NSW Champs

Saturday, 16 September 2023

Back at the Easter 3-day competition we received a flyer for the 2023 NSW Orienteering Championships. We wouldn't normally consider attending a standalone state champs (other than our own) but the photos of the pagoda terrain looked so  amazing we couldn't resist booking flights.  

Paul also felt it was unmissable so he tagged along with our plans which included Thursday evening flights into Sydney and a fairly horrible 6.30am flight out on the Monday morning. 

Just a few weeks after booking we received invitations to Shirley-Annes 60th birthday party in Sydney. With the event a good 3.5 hours drive from the lunch party it looked like it was going to be do-able for Jon if he left our accommodation near Kandos first thing on Sunday. I decided I'd stay and run the 2nd day and then find a lift back with the kids so we could arrive in time for the afterparty on Sunday night.  On paper it was already looking fairly complicated, then to add to the degree of difficulty our best car rental option by a long way was a fancy BYD Atto 3. Which was electric. Which meant charging stops - as even with a 460km range, it wasn't going to get us into the event and back to Sydney. 

Everything went to plan pretty much, we stayed Thursday night at Tracy and Paul's place while Paul L stayed with Andy, then we drove out to Kandos the next day via IKEA and 2 charging stops at Lawson and then at Lithgow. We were lucky there was a free charging point each time we stopped.   The Simpson-Troedson's, us and Paul stayed in an Airbnb which was only a few minutes to the event centre each day which was good, as on Sunday Jon left at 7 to make it home for the party, leaving Andy to shuttle us all to the event after we packed up.   Jon had to go early as he had to factor in another charge as the car was only 1/2 charged when he left, due to our other complication - the Airbnb being off grid so we couldn't drain the house power charging our e-cars! 

After the event on Sunday (we all did pretty well both days) Zali, Jett and I squeezed in with Tracy and Paul who very very kindly drove us all the way to the CBD (and their car was a petrol car so we didn't have to charge on the way home which helped - Andy sent us a message saying there were 8 cars in the queue at one of their stops!) . We arrived back in the city dirty and sweaty at about 6pm and we went straight to the afterparty venue which was a bar right on the water and very cool.

We were there until about 9pm catching up with many of the McComb family and lots of Tim and Shirley-Anne's friends who we had last caught up with at her 50th! It was really fun but we were all really exhausted so it was a relief to pick up the car from the Opera House car park where Jon had left it and drive out to our airport hotel at around 9. Of course the complications didn't stop there as I had to drop everyone off at the hotel and then drive to the international terminal to return the car (as the domestic car rental area is out of action at the moment).   It was so late that there were no shuttles running back to the domestic terminal so after walking a few lengths of the terminal I discovered my only option was to jump onto the train which actually was pretty easy, but as the night got later and later everything felt harder and harder!  By the time I'd arrived back at domestic then walked the15 minutes to our hotel I was pretty smashed and only lasted as long as a shower in our room which wasn't much bigger than a cabin on the Spirit of Tasmania.

The next morning we were up at 5am so we could roll our luggage the 15 minutes back to the terminal and check in - thankfully the flight was on time and after dropping Jon off at work on our way through town I was at my desk at home by about 9.30.  

That night I was so exhausted I went to bed at 8 and didn't wake up until 7 - unheard of for me.  I loved the orienteering and the party was great but it was almost as complicated as the campervan, train, ferry, water-taxi island trip we did in Sweden back in 2019 which still makes me tired just thinking about it - so it left me pretty drained all week.