Latest ONSW News

Our popular Saturday morning series SOS resumes on Saturday and is expanding into the Hills District.

Each Saturday in Terms 2 and 3 for six weeks you'll have a choice of Northern Sydney or Hills - with a combined event to finish each school term. 

This week the events are on at Castle Hill High School and Howson Oval, Turramurra. You may start any time between 9.30-11am.

The Turramurra map features a beautiful angophora and eucalyptus forest growing on sandstone outcrops and nestled in north shore suburbia. The courses will take advantage of the bush and the tracks. 

The Castle Hill event will be Sprint orienteering within the school grounds - plenty of twists and turns in that! 

No experience is necessary and courses are ideal for beginners as well as regular orienteers.

The SOS is run by partner organisation Bold Horizons. See here for details.

Proving their kids' MTBO abilities are genetic, the Mackie parents (Big Foot) starred at the NZ MTBO champs last week.

Mum Amanda was on the podium each day in W50, claiming a first in the Sprint, second in the Long Distance and third in the Middle; while dad Hamish won the Long in M40A.

Newcastle's Andrew Power was third in the Sprint in M50.

Congratulations on these achievements.

The 2018 NSW Long Championships earned glowing reviews as two of our more remote clubs - Northern Tablelands and Bush n Beach - combined in perfect harmony near Armidale.

"I think these new maps make it to my top 10 in Australia. Really awesome areas!" said Krystal Neumann, JWOC manager and current NOL senior women's leader - and winner of W21A.

And this from Bennelong legend Terry Bluett: "The best orienteering weekend I've had in ages."

Pretty much everyone raved about the accuracy of the yellow, grey and green areas that allowed you to navigate carefully but with confidence - making for a fantastic experience in testing terrain.

Setter Tony Woolford (Bush n Beach) sapped every ounce of our physical and mental energy with courses that criss-crossed open areas of fast running, steep rocky sections, and the promised "football fields of bare rock".

We noted these excellent performances: the Barbour twins (Big Foot) coming second and third in W14A, Nerise McQuillan (WHO) winning W35AS, Carolyn Davies (Garingal) taking out W55AS, Barbara Junghans (GO) winning W65AS on crutches!, and ACT junior Patrick Miller claiming M21A.   

See our State League web page for links to results, Winsplits and Routegadget.

We ask all competitors to please fill out the very brief Course Setter survey for each day. This information provides valuable feedback and helps determine who wins Course Setter of the Year.

Our next SL weekend is May 12-13 when we go back to Canberra for the ACT Sprint and Middle Champs. Entries close on Monday May 7.

On behalf of the nearly 300 orienteers from ACT, QLD, VIC, NSW, SA (thanks, Emily) and TAS (onya, Will) who ran on these brand new maps - a massive thank you to Northern Tablelands, the Coffs crew and controller Rob Vincent for an awesome weekend. Showcased everything we love about orienteering.

Click on the blue links for photos by Alec Watt from Saturday and Sunday, Terry Cooke from the Middle, Long and presentations, and Tony Hill. Thanks for these great images.