in business.
The pace picked up hugely for a while - we flew off to get 60 and then on towards 61. But we got so excited that we got it massively wrong by following a wrong ridge without checking the bearing! Bad move! So we went way off course and spent an hour recovering!!
Once we realised our huge blunder, we moved very slowly again - funny how the spirits go up and down when you are so tired!
The last few hours went past fast, and we collected a few more on the way back to HH. This was just as well because as we learned later, Julie and Emma had a really solid event and moved solidly and smoothly the whole way, unlike us! They were only a few points behind us at the end of the day!! Phew!
We got back to HH with about 15mins or a bit less to spare, contemplating briefly charging off to squeeze in another before the end - but decided we couldn’t be bothered, and probably didn’t have time anyway.... So that was a relief to just end it off a few mins early - relieved a lot of pressure and it felt great to sit down and take it easy!
So - all up, it was a truly amazing event for me - one of a kind. I learnt heaps about navigation (with and without a map!), pacing, eating, resting, concentrating, feeling crap, then feeling good. It’d be good to do another one to try and finish off better without losing the plot so badly.
The sleep on the bus back to Canberra was pure bliss - you nod off very quickly and the warm sunshine felt magnificent.
Cheers, and hope to see you all out there again sometime!
Trevor Jacobs
