Australian Orienteering Champs - Armidale

Friday, 25 October 2024

It's been a long time since the whole family has travelled to the Australian Orienteering Championships together. Since 2017 Jon has been involved as a coach for the Tasmanian Schools Team, and either Zali or Jett (and for a while both) were on the team so they would travel and stay separately while I made my own plans with one or none of the children.

It's nice to be back together again.

Some years (like last year in WA)  the week of the championships involves 2 or even 3 moves around a state to follow the events, where as this year we could stay in just one location, which unfortunately for us was in the Armidale Holiday Park.  I mean it was fine, but 9 nights was about 6 too many nights to stay in a place where you had to visit reception to get a single roll of toilet paper every few days and where the cabin was so stark  we only had 1 bedside table and no coffee table.  During the week I still had to work which meant sitting at the dining table which was uncomfortably furnished with outdoor chairs.   

 

The orienteering itself was fantastic. Armidale has lots of areas with relatively open bush forests with huge boulders everywhere (which was my undoing a number of times).  Jett had some good runs and even sat on the leader's chair for a while on one of the days, while as per usual Zali did really well for someone who does no training, and Jon and I had a mixed bag or results. I finally got a win at the sprint event on the last day which was nice.

 

 

The rest of the time we toured the local area and saw lots of big canyons and waterfalls.

 

 

 

And while it was a bit boring having to work during the week I was able to get out really early for some lovely runs about 20  minutes drive away:

 

 

 

All up it was a fun week. Great to catch up with lots of people and nice to be away. 

 

Southbank Apartment

Friday, 25 October 2024

Ever since I started coming to Melbourne for work a few years ago I've been mulling over the thought of owning somewhere in the Southbank area - which happens to be suburb in the view from the terrace of my work in South Melbourne :

 

After work I'd look at the real estate prices and marvel about the relatively low prices (compared to everything, everywhere else), and fantasise about having a little place we could come and go from as we needed and we could pretend we had a Melbourne lifestyle as well as a Tasmanian one. 

As it happened the prices kept going down (again, in opposition to everywhere else), and I finally mentioned this idea to Jon a few months before we went away to Europe when one of his work trips co-incided with mine and we stayed together in my usual Southbank hotel.  To my surprise and happiness, Jon was immediately on board with the idea, and later so was Zali (who had the Formula 1 in mind).  Jett happened to be away in Europe at the time so he had to be caught up with the plan later.  

Knowing there wasn't much we could do about it until we were back, we did nothing more except occasionally browse the real estate websites and decide which buildings looked like they had the best facilities. My dream was to have a 25 metre pool and a gym, Jon's was for a sauna.  Southbank is almost 100% apartment buildings so there were a lot of buildings to think about but by the time we got back from Europe we had an idea of what ones we wanted to check out, and what we didn't.  Initially we were mostly looking at 1 bedroom places but then, after mentioning this plan to Paul, he said he and Dani be keen to come on board,  so with our combined budget we could get something larger that would suit us all and be co-habitatable when required or just be able to host larger groups. In the end we set our sights on two bedroom/two bathroom places.  The location needed to be walking distance from the CBD proper (and the skybus), walking distance to my work, and a short run to the botanical gardens - which pretty much fitted 3/4 of the addresses in Southbank.

Of course we couldn't do anything without looking at places in real life so Jon, Zali and I booked a 4 day trip to Melbourne, conveniently staying in one of our target buildings - Melbourne Square. This was our one and only chance to check out as many places as possible so we lined up a hectic schedule of 25 viewings over 3 days. It was intense and often involved RUNNING between viewings as if you weren't outside the building at the start of the 15-30 minute inspection window, it was likely you wouldn't get inside at all, as the agent would come down and get everyone just once, then go up to the apartment.   We became familiar with a large group of southbank real estate agents and we revisited many of the buildings multiple times to see different apartments.

We saw lots of great places, the very best were a bit out of our price range but lots of the ones that were within our range still had great views and great facilites. 

 

We saw a lot of places that were styled within an inch of their lives, from the music and scented candles to the open cookbooks which seemed to be an obligatory part of styling:

  

 

 

We also saw a few dud places - generally ones which were tennanted and the tennants had no motivation to clean or tidy up.  In one case the agent unlocked the door and followed us into a dimly lit apartment were we could discern that the tennant was halfway through packing up as their bags of clothes were spread about the floor.  A few steps further inside and I looked left into the master bedroom and saw that the tennant was in fact completely passed out asleep in their bed with their feet hanging out the end.  They obviously had forgotten about the inspection and had a big night the night before.   Hilariously the agent asked us if we'd like to stay and look around (what and tiptoe around the sleeping tennant?), but we wanted nothing more than to get out of there as quickly as we could!

Overall it was a fun weekend.  We were careful about taking photos and Jon was great about writing down our impressions as it could have easily all ended up being one big blur. 

 

 

 

 

By the following Monday - after consultation with Dani and Paul - we were ready to make an offer on an apartment in one of our early favourite buildings - Melbourne Square.  It has a pool, sauna, spa, lots of other facilities and is in a great location.  The Southbank market being as it is (great for buyers, bad for sellers), the vendor accepted our lower-end offer pretty much immediately and we were suddenly full steam ahead for a little slice of life in the big city. Settlement is on the 1st of November.  

 

Mixed Bag

Thursday, 24 October 2024

Just a few random photos & thoughts:

It's been nice having family dinners at Mum's house (although sad that Dad isn't there).   

 

Pinto has the cutest feet in the world.

 

Not all eggs are good eggs (thanks for the warning Zali)

 

The pipeline track is often the best place to run on a wet and windy day

 

Pinto keeping a close eye on me..

 

Jo and her cat Chico standing in her garden which is looking beautiful at the moment

 

St Helens Orienteering Event

Thursday, 24 October 2024

It feels like we've been pretty busy since getting back from Europe. One thing we were doing was organising an orienteering event in St Helens.  This meant lots of visits to the area to check control sites and clear paths through the thick gullies so the competitors could make it through on the day. This activity provided much joy and sustinence to the local leeches.

Despite my leech bitten ankles I found it was kind of nice moving through the bush slowly and taking the time to notice all the little things..

 

 

 

On the day the event went really well with very few hitches, despite the fact that after all our planning and checking we had change almost everything the weekend before when it became clear that the creek level wasn't going to drop low enough to get all our competitors (of all different ages) across to our planned start location safely.  

 

The following day was the Tasmanian Long Distance championships on another map nearby which was certainly long but was also really fun. One competitor came back with such an interesting shape on their shirt from some sort of altercation with a burnt tree that I want to use it somehow in the future so I'll leave this picture here to remind myself..

 

While we had a full house we took advantage of the numbers and held our first ever St Helens Orienteering Club AGM. I'm president, Jon is secretary and we strong-armed Jo to become treasurer on the proviso that there would be absolutely nothing to do..

  

 

Brain Scrolls

Thursday, 24 October 2024

 

I was making a batch of cinamon scrolls the other day (above) when Zali asked if she could bake some of them herself. 

This is what we ended up with:

 

St Helens, it's been too long

Thursday, 24 October 2024

As evidenced by the difficulty of pushing the lawn mower through the lush grass in the front garden.

 

Finland Days 5 & 6

Monday, 12 August 2024

Our last day of competition was the long distance final – I knew the distance was going to be too long for me to be very competitive, plus I made lots of mistakes so I finished well back in the field – but it was still heaps of fun.

On our way home we did one last stop at a lake for a swim - there's no shortage of lakes in this country.

 

Back at home we washed our orienteering shoes and gave them a quick sauna before we packed them (all apartments and houses we've seen in Finland have a sauna).

 

On our last day in Finland and the very last day of our holiday we went for a quick run on one of the islands as I was keen just to run and enjoy the forest (without thinking about navigation).

 

 

Then we returned home to face the final pack of our bags - Jon has swapped bags with Zali and also been given lots of Zali and Jett's stuff to take home so there was some serious squishing to be done.. 

 

 

One we were done we picked up Andrea and Sue who were getting a lift and made our way to the airport.   Unfortunately I was feeling pretty unwell by the afternoon with almost exactly the same symptoms as I’d had in Edinburgh.   Hopefully some good rest at home will help me get rid of whatever this is for once and for all, as I haven't been 100% for weeks now.

Finland Day 4

Monday, 12 August 2024

I’d been looking forward to the rest day almost as much as the beautiful Finland forests, and we had a great day hanging out with our friends – firstly heading out to heading out to the archipelago where Andy and his family were staying for some disc golf around their amazing summer house/cabin (complete with a spa,jetty and sauna) and then some paddle boarding from their jetty, then we drove further into the islands via bridges and car ferries to go for a short walk to an observation tower with views out to sea – then we played some more disc golf on a little course nearby which was super fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finland Days 1 - 3

Monday, 12 August 2024

By virtue of flying west to east and losing 3 hours to the time zone change, our first day in Finland was pretty short – we arrived at 4pm local time, picked up the car, drove 2 hours to Turku then had dinner with some Australians before finding our apartment in the Port Arthur suburb of central Turku.   Turku seemed pretty nice – it was the original capital of Finland and is a port town with a big archipelago nearby. Our apartment was in the older part of town of converted workers cottages:

 

 

The World Champs had been going for a few days already with the sprint qualification and sprint final having been run and won – because we wanted to fit in Iceland and the Faroes we had chosen to just come for the forest events – a qualification then a middle distance final followed by a rest day, and then the long distance final on the last day.

 

The first day of orienteering for us was the forest qualification race – To make the A Final I had to finish in about the top 40 of my heat (of 2 heats),  while Jon who had to be in the top 30 in his heat as there were more competitors and 3 heats. 

I had a steady run with some moments of good fortune when I stumbled over controls on my way to relocating so I finished 26th in my heat but a long way back timewise. The terrain was really lovely – really detailed with lots of open moss-covered bits of bare rock – definitely more challenging than O-ringen had been as there were way less tracks and hardly any easy legs.  Jon only just missed out on making it to the A final – despite being a lot closer to the winner in time than I was.

The next day was the middle distance final – It was really tricky but I had a good run and finished 30th which I’m really happy with - especially as there’s also the threat of relegation – if you finish in the bottom 10 of the A final, you get relegated down to the B final for the long distance race (while the top 10 in B move up) – so with 80 competitors I was well clear.  Jon wasn’t far off being promoted but ultimately stayed in B for the long final.

Iceland Day 5

Monday, 5 August 2024

Our last day in Iceland was relatively cruisy - we woke up at 7am to go for a run but it was so windy and wet it was hard to even get the front door open, so we went back to bed until 8 when we had another look - same - so we went back to bed again and got up for real at 9.30 and packed our running gear away (at least it was still dry!). After some leisurely packing we left Vik headed for Reykjavik in the still pouring rain.  Vik seems to be in some weird constant rain shadow area as it always has the worst of the weather - after about 20 minutes it cleared up a lot.

  

We didn't have any stops to do along the way so we arrived around 1pm and did a bit of a walking tour before going to our apartment. The city centre and old town are quite pretty and very busy with tourists.

 

 

 

There were heaps of souvenir shops in the town - my favourite by far was the one with the cat (with a sign next for it saying 'not for sale)

 

It was nice to see a few other neighbourhood cats around too:

      

We stayed in a small ramshackle apartment very close to the centre - I chose it because I figured we'd need a washer and dryer at this stage (I was correct) but unfortunately it only had a washer as the dryer was in the 'other apartment' that's available. After much messaging with the owner we managed to get half our stuff into the basement dryer of the completely different house next door, but then of course the guy that enabled this went out - leaving us unable to get our gear from the locked place just as we were planning to head to our evening booking at the Blue Lagoon - so it was a bit of a hassle for a while - it's not the first time the washer or dryer hasn't really existed despite being on the ad.  Anyway it all turned out ok - someone else turned up and let us get to it.

After dinner we drove the 45 minutes out to the Blue Lagoon. We weren't sure we wanted to do this activity as it was pretty expensive but I'm really glad we did - it was really fun and we drifted about in the delightfully hot waste from the geothermal plant next door for a few hours - enjoying our free drink and facial scrub. 

 

We took the time to debrief a bit from the last four weeks and decided the following: 

Best countries we've experienced in order:

  • Sweden (mostly because O-ringen was so much fun but the weather was good, the forests and lakes were beautiful)
  • Faroe Islands
  • Scotland (WOC was great and I loved the Isle of Skye)
  • Ireland/Iceland
  • Northern Ireland
We're ranking the full experience we had - which puts Sweden above Faroe Islands but from a pure tourist perspective the Faroe Islands was the winner. Despite the amazing scenery Iceland ranks lower than we had expected because of the weather, the fact that things are actually a long way apart, and the expense. It was nice but it felt like we were on a tourist train from one site to the next - I think it would have been better to be here either just 3 nights (on the tourist train) or two weeks so there's time to do some long hikes and get into the mountains a bit more (but then of course the bad weather makes that less fun). Also Zali noted that our Faroe Islands photos don't do it justice, whereas the Iceland photos actually make it look better than it is.  There's not a second spent on the Faroes where the views aren't breathtaking.

Best city

  • London

Worst city

  • a drawer between Dublin and Belfast - both really dirty and Belfast had a weird vibe.

And now it's on to Finland for 5 nights for the World Masters Orienteering Championships.  It actually started a few days ago with the sprint races but we're just going for the forest ones as we wanted to fit in Faroes/Iceland.    We'll arrive in Turku late this afternoon after losing 3 hours mid-flight due to the west-to-east time zone change. We had to get up at 4am this morning so hopefully the flight is restful!

Iceland Day 4

Sunday, 4 August 2024

Today was always going to be big - we had 5 hours of driving interspersed with numerous stops and hikes.  Luckily we are match fit after almost 4 weeks of touring so we were well prepared.  

Leaving Vik in the pouring rain and gale force winds, our first stop was in clearing weather 50 minutes down the road at the Lava Fields - actually there are lava fields absolutely everywhere but these just happened to have a convenient viewing spot - the moss grows in layers on the older lava fields like thick snow:

Then it was onto a deep canyon called Fjaðrárgljúfur where we could walk along the top for a few kilometres:

    

Then we made it to the glacial highlight Jökulsárlón, which is a lake at the bottom of one of the glacier tongues, so ice chunks break off and float around the lake:

 

  

The more exciting part of this was the next stage, where the icebergs float out to sea, then get smashed up in the waves (which were wild today), and land back on the beach in pieces, looking like diamonds in some cases - hence the name.. Diamond Beach.

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The best fun part was sitting in the car in the carpark having lunch, watching people get unexpectedly swamped by the waves as they took selfies or stood on the larger icebergs.  The rate at which the ice melted in the sea was astounding - a car sized chunk was swiss ball sized by the time we drove away.  The beach also had cool rocks which contrasted with the black sand.

 

Then we turned around and headed back towards Vik as we had 2 nights booked.  We stopped at a national park to walk to Svartifoss - a waterfall with the basalt hexagonal shapes we've been noticing since the Giants Staircase in Ireland.

 

 

    

 

 

Then it was back in the car for the final leg home past mountain and glacier views, multiple waterfalls that had water falling up into the sky from the strong winds, and cliffs with cute houses and horses below.  These photos were taken out of the car window. 

 

 

 

 

We left home at 9ish and arrived back at 7.30, in time to have dinner, watch some Olympic highlights and reorganise ourselves for the trip to Reykavik and our final night in Iceland tomorrow - the highlight of which might be having access to a washing machine and dryer, as we haven't had one since Copenhagen.

Iceland Day 3

Saturday, 3 August 2024

 Once again our day started with rain but by the time we got to our first stop at a geyser park it had pretty much stopped

 

We are now south and east of Reykavik and today we hit many of the more famous tourist sites - they didn't disappoint. The drives between each of them were really nice too - again lots and lots of horses, green fields and looming crazy shaped cliffs formed by lava.  We also got glimpses of a big glacier in the distance.

 

 

 

     

 

Shortly after visiting the waterfall above the weather changed again and it started bucketing down and the wind picked up.  Handily we were almost at our accommodation so we abandoned further plans and went straight there to shelter for a few hours. 

After dinner the weather cleared so we went out to visit the black beach and get a good view of Vik, the town we are staying nearby.

 


 

Iceland is very busy with tourists just like us - there are lots more people around than are appearing in my photos I'm just using careful framing! It's not quite as busy as I expected though, there are always spaces in the car parks and it's pretty relaxed. 

 

 

Iceland Day 2

Friday, 2 August 2024

Day 2 of Iceland was great although the weather certainly started where it left off the day before:

 

 

 

While the rain was good for the volume of waterfalls, it wasn't good for the water quality - the waterfall below is supposed to have clear blue water..it was still interesting that the water didn't come from the top of the lava cliffs, but it wasn't quite the same as the photos we've seen where it's beautiful and blue!

 

 

 

Due to the prices (and our general preference not to spend more than necessary on food), we don't get to stop at the places that say 'all day lunch buffet' - we get to stop during a break in the rain at a soggy picnic table by the side of the road for cheese sandwiches.  After lunch the weather improved a lot and we started to see some great views around us.

We drove over the mountains to the famous Thingvellir National Park which is where two tectonic plates join and also the site of the birth of Iceland as an independent country in 1944.

 

 

 

 

After strolling around for an hour or so we continued on to our accommodation, which I'd had to book hastily the night before when Zali realised we had a gap in our bookings. It's turned out to be our favourite place we've stayed in so far - so all's well that ends well! It's a beautiful hand crafted cabin that smells of some sort of pine and even has it's own stream out the back.

 

 

We even had time for a short run near the local lake (with geothermal pools) before dinner. 

 

 

 

Then we had hot chocolates and admired our icelandic socks we bought at a tourist shop hours earlier.. 

 

I haven't got a good photo of them yet, but there are icelandic horses everywhere. We seem to frequently drive past paddocks full of 30 or more of them. While we drove through the mountains we got a good view of a group of them being run along beside the creek - it looked incredible - there were 8 with riders and 30 running along in between. I'm not sure why anyone needs as many horses as they seem to keep around but they do look very striking.  I'll get a better photo somewhere before we go.

 

 

 

Iceland Day 1

Friday, 2 August 2024

The first day in each new country always feels very long and this was no exception.  Our first stop was the rental car company which was a bit tedious as we had to wait 45 minutes at the airport for the shuttle.  Once we got the car we were told to watch out for the wind as an 'orange' warning had been issued - but that we should be ok as long as we aren't travelling west.  Of course we were travelling west!

Our second stop was to a supermarket to decipher all the food items and stock up as much as we could for the next 3 days at least. 

Then we did a million other stops on our way west to the western peninsular of Snaefellsjokull which had high mountains and a big national park. The weather steadily got worse and by our second last stop of the day we were all absolutely drenched.  By the last stop I'd had enough and refused to get out of the car to look at another stupid light house and suffer another drenching.  I'm sure the 5am start didn't help my mood.

Luckily by this point we were close to our firsts night accommodation at an old bookstore, so by the time we'd had dinner and hot showers I was feeling a bit better.  

There are too many places to list them all - here are some of my better photos in chronological order:

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Zali hitting her limit - 3 stops from the end) 

 

 

(this stop was my breaking point - note how wet Jon is in this) 

 

Jon probably has a good photo of our final stop before our accommodation as only he and Jett braved the elements. I won't post it out of respect for their acheivements :)

We finally made it by around 7pm - on schedule by our usual standards except we got up at 5am Faroe time.  The place we stayed at felt like a Hydro town - grid streets and fairly soul-less. It turns out it was where the fishing workers lived so it makes sense. It did have some nice Murals but nothing that would challenge Sheffield.

I have to admit that after the Faroes  our first impressions (well mine anyway) of Iceland were a bit humdrum.  The normal-ness of the cities and long bland sections of driving (and our fatigue) probably contributed to this.  Also the deteriorating weather didn't help.   The prices are even more expensive than anywhere we've been so far-- one night in our tiny slightly run-down place in a nothing town cost more than our 3 nights in the cabin on the Faroes.  


 

Faroe Islands Day 3

Thursday, 1 August 2024

Jon and Jett went out for a rainy run in the morning..

 

then we finally got to walk through the doors of the local supermarket to get some non-service station food for the day’s supplies.

After that we did a driving tour of many of local towns and  islands via many tunnels and many bridges. We stopped for photos and even got some wifi when we went to an open information centre to check in for our flight the next day. We also discovered that one of the local teams Klaksvik was playing Malmo in the UEFA champions league round that night – so there was much excitement in that town (Update - they won 2-1!).  We’ve noticed that almost every town in the Faroe Islands has better football facilities than Hobart – generally beautiful artificial turf grounds and fancy clubhouses – so soccer is definitely a national pursuit. The other is racing their Faroe style dinghies but we didn’t get to witness any of that although the boats are all over the place.

 

 

  

After having a mostly cruisy driving day we had one final tourist challenge – we had to catch a car ferry to another island, drive to the far end of it (via 4 tiny one-lane tunnels), hike out to Kunoy lighthouse and back, then return to the ferry before it left, thus not leaving us stranded on the island overnight.  This meant we had to walk and jog at a decent pace to get back to the car in time. This was one of the pay-hikes which unfortunately don’t mean they are in good condition as we were slipping and sliding through the mud on the exceptionally steep slopes.  We made it with about 15 minutes to spare and the views were well worth the sweat and slides.

 

 

 

By the time we were home for our last night we just had time to pack and be ready for a 5 am departure for Iceland.

Overall the Faroes were amazingly spectacular.  It was hard not to be somewhere with an incredible view.  The weather was pretty similar to a Hobart winter - we noticed we were getting very similar temperatures each day! The roads are pretty good in most places, there's ample parking and toilets for tourists and good information boards everywhere (very helpful for those without internet). I'd highly recommend visiting to anyone but be prepared to hike a little, and go quickly, it's not going to stay quiet for long. 
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