Won Wron Forest Frolic Rogaine (16 May 2026)

My last rogaine with Mel in Victoria had been back in 2022 at the NO IDeA Rogaine. I was still scarred from that event, with its 20m contours on an unaltered topo map in very subtle country. I was hoping Victoria’s maps resources had been improved since then! I’d had pretty good preparation for this rogaine, with effectively 3 rogaines in the previous 2 weekends (the NSW Nightgaine, and then 2 days out vetting the NSW Paddy Pallin course).

Mel & I drove down from Melbourne on Saturday morning, with the rogaine starting at 11am, even with the 2.5 hour drive, we didn’t have to get up too early. The main disaster was the kettle dying, thanks to a leaking water bladder, and so we were unable to make a second coffee for the day while we were planning.

I was greatly relieved to see that the map had been made in QGIS. However, I perhaps put too much stock into the reliability of the map (more on that later). For example, Open Street Map data hadn’t been used to fix up tracks that were incorrectly marked. [NB. There is a picture of the map at the bottom of this post]

We had probably the best planning session I’ve done before a rogaine and had an optimistic but doable route sorted without running out of time.

At 11am the 125 teams (99 in the 6 hour, 26 in the 12 hour) were off! We hadn’t really worked out the tracks leaving the Hash House so unfortunately found ourselves at the back of the crowd and spent the first few minutes trying to overtake teams on the track. Once we hit 34 we took off cross country to hit the track not far to the east. The vegetation was quite challenging and left us wondering if our route needed to be slashed already!

Fortunately the next couple of controls (60, 61) passed with no issues, and it was good to get a bit of nav done. I was somewhat surprised to find we were the first teams at these controls – I knew as the Navlight punch was still wound up and stuck inside the control. The next couple of hours went well, despite the vagaries (or non-existence) of some of the tracks.

We bumped into a couple of teams multiple times as we moved between 53-92-75-65. An older pair of men continued to be very impressed every time they saw us, and congratulate us on how well we we were doing. It was kind of nice… but also a little condescending!

By the time we got into far north west corner we were a bit over the grass trees. They were stunning, but I don’t think I’ve ever walked through so many. Certainly, not at that height so consistently. My face and Mel’s neck were both starting to protest over the thousands of little pricks we must have had by that point. So, with that in mind at 65 we elected to return to the road and take the longer route around to 80 (via 21).

The vegetation had varied between fairly open, not so open but not scratchy, through to fairly unpleasant – but generally only for short stretches.

Our plan had us at 80 at 3 hours, and we punched at 3 hours 2 minutes so we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. Unfortunately that was when the wheels fell off for an hour. Clearly we had no issues going back past 21, and then we headed out towards 49. Looking at the time as we headed in I wondered whether we should bother, and so was lacking conviction from the outset. We started hitting some less pleasant scrub and I was becoming more concerned about the time, we scouted around briefly, but ended up heading back to the road without finding it. A look at our trace versus the control circle shows we were very close (especially since I went further down the spur than Mel who had the tracking)… but no points for us.

Somewhat disheartened we tried to regroup for 71. I’d come into the day with a bubble in my compass, and I was alarmed early on when I saw more bubbles going in as I set a bearing. The bubble had continued to grow through the day, and was now at the stage where the needle wouldn’t settle unless I stopped moving completely. In retrospect I should have started using Mel’s spare compass, but I didn’t. That meant my ability to walk on a bearing without stopping frequently was compromised, and those who have rogained with me would realise that meant I just kept walking regardless. 🙂

I would like to blame what happened at 71 on the compass but given the direction we walked it seems we took the completely wrong bearing to start with. So many things should have tipped us off that we weren’t going in the right direction, but didn’t. Some refuelling earlier might have helped. We were both quite confused when we popped up on the knoll, that we’d convinced ourselves we were aiming for, to find a road and no control. Fortunately we quickly realised what we’d done and had to decide what to do. We’d used up a lot of time and didn’t think we had enough time to recover our plan of 71-93-70 given how much off track was involved. Instead we headed down the road to 47 and 32.

At 32 we elected to go cross country towards 70. In retrospect despite being twice as long it may have been better go via the road/track. Our intention had been to ensure we hit the track well west of the ‘overgrown’ track that 70 was on. However, we had no idea where we hit it, except we found a lot of other confused teams who were looking for the overgrown track. At this point things were getting a bit panic-y since we were relying on getting to 70 to be able to continue anchoring our navigation. Fortunately we stumbled across the overgrown track (we thought… ) and a few minutes later were overjoyed when we arrived at 70.

We made quick work to knock off 73-82. Our pre-starting plan had wanted us at 82 with 1h 40 to go. We got there with 55 minutes to go. Aaah. We didn’t really have a lot of options for varying our course – either we headed back to the HH with no further points, or else we tried to finish off as we’d planned and probably be late. Mel having recently run a PB in a marathon was in far better running shape than me (having run all of about 1 hour in the last year). As soon as we hit the road south of 82 we started running. I quickly abandoned any pretence of concentrating on the nav, just trying to keep up with Mel. We got 46 and the got to an intersection with ribbons on it. We weren’t expecting an intersection until 55, and we hadn’t done the curve shown on the map so we just continued on without much thought.

I realised that the terrain was falling away on our right (it shouldn’t have been) and figured that intersection must have been 55 and we’d missed it, and soon we’d pop out at W23. And sure enough we hit the road not long after that, but to both our confusion no sign of W23. Another team came wandering past not looking at all confused, and I concluded we must have come down an unmarked track. Time was a-ticking so we headed towards home, and almost immediately went past the plantation – confirming our suspicions on what had happened. I suspect it was a blessing in disguise as it meant we no longer needed to keep running (thank goodness) and were able to grab 40-36 as we walked back with just over 2 minutes in the bank.

Mel was justifiably disappointed with our various errors through the day and proclaimed there was no need to hang around for the presentations. I wasn’t so sure our mistakes were catastrophic, and quietly held out hopes for, at minimum, a placing.

We got our scorecard – 1,000 points, instead of the 1,270 we’d planned for. Then all our focus was on food & coffee. We thoroughly enjoyed the vegetable soup, and the AeroPress got its belated workout.

The first categories (Mens U23 & Novice?) were won by a team on 950 points. Who the announcer said were 7th overall. That made us a sit-up! That meant we’d come in the top 6. So it was with less surprise we found ourselves winners of the Veteran Women & Open Women categories. The top 3 teams all got 1,100 and something, so if we’d nailed our plan…. (though I’m sure they probably had their mistakes too).

It was a pretty happy car load that headed back to Melbourne.

Once home I geo-referenced the map and overlaid Mel’s track. Interesting things to observe:

• The road leading to 61 bends much earlier than the track as shown on the map
• The track between Watson & Sandridge Tracks was barely visible, and in the end we just walked cross country. Surprisingly it seemed we were almost on it. (near 44)
• The track shown leading over the spur below 53 didn’t exist.
• The track shown leading over the knoll below W21 didn’t exist.
• See how close (yet so far) we got to 49
• What the hell was the bearing we took to go to 71!??
• The dangers of going cross country when trying to hit a track in a particular position… on our way to 70
• The unmarked track that took us down to near 40 (missing 55 & W23)
• A few controls that were not in the centre of the circle i.e. the map didn’t match the terrain e.g. 40 – the control was in the watercourse, but watercourse must be incorrectly located on the map.

Controls we’d planned to get but didn’t: 49-71-93, 55-W23, 77 (ran out of time)
Controls we got that we hadn’t planned to: 47-32

In conclusion an enjoyable rogaine, and as always plenty of things to learn from.

It’s interesting doing a rogaine in a state that you’re not used to. There’s small differences between the way rogaines run in NSW and Victoria (based on my experience of 2 rogaines in Vic!).

	Victoria	NSW
Mandatory Gear Checks	Done	Not done
Wristbands	Put on for us	Given in a paper bag
Intention Sheets	Given in as you enter the starting area	Given in at registration
Start punch	Punches as you enter the starting area	Not needed
Scores	Print out provided when you finish (& eventually put online)	Not revealed until the presentation. Online within a few hours of the finish
Prizes	Small chocolate bars	Rogaining mugs