It’s always a challenge to set orienteering courses in granite terrain and for this reason I teamed up with Darren Eenjes (or should I say the entire Eenjes family) to run our Korong Spur event. We also had the good fortune to have the permission of Ian Fraser (the owner of the property that adjoins our start location) to use his driveway for parking. This made it easier for us to get Parks Victoria approval for our event. It was a pleasure dealing with Ian, who is an avid environmentalist and a fan of our sport.
After running a successful event on this map in 2016 with Darren as course-setter I was keen to follow up with another set of memorable courses. I made an early decision to include a strong route-choice leg on Course 1 and this was well received by runners, who chose to attack the leg in various ways. The most popular route chosen was via the track to the West. Courses 2 and 3 were truncated versions of Course 1. Course 4 was a ‘hard’ moderate course, made easier by having all control sites in relatively close proximity to the Eastern perimeter road. As was the case in our 2016 Korong Spur event it was necessary to provide taped routes for more difficult legs on Course 5. For all courses my aim was to provide opportunities for orienteers to move quickly through mostly open terrain, with fair control sites and inspiring views. The moderately ‘friendly’ granite terrain on Korong Spur made my task relatively easy.
A couple of trips to Mt Korong were necessary to tape control sites and most controls were placed two days prior to the event. After an extremely cold beginning July 1 cleared to become a lovely sunny winter’s day. 49 runners started on the day with only 5 non-finishers. On Course 1 Matthew Schepisi made a return to local orienteering and won with an impressive rate of just over 7 minutes per kilometre. Ben and Richard Goonan were close behind him. Jimmy Cameron was a clear winner on Course 2, with other creditable performances from Michael Loughnan, Andrew Cameron and Tavish Eenjes. John ‘Wilko’ Wilkinson’s nagging injuries didn’t stop him winning Course 3, but Serryn Eenjes finished an impressive second despite a couple of navigational errors.
Winners in the moderate and easy courses were Ryan Davies (DROC) in Course 4 and Xavier Ough on Course 5.
Post-race discussion centred around route choices on Course 1 and the difficulties experienced by many competitors in finding the first control (common to courses 1 to 4). When choosing this control site (located only 150 metres from the start triangle and accurately placed) the course-setter believed it was possibly too obvious. Obviously not.
Daryl Fleay
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