Orienteers of all ages from across Australia and New Zealand descended on Castlemaine, Maldon, Daylesford and Blackwood for the Australian Orienteering Championships from September 24-October 2.
The nine day carnival kicked off in Daylesford with the Victorian Middle Distance Championships and the Orienteering Grand Prix.
September 25 the action moved to Blackwood for the Australian Middle Distance Championships.
September 26 the focus shifted to Kyneton for day one of the Australian Schools Sprint Championships. September 27 students competed in the Long Distance Championships on a course at Harcourt, and on September 28 Chewton played host to the Australian Schools Relay Championships.
After a rest day on Thursday orienteers hit the tracks at Sunbury on Friday September 30 for the Australian Sprint Championships.
Fine skies greeted orienteers at Maldon on Saturday October 1 for the Australian Long Distance Championships, and Sunday October 2 the event wrapped up with the Australian Relay Championships at Campbells Creek.
Carnival director Warwick Williams of Orienteering Victoria said they couldn’t have hoped for a better event.
“The weather on both weekends was fantastic and during the week we managed to stage all our events despite the wet.
In fact, on the Tuesday Bendigo and Kyneton experienced two inches of rain, but up on Mount Alexander the weather went around us and we only had a slight bit of drizzle and competition proceeded as planned,” he said.
“We had around 1000 competitors from Australia, New Zealand and further afield attend and they really enjoyed the courses, the scenery and the goldfields landscape.
“We opened up two new courses in the Nuggety Range at Maldon and Blackwood and these were really well received and will no doubt be a location for future competitions.”
The Australian relays on the final day were also blessed with another gorgeous spring day with Wattle blooming.
The cream rose to the top with some of Australia’s best orienteers leading their states to relay wins. Greg Barbour, Jock Davis and Steve Craig, all multi time champions combined to win M45, narrowly, from Victoria. Jo Allison, Shannon Jones and Cath Chalmers did the same in W45. All the elite races had lead changes.
New Zealand cleaned up all the 14 and 16 classes. Victoria had good wins in W35s with Clare Brownridge, Melissa Gangemi and Lillia Gluscenko winning by ten minutes.
Perhaps an even more impressive win came in the very competitive M65s where Roch Prendergast, Chris Norwood and Ted van Geldermalsen came over the top of well credentialed ACT and NSW teams.
For all the results visit: aoc.orienteering.asn.au/results
