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.
Sue Healy stepping forward to receive a medal at the Victorian Champs at Spring Gully near Castlemaine with fellow club member Joyce Rowlands also on the winners podium. Ron Frederick is making the presentations. Fiona Fell and Geoff Armstrong in the shelter and Bruce Arthur, OV President at the time, looking on.
“Sue died on 1 March at her Aged Facility at Ashfield. She was 93 and had suffered from cancer for the previous year. Fortunately she did not have much, if any, pain and died peacefully.
Sue began orienteering in late 1974, introduced to the sport by her sister, Pella Rye. Pella was visiting Sue in Wollongong from England (Pella had been orienteering for some years in England). Sue formed Orienteers of Wollongong (the predecessor of Illawarra Orienteers) in early 1974 and organized several events for OW in 1975.
She then moved to Melbourne (late 1975) to work at the Victorian State Library (she became Victorian Head Librarian before her retirement in 1993). Sue competed in most major Australian events from 1975 to 2020 as well as in New Zealand and Europe. Sue was President of the VOA (Victorian Orienteering Association) in the early 80s and won the World Masters Sprint Championship (W85) in 2017 in NZL. She moved to Sydney in 2018 and joined Uringa Orienteers.
Sue had a very active and varied life. Born in England in 1930, she lived the first 25 years of her life near Wem except for boarding school and University (London University) where she obtained a BA in French, Spanish and Librianship. She was the leader of a UNESCO team sent to reconstitute the library at Dunkirk in 1951 (she was the leader because she was the only team member who spoke fluent French – with a Marseille accent! due to working as an au pair there in 1949-50).
She lived in Kenya in 1955-57 (during the Mau Mau incursion!) and Sierra Leone in 1959. She moved to Australia (Canberra initially before moving to Wollongong) in 1960. In the mid 70s in Wollongong she stood for the Australian Parliament for the Australia Party and later the Australian Democrats. Sue spoke French and Spanish fluently and Italian, Greek and Swahili competently!
She has 2 children (both born in Kenya) – son, Richard and daughter, Margaret.
Sue will be missed, especially by me.”
Dave Lotty
Sue joined Rockhoppers OC when she moved to Melbourne and then Nillumbik Emus after the merger in 1995. Sue was a very active member until her move to Sydney in 2018. Sue was an inaugural recipient of the club’s Services to Orienteering Award in 2021.
Sue with brown top under the shelter next to Laurie Niven and Fiona Fell. Alice and Helen Edmonds in foreground.
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.
Nillumbik Emus 
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