Easter Carnival: The Cascades

Rest day yesterday, and most of us needed it after the 4 days of rock & seeds.

Yesterday, many went to visit the Girraween National park a few km south of Stanthorpe, followed by a relaxed lunch at the Stage Coach Cafe, then a quick Winery visit to Symphony Hill. We’d tried the earlier nights winnings and decided not to visit Summit wines, but Robert Channon winery might also be worth a visit, which we did after the event today.

Some pictures of the National Park are in the gallery.

Take a peek at the Cascades map from this morning. Wow, what an inticate masterpiece ! There were mixed O results today, ranging from “I’ll never go here again”, to “that was really quite fun”. My own experience was more in the latter category. There weren’t any age groups today; people had just entered whatever course length and navigational difficulty they thought they would like to do. Like street-O. I’ve had a belief for quite a while that Vic State Series events should all be like this. You compete against people of all ages, but similar abilitites. It avoids small age groupings with only a handful (or just one !) person.

Most courses featured one or two long hard legs in them (see map below), which tripped up some, but everyone finished their course, despite some being of the epic variety. There was lots of grey that was mapped so well it was a bit like street orieteering in Kensington, till you had to cross the shrubbery barriers !  The white was fairly thick in places, but not as seedy as other days, so it was great to not have to spend the hours de-seeding various bits of clothing today.

Given the high class of those finishing above me in Red 3, such as Nick Dent, and many notable names below me, such as Isabelle Wymer (2nd over Easter 3 days), the ever average Russell Blatchford, Easter Day 2 course setter David Firman, and John Scown (who caught me on the 1st control), I was quite happy with my 4th place. Suzanne did well on her super long 4th leg in Red 5, but was too tired to navigate properly for the next few controls. Still, she still beat John Sheahan who started well but had some grief on the long leg. Mark Besley had the same long leg as Suzanne, but did a commendable multi-faceted noodle on arrival near the control circle. Very picturesque !

The afternoon in the sun, a bit cooler today, was spent at a winery, a cheese factory and a berry farm place called the The Bramble Patch (yummy raspberry and boisenberry ice cream mixed on the spot).

Most of us leave Stanthorpe tomorrow and head north to near Ipswich. Mark heads home towards Melbourne carting the very valuable grape based cargo.

3 Replies to “Easter Carnival: The Cascades”

  1. Great to read of your rest day activities. Sounded great and would have loved to have visited Girraween. We stayed in Parkes overnight and arrived back in melbourne tonight. Still laughing over Peter C’s ‘superpower’ of being able to lose things and find again – this time his compass in the bush of Rosenthal creek (Easter Day 3)only to have it returned. He feels vindicated. Steve is contemplating doing AS for national series after 2 days of requests from his family!!! Congrats to all BK participants and more who made it a great time over Easter. Very much looking forward to the ELITE results from this coming weekend!

    1. Tell Stephen (and Peter?) to enter Sledge instead for Easter 2013 🙂 Aust Champs maybe AS would be a accomodating move.

  2. I think if Stephen wants to go for a nice long run, he should. Good to get your money’s worth, I say. You don’t want to travel all that way and finish in an hour – time for Philippa and i to do a harder course(am thinking nostalgically of the days when I first started orienteering and I used to spend 3 and a half hours completing the W35A course :))

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