Rachel Grindlay

After my first Navshield last year I was a little surprised to find myself fronting up for another one this year. I did not want to be in the same state at the end, as I was the year before, so one of my conditions on participating was to have 8 hours off our feet in the middle of the event.

We were scrambling to find a fourth team member only a couple of weeks out. To be eligible to compete in the Bushwalking Division teams must have a minimum of 4 members. Eventually Lauren recruited Alexi who Alex and I had never met. As it turned out this was to be Alexi’s first ever rogaine – it was a pretty brutal introduction to the sport. I’d suggest most people start with a 6 hour event!

I was the only one able to get away early on Friday so I drove up to Stroud in the afternoon so I was able to get to Base and pick up the maps as soon as they were available. After weeks of wet weather the site was still very boggy, and non-4WDs were not being permitted down to the gully where Base was set up. I wandered down and chatted to others as we waited for the countdown to 6pm and map release. By 6:02pm (I must have got my maps slightly early since it took more than 2 minutes to walk back to the car) I was back on the windy dirt road to Stroud. By 6:45pm Alex, Alexi and I were looking at the maps in the pub. The most surprising thing for me was that Base was on the western edge of the map – our plans for doing a Saturday loop and sleeping at Base were looking unlikely.

Dinner took awhile to arrive and so we didn’t really get into the map marking up until later than I had hoped. At least this year the map was a lot smaller and we didn’t have to mark overlapping sections.

For so many things with NavShield you have to come back to what the purpose of the event is – it’s a training exercise for SES/emergency services. Are they going to get a map with their search areas drawn on in the real world? No, of course not. So I get why this is an important part of the event – but it takes so long, and by the time it’s done you don’t have much time to plan a course. If the maps were released even an hour earlier it would make a big difference.

Much like last year we were ready to go bed by the time we had the map marked up – so we spent all of half an hour on our route. The main decision we made was that we’d have to carry gear for camping out as a loop back to Base didn’t make sense. In the end we could have spent longer planning the course as the locals were having a good time on a Friday night and there wasn’t much sleep to be had until the pub closed (and they all hopped in their cars and drove home… let’s hope there were a lot of quiet designated drivers with them).

The weather for the weekend was clear and sunny and it was a beautiful site to behold when we arrived at Base the next morning.

All routes out of Base involved crossing Mammy Johnsons River – I was hoping that wasn’t going to mean wet feet for the entirety of the course. Fortunately there was a rocky bar which kept my feet dry. It was the usual chaos of hundreds of people heading in varying directions out of base. We kept leap-frogging former PM Tony Abbott and his teammate for the first 5 or so controls. They must have been relatively quick across the ground but their finer navigation skills were somewhat lacking.

We started off in a section of the map which was ‘white’ vegetation, which asides from the farmland, should have been the easiest vegetation. After battling our way into a narrow oxbow for two twenty point controls we wondered what on earth the ‘green’ vegetation sections were going to be like.

We also had discovered by that stage, that the “track – 4WD” as marked ranged from fully functional, currently used, dirt roads through to previously used many years ago, barely visible roads – the kind where you’re looking at the unnatural gap in the tree growth to spot them rather than any clues on the ground. We started referring to them as ‘real’ 4WD tracks and ‘fake’ 4WD tracks. Again, I had to come back to the purpose of the event, if a real search occurs, tracks marked on a topo map could be in either of those categories, so it’s understandable that teams in a training event have to be prepared for that. However, if this had been a normal rogaine, I don’t think that would have been an acceptable way to prepare the map.

We ran into our first navigational hiccup in the early afternoon looking for control 81. Approaching it from the south we were expecting to find the second watercourse and walk up it. We thought we did that but then the watercourse kind of stopped and the terrain wasn’t matching. Rather than fully resetting we walked back south, found some features which aligned and walked up that watercourse. In that watercourse we found a culvert under an old road, which we had to climb over to continue up the watercourse. And continue up we did, for quite some way… with no sign of the control.

Eventually we concluded we’d either missed it or were in the wrong creek. We headed back down and reset from the river. And found ourselves back where we had been originally. Now that we had the knowledge of the old road we realised that where we thought the watercourse had stopped we’d just hit the embankment. So a few short minutes later we finally had control 81. Interestingly the old road was on the topo map – it just hadn’t made it onto the rogaine map.

From there we were on a bit of a mission to try and get to control 100 before dark. The course-setter notes had advised ‘visiting the control in daylight hours is recommended’. Not sure if this was so you could appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the waterfall, or to avoid the cliffs and rock scrambling in the dark! It was an impressive waterfall but since it was 4:30pm and already darkening in the gorge we couldn’t linger to appreciate it. I lead us up a slightly sketchy climb through the cliffline rather than backtrack down the gorge.

While the next ridge was predominantly ‘white’ it was pretty slow going, and it was after sunset by the time we made it to control 43. Torches came out part way through our traverse across the slopes to control 82. Our second navigational hiccup occurred once we hit the creek. Heading upstream, cause why not? The rock platforms were delightful… Until eventually concluding we must have hit the creek above the waterfall rather than below it. The rock platforms weren’t quite as delightful when going downstream. We managed to climb down carefully and finally pick up control 82 just a few minutes from where we’d originally hit the creek.

Having experienced the range of vegetation we weren’t sure the best way to then get to control 72. We went for the creek, hoping it would have some nice rock platforms and quick travel. It wasn’t quite as nice as the other creek but it started off ok, though progressively slowed. Eventually we decided to leave the creek, which was challenging to get out of. And having just battled through the vegetation onto the ridge Alex then asks the sage question ‘how are we going to find the control?’ (it was in the watercourse). Fortunately we made our way back in further up and got the points with no particular issues.

We were now a good two hours later than I had optimistically thought we might be at the point – the previous two controls taking over 4 hours. The next hour felt the longest though – we had agreed, some hours earlier, dinner would be at radio checkpoint Alpha. Now we were so close.. and yet so far. An hour to cover the 600m up the hill to the road. I was well and truly over the thorny cabbage tree palms by then.

We stumbled into a deserted Alpha at 10:20pm. The wind had been progressively picking up throughout the afternoon and evening, and clearly everyone based at Alpha had decided it was so miserable that being in their tents was the best option. Fortunately, no discussion required, everyone in our team was on the same page – it was time to sleep and we’d worry about the next day in the morning. The wind continued gusting all night but no big branches landed on us, though I was covered in small debris when Alex’s alarm went off at 5:30am.

More water had magically appeared overnight, which was good, since there was hardly any when we arrived. By the time we’d filled up and agreed what we were doing we almost didn’t need torches.

Once more into the cabbage tree palms, my friends! Some slightly tricky nav got us to ‘a small but distinct knoll’ with control 90 on it. From there we left the world of thorny cabbage tree palms, lawyer vine and lantana thickets behind in exchange for fire trail and elephant tracks to our remaining controls.

I think we were all happy for a change of vegetation, especially Alexi who in his learnings from his first rogaine, would no doubt have ‘don’t bring a pack with a frame that sticks up above your shoulders to get caught by every vine we walk past’. Closely followed by ‘hope that your short buttons don’t fall off in the first 3 hours and you need to fashion a belt from string’ (not sure how you prepare for that one though!).

We came in with 23 minutes to spare, and 1,260 points (by complete coincidence the same score as last year). I would say it was a great weekend, enjoyed by all, but I think Alexi’s suffering was similar to mine at the end of last year’s event.

The wind had played havoc at Base while we’d been away. Marquees had been picked up and dumped through car windows. Several tents had gone flying. Perhaps it was a good thing we hadn’t ended coming back to camp!

The GPS says we did about 41km, with 3000m asc/des. We were moving for 18.5 of the 27 hours (at Alpha from 10:20pm-6:20am, and back 23 minutes early).