Our Orange-based Goldseekers have celebrated 25 years with a social run and party at Lake Canobolas, where it all began.
The club formed in May 1994 following a course on orienteering run by Jean and Basil Baldwin at the local Community College. (They started orienteering in South Australia in the early days after coming from the UK, then Basil - pictured here - got a new position at Orange Ag College.)
Lake Canobolas was the first area to be mapped, followed by Gosling Creek. These were the venues for the first Goldseekers events in September and October 1994. Their first bush map was Rocky Falls in the Mullion Range.
In November 1994, they organised a Spring Classic 2-day event at Lake Canobolas and Rocky Falls. 70 Sydney people and 30 locals came to the first Spring Classic. They were also asked to organise orienteering for the Eight Day Games in November 1994 and have done this each year.
1996 was a big year as the national Easter 3-Day Carnival was held in Orange with around 800 people attending. Macquarie Woods, Ophir Diggings, Lookout Rock (Mullion State Forest) and Khalis Rocks were mapped for this event. Goldseekers provided breakfasts at $3 per head for the 400 campers at Canobolas High School!
The summer evening events were started in 1999 and continue to be very popular attracting up to 100 people to the parks and streets of Orange during daylight saving time.
The club has produced over 30 maps of areas near Orange, forest, parkland, suburbs and schools.
Key achievements by club members include Matt Parton representing Australia in the Junior World Championships. Rob and Bridget Bennett representing NSW in interstate school challenges and Jean and Basil Baldwin representing Australia in senior classes in Australia v New Zealand challenges.
"Goldseekers are an important part of NSW orienteering - not only do they have the biggest membership away from the large metropolitan areas, but they are custodian of some of our best terrain ranging from intricate sandstone outcrops, complex granite, runnable open spur gully and also the gold mining of Hill End," said ONSW president Greg Barbour.
"Great terrain has attracted a number of major carnivals and several Australian championships have been held locally. We'll see this again at Easter next year around Molong and the NSW champs at Eugowra.
"We believe Basil is nearing his own milestone and we congratulate Basil and Jean on the way they have nurtured Goldseekers for a quarter century."
You can read the full birthday article here.
