The Australian championship carnival is underway in Ballarat, with the Victorian and Australian Middle distance champs held in intricate gold mining terrain at Creswick at the weekend.
For relative bush newcomers, this is tough, tough going. The map looks like someone spent hours drizzling honey onto paper.
Our intrepid reporter (and novice), Jim Mackay from the Uringa club, filed this report.
"It's not natural," was my conclusion after Sunday's race.
"I wasn't talking about the weather - which was a gorgeous spring day with no wind to speak of. I was talking about the 19th-century mining which has gouged and transformed the landscape into a difficult terrain to navigate for the uninitiated.
"Natural contours have been replaced by steep criss-crossing trenches, pits and rock piles which make it more industrial art than bush art on the map. Only the miners' water trenches follow the natural contours, I was told, after my dismal run (Jim was 40th in M50A in a tad under two hours - the winner took 36m31s). Next time I'll be ready.
"This time around the Bigfoot Barbours were ready with Greg (M50A) and Louise (W10A) each getting 1st place and Julia 3rd (W10A). Other NSW winners were Anna Fitzgerald (GS) in W35A, Jenny Hawkins (NT) in W70A and Neil Schafer (GO) in M85A."
Among the elite classes: Big Foot's visiting Swede Mikaela Ronnback was 7th in junior women, Newcastle's adopted Swede Malin Anderson 8th in open women, Aidan Dawson (GO) 7th in junior men and Rob Preston (NC) 10th in open men.
Thanks to Jim for a fine report and Karen Blatchford for the lovely photo montage.
Click on the blue links for results from Saturday and Sunday.
