Welcome back to 2025. The Summer Series events have been a great success. The Thursday Northern Series concludes on the 6th March at the Ruffey Lake Park, Victoria St Playground with end of year BBQ and Presentations. The last event in the Wednesday Series is on the 26th March.
A big shout out to the organisers of Northern Series – Schon and Geoff Hudson, Ewen and Jenelle Templeton, Tina Smith and Lauris Stirling.
Congratulations to members who placed first in the StreetO Champs. All the winners’ names have been placed on the “Honour board”
Mens ultravet running – Jim Taylor
Womens open running – Victoria Greenhan
Womens veteran running – Rachel Johnson
Junior boys/girls – Aeon Greenhan
Sub junior boys/girls – Opus Greenhan
Mens Power open walking – Dave Stillwell
There will be a lot of orienteering action in Victoria is in the first half of the year. This edition covers major events and includes a busy time for Nillumbik Emus.
The attendees at the AGM were all members of the committee and more like a face-to-face committee meeting. Our committee meetings are all done online. Thank you to all members of the committee for putting their hands up to serve the club this year. Rex Niven expressed a desire to step down. If you wish to take over this role sometime this year, please contact Rex.
Welcome to new club members Greg Bower, Kristian Ruuska, Jayden Styk, William Donnelly, Andrew and Lizzy Selby. The Selby family also have two youngsters who have been accompanying them at MelBushO events. We have picked up 9 new members this year and membership has grown to 68.
2023 VICTORIAN SCHOOLS ORIENTEERING TEAM ANNOUNCED
It’s great to see 4 of our juniors have been selected in Victorian Schools Orienteering team to be held at the Australian Orienteering Carnival in Western Australia, starting late September. The team will be away for 10 days. Congratulations to club members Xander, Matthew, Jayden and Izzy and coach Carolyn Layton and we wish them all a successful, adventurous and safe trip.
Members of the team are as follows:
Junior boys: Xander Greenhalgh, Matthew Layton, Jayden Styk
Junior girls: Izzy Greenhalgh, Angelina Kozma, Ella Maja Lang, Keely Williams
Senior Boys: Lucas Kent, Nicholas Mousley, Ash White
Seior Girls: Sophie Arthur, Maya Bennette, Milla Key
The team officials will be Bruce Arthur (Coach), Carolyn Layton (Coach) and Heather O’Donnell (Manager).
Our club will be supporting our members in fundraising for their trip.
Social: Christmas Dinner
Thank you Lauris Stirling for hosting the event and providing a wonderful meal. A great time was had by all.
Event Reports
Park and Street Orienteering – Contributor Lauris Stirling
As we enter the last two months of the winter season, I would like to take the chance to thank our volunteer course setters.
Our club was responsible for five Saturday afternoon events and six Wednesday night events.
All courses for his event can be accessed at Livelox
Christine Prentice set the courses and Laurie Niven was the organiser for this event. There were 103 entries including 18 from our club and many other members who assisted without competing.
CANDLEBARK PARK – MELBUSHO 9 July
“RECIPE FOR A GREAT EVENT” Contributor Ian Parry
Take a crisp, cool Melbourne morning; add a location with something to offer for every Class from Easy to Long-Hard, mix in 134 enthusiastic runners and warm with mid-morning sun … Marvellous!
After a run of wet weekends, the Sunday morning at Candlebark Park on July 16th could not have been better. Sunshine, only the slightest of breezes and no rain forecast. Some last-minute changes to the map in light of the rain saw grassland reclassified as marshy, and marshes reclassified as ponds.
Respondents to the post-Event Questionnaire gave the Event organisation and the Courses a resounding Very Good from two thirds of the Entrants.
The Entrants varied from some very enthusiastic high-performance runners to family groups new to Orienteering … and there was enough fun to go round for everybody.
There were more than 50 Entries on the day, many people just wanting to give the sport a go on a great morning for getting out in the open air. New software “OE2010” has been upgraded to “OE12” plus the skills of Rob Edmonds made this a less of a daunting task than it has been in the past.
CANDLEBARK PARK OFFERS A RANGE OF TERRAIN
For a metropolitan park Candlebark has a lot of things going for it. Easy to get to, no parking issues, toilets on site and a range of possibilities to set Courses to please all levels of runners.
Big obvious tracks
“Maybe it’s a track?” Tracks
“Get in there and find the Control” Woodland
And the always popular“Am I allowed to swim on this Leg?”
A huge round of applause for all the “Emus” who gave up their Sunday morning to help … Events like this do not happen by themselves.
All courses for his event can be accessed on Livelox. There were 134 entries including 15 from our club and 6 members who assisted without competing.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO RUN A MELBUSHO HARD-LONG COURSE?
The standard answer is, on average about an hour. But that is just if you are a runner…
Running a MelBushO actually takes weeks, and many, many hours of work.
From planning the Event, organising permissions, setting, checking and tweaking the courses, organising the trailer load of equipment, setting up the data equipment and networks and then, on the day, there is a small army of hard-workers who put out Controls; do the Registration of runners; man the Start and Finish Controls; provide advice to newcomers; do data entry; download the runners times… then at the end of the day, pick up the controls, dismantle shelters; upload times and splits to the Net … and then get to go home…
Add up all those hours and day and the answer is quite staggering!
Congratulations to Event Director Helen Edmonds; and Course Controller Laurie Niven for their crucial work … but mostly to ‘Team Emu’ … including newcomers … who made it all work on the day.
Helen Edmonds in hi-vis vest registering a competitor on Sunday Morning.
Event Controller Laurie Niven making sure the whole Event is going smoothly and running like clockwork.
On the right Rob E. is talking to the computers … and the computers are talking to each other …
Could anybody wonder if this was an NEV “Emu” Event? The Shelters are marvellous!
And not to forget the all-important competitors … hope they had fun and will come back for the next Event!
And last but not least …a before the Event picture of a very soggy but very happy little Course setter out the weekend before the Event
This was Ian’s first event as a course setter. Congratulations on a fine job, Ian.
He has also been working on our new event management software, OE12 V.12.1 the club bought recently.
Ian set up the app on NE’s computers and solved connectivity issues.
Coming Events:
These events are not far off, and the Nillumbik Emus team is heavily into planning for these two important events. You help will be greatly appreciated.
Ron Frederick is the organiser with Rex Niven course setting. The adviser is Tim Hatley.
As Champs are on the Saturday, we will also need a few people on the Friday arvo to set up the assembly area. There is free camping with flush toilets available at assembly area.
Please note that the Victorian Long Champs will be using the same start location on Sunday.
This picture was taken last year at the Australian Carnival event held at Mt Alexander, at the finish. Carolyn and Matt Layton in foreground. Carolyn competed in Europe including the Scottish 6 day.
Ron has just arrived home safely after his sojourn in North America, including Alaska. “We were very fortunate to see these humpback whales bubble net fishing. Seagulls waiting for scraps.”
Mt Denali (formerly known as Mt McKinley), is the highest peak in North America. Ron didn’t have time to climb it. According to Park Rangers only about 900 did so successfully this season.
This post gives members some information about upcoming bush events organised by our club
All other events are listed on Eventor including Bush, Park/Street and Mountain Bike events. There are a few events coming up which you are invited to help at and take part in.
Ron Frederick is the organiser with Rex Niven course setting. The adviser is Tim Hatley.
As Champs are on the Saturday, we will also need a few people on the Friday arvo to set up the assembly area. There is free camping with flush toilets available in the assembly area.
Martine at the finish of the Waterford Valley event with her fluffy emu
Martine was invited to write a few comments about her experience and tell us a little more about herself. Congratulations Martine on a superb job.
“Along with my partner Andrew Johnston we started orienteering mid-2018. By late December 2018 we started going to Monday night StreetO regularly and quickly became hooked, at the same time we also discovered Geoff’s (Hudson) Suburban Adventure Racing series which we also love.
Through the Autumn/ Winter series in 2019 we decided to do both Monday and Wednesday nights as by this stage we were both well and truly addicted to the sport. Andrew has also taken me Rogaining on some 6 and 12 hour events, and we have done a couple of Metrogaines as well. When Lauris Stirling put the call out for course setters towards the end of the Winter series we both thought we’d have a go at setting a course each, and after an OCAD training course with Geoff, I started setting my very first course using the Waterford Gully map in Rowville. With no experience in course setting I didn’t really have too much of a plan.
My goal was to keep the controls as consistently spaced as I could and to use as much of the map as I could by going out to all corners of the map without being too long in distance. From there I just focused on trying to have route choices in every possible direction, I tried to make it so that as a runner there was not an immediately obvious drop of controls for course A, then being a power walker myself making sure there was enough options for those wanting to walk short and long distances. I feel I was very fortunate the event I chose to course set lent itself to providing multiple options, with winding streets going off in all different directions, with a few parks providing cut throughs and the basin through the middle providing ways to link as well. I was so nervous on the night as to what people would think, everyone was so complimentary, and now to have won the award on my very first attempt I’m a bit shocked, it’s certainly a confidence boost to do more course setting in the future.”
MapRun, a simple phone app which allows you to create and manage orienteering courses with minimal effort, no ground infrastructure etc that has to be set out and collected up, and almost no effort on the ground to plan courses.
Originally demonstrated to Victorians in 2015 at Westerfolds Park by its developer Peter Effiney, Maprun was trialled during the last Geelong and Surf Coast Summer Series. Initially events were run in parallel with the conventional punched card/control plates events. After the initial 6 weeks of experience the Maprun app has been significantly revised to provide a robust and reliable tracking tool. The final 6 weeks of the Geelong Series were exclusively Maprun events and this format has proved a huge success. The idea now is to develop a programme of MapRun events to run alongside our other events, targeted at non-orienteers, and those of us looking for something different to do on training runs or whatever.
We are presently running MapRun events in the Western Autumn Night Series coincident with conventional punched card/light pole controls courses. It is a tool for urban and suburban environments – it is less reliable in the forest – but for those it brings a number of advantages over our current street series events: It doesn’t require special maps, courses can be planned almost wholly from your desk; and the phone app handles timing, scoring and results processing, so the planner/organiser has very little to do on the day.
We are looking at the best way to exploit MapRun as a means of attracting active people who are looking for something new to try. Meanwhile, as a taster of a new way of orienteering, the following images show part of my run last night in Footscray.
Post run reports include a RouteGadget report whereby other competitors’ routes can be compared and the event can even be rerun with graphical display of competitors moving around the course.
Nillumbik Emus 
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