St Arnaud and Swan Hill

This week we went travelling in our van to St Arnaud National Park and then on to Swan Hill, Victoria. We free camped at Teddington Reservoir for two nights first up. We had at most 4 neighbours in the camping area so it was very quiet and peacefull. We kayaked on the reservoir and walked round it and the next day drove the tracks to a lookout and on to St Arnaud township, taking a picnic with us. We thought the park looked like good orienteering terrain so emailed the details to the VIC president who is looking for new terrain in the Ararat/Stawell region for the Australian Championships in 2015.

At Swan Hill we were in the caravan park with a site right on the river, which was a very pleasant view each day. We visited the Pioneer Village and had a paddle boat ride, visited Lake Boga and the Catalina Flying Boat Museum (my uncle trained at the base in WWII), took a picnic to Nyah Vinefera River Murray Reserve and stopped at a winery where we discovered a rather nice old tawny port (Buller)!

Australian Orienteering Championships 2012

Held in Tasmania around the St Helens region on the east coast, these champs were great fun. My son was in the Victorian Schools team and stayed at a local caravan park with the other state teams. I stayed in a villa complex with many other club members. We had a great view from the balcony.

 The terrain varied and was quite challenging, we did 7 events in 9 days. Unfortunately I made a mistake (of varying proportions) each day except for the event on the junior girls course which I "aced" and for the relay where I learnt from my mistakes to complete the course quite well when many stumbled. I also had success in a couple of the finish split handicaps that our club runs - a bit of fun!

We had a little time for sightseeing as well and enjoyed the Bay of Fires, Pyengana, St Columba Falls and local walks and drives to and from events.

The kids did well with three selected in the Aust. team and two as reserves plus two silver medals for the senior boys team and a bronze for the junior boys. My son had his best champs yet.