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The club plans to run a weekend away with good company, the opportunity for social activities and a few orienteering activities.

Overnight accommodation will be available (bunkrooms sleeping 4 – 6 people). There will be time to relax/ be active/have fun. The Warburton rail trail and other bike riding trails are close by. A FUN Pent-O is planned for Sunday morning with the club dinner (probably a BBQ), club presentations etc. on Saturday evening. More details etc. will be published closer to the time.

Email Lists

We send out periodic broadcasts to members....but up to now had no way for members to reciprocate (without exposing ourselves to huge amounts of spam email). Now you can send suggestions, offers of assistance or provide feedback to the committee, by sending your message to the email address below (note - remove embedded underlines/spaces first...spam engines harvest email addresses from pages like this....so I put some extra characters in the address that a human can see - and remove - but a computer may not). Anyways...the address is

Oxfam 2007

Lauris Stirling and Geoff Hudson are thinking of entering an Emus team in the Oxfam Trail Walker event next year. This 100Km event traditionally runs from Jell's Park across the Dandenongs, over to Warburton and up to the top of Mount Donna Buang. As a result of the snow storm last year, the organisers have changed the route - so that the finish no longer requires one to climb a mountain at the end of 100km.

If others are interested in taking part, can they let us know - soon....we have to register in the next week or so.

Recent Events

Maxi 3 Hour Report

Street-Orienteering

Coming Events

Check out the Emus Street-Orienteering pages for details of Park/Street events - without a doubt, still the original and the best available street orienteering information in Melbourne.Details of all remaining Bush events and special events below:

OCT

NOV

Victorian Teacher's Games - by Rob Edmonds

Our fellow Emu, Rob Edmonds, has just run the Orienteering activities associated with the Victorian Teacher's Games for the 3rd year running - great effort Rob!. Thanks to the fellow Emus that attended to help Rob out - Robyn and Helen. Congratulations to Rob and all of those that pitched in to help. Rob's report/photos:

Monday Night Series

Earlier this year, as I spoke to Schon, I noted that I'd like to get an extra run in each week - preferably on Monday nights as I was free then. I suggested a highly localised series - to minimise driving. Other concepts proposed were minimal effort - ie no controls to put out or pick up and zero cost - anyone that's ever processed the takings knows that about 50% of every entry fee goes directly to the VOA....clubs actually make very little out of running such events....so no real loss.

Our initial event had only 9-10 people, but this has gradually grown to about 20 regulars and a few others that come from time to time. The accent on these events has been innovation and fun...and the series has excelled in both regards. We've learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way:

A concept that initially started as "Emus Training Nights" - but was renamed so as to remove any implication of inter-club rivalry - has certainly been shown to be viable. At this stage, we're considering a similar (but perhaps less regular) event during Summer - a Saturday evening run, with the possibility of a BBQ afterwards. Properly done - this could be an ideal activity for both regular runners and those with families - more on this soon.

Northern Series starts in 4-5 Weeks

The Northern Series was started - by us, several years ago as a direct response to being smothered by Bayside and to a lesser extent DROC in the Eastern Series. With few maps in the Eastern area we decided that we would start a series in the North and North-Eastern series - our home ground. This year, the series will run for the 4th year - and we need as many Emus as possible to take part. It's OK if you can't make it to all of the events - but please try to be there, in club running tops, to as many as you (and your family) can make it to.

Ian Stirling coordinates Street orienteering in Melbourne and Schon and I coordinate the Northern Series. One of us will contact you in the near future to enlist your aid in setting courses. Note that the Northern Series is much easier than most - in that series, we organise people to collect controls for you at the end of the evening, so it's generally a little easier than some events.

Call Ian on 9876 3643 or Geoff on 9888 8121 if you're prepared to help out during the summer series.

Permanent Street-O Courses

Our successful Monday night events encouraged us to think about other ways that we could introduce our sport to others. It so happened that at this time, I had just built a set of web pages for the VOA site to advertise their permanent course in and around the Metropolitan area. I wondered if this concept might be portable into street-orienteering. Here's how it's panning out so far:

Emus in Japan - James goes to Hokkaido - by James Fell

Most of you will be aware that James fell is studying in Japan for 12 months - and from reading his online blog at http://www.jemuzu.blogspot.com/ he's clearly taking the opportunity to see as much of the country as possible. He's been down south to Okinawa and most recently, all the way up North to the semi-arctic island of Hokkaido....but I'll let James tell you about it:

I’m back from Hokkaido. I caught the bullet train to Tokyo and then a sleeper train from Tokyo to Sapporo, which is the capital of Hokkaido. I bought some pre-prepared food in Tokyo, for tea, and ate it on the train (after it departed 30 min late). I spent about 2-3 hours vomiting it all up that night. The train was the bumpiest and noisiest train I’ve ever been on, so it wasn’t very helpful for if you’re feeling sick. I hadn’t been so sick in about 10 years.

The train ride went was scheduled to go for 16 hours. I had booked a bunk bed, which was ok, but there wasn’t really any seating on the train, so when you weren’t sleeping you had to be on your bed anyway, which had no windows. In the morning they announced that the train would be an hour late (I don’t know how they managed to make it an hour late – they must have driven exceptionally slowly). This meant I had to get off the train at a place called Hakodate, and catch a train that departed after the sleeper train left Hakodate, but arrived in Sapporo before the sleeper train arrived in Sapporo. If I hadn’t changed trains, I would’ve missed my connecting train to Wakkanai, and would have to wait for the last train to Wakkanai, which arrives in Wakkanai at about 11PM, meaning that I would’ve been locked out of my accommodation.

After being sick, I decided it’s safest to stick to McDonalds and bakery foods from the convenience stores, so that’s pretty much all I ate for the rest of the trip.

When I arrived in Wakkanai, it was 5:45PM, and it was already dark…and freezing. I had to wear a polar fleece top and trousers (when I left Kyoto, I was wearing t-shirt and shorts). I woke up the next morning at 5AM and left the hostel at 5:05, to start my walk to Cape Noshappu (which is Japan’s second most northern point). The most northern point is Cape Soya, which I could see when I was walking, but because of my time restrictions, I couldn’t go there. The lady in the tourist information centre had told me that there was no way I could possibly walk to the Cape Noshappu from Wakkanai as it was too far and that I’d have to catch a bus. It only took me 45 mins to walk there. So I spent 15 min there and then headed back to the station for my 7:10AM train to Sapporo (there are not many trains to and from Wakkanai, so I had to fit in with the train schedule). I also saw some kind of military installation there, with lots of strange radio receiver things, presumably it played a role in intelligence when that Korean plane got shot down by the USSR.
	Wakkanai is covered in snow for half the year and I noticed that all the buildings had two sets of doors in their entrance, so it obviously gets very cold. The street signs are tri-lingual, in Japanese, Russian and English (58 000 Russians enter Wakkanai every year, which is probably greater than its population). The background of the picture is black, because of the amount of daylight around and the reflective properties of road signs. There was actually a lot of daylight around when I took the photo. After the 5 hour train trip to Sapporo, I went to see the clock tower. About 125 years ago, when Japan was trying to copy everything Western, they were pushing development in Hokkaido, so Hokkaido is more European/American looking than the rest of Japan. The picture is of the clock tower.
After the clock tower I went to the old Sapporo Brewery. This was the first beer brewery in Japan, and has a museum and sampling area. The train home left at 17:10, and was much nicer, because I had my own room, so I could lie in bed and watch the scenery go by as I travelled half way down Japan. It was particularly satisfying to see the people in the crowded Tokyo commuter trains see me lying in bed looking out the window at them in their crowded trains. The train was delayed 45 mins at one of the stops in the morning, because there was something wrong with the locomotive. At one stage they said that the train was not able to depart the station, and they told everyone to change to the bullet train. But only about a third of the passengers changed trains, and then 5 minutes later they said the train was fine. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I just stayed on the train.

	The VTG included Orienteering on two days, a score event at Eastern Park Botanical Gardens, and a bush event at the You Yangs. Robyn Sunderland set the courses for Eastern Park with an event that took in points of cultural and historical interest along the Geelong beachfront and gardens and a newly made OCAD map. Questions included, ‘Which year did South Africa play cricket here?’ and ‘In which year did the Union Bank open here?’ Helen Schofield also assisted at registration.
Peter Grover completed the course under the prescribed 75 minutes and scored a perfect 20. Helen Edmonds and Denise Pike crossed the line in under an hour but messed up one answer. The next day’s event was more popular with nearly 50 people taking part. There were a few newcomers, too. Mike Hubbert and Ian Baker, who took part in the original event at the You Yangs in 1971, were there as well.		Just two courses were set, a social (moderate) course and a competitive (hard) course. Men and women did the same courses. Nick Gibson won his second Gold medal at the VTG in three years and Tony Clark followed up last year’s Gold with Silver. Helen Edmonds won her third Gold medal in three years with Denise taking out the Silver and Laurie Niven, Bronze.
	The VTG will be held in Geelong again next year. The previous two years were based in Albury - Wodonga. The event continues to grow in popularity with over 2000 participants this year. It is important to maintain an orienteering profile at the games if we are to make inroads into gaining acceptance in school curriculum. The games provide a great way to showcase our sport. In the 3 years orienteering has been part of the games, participation has grown from 12 to 37 to 57 this year.

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Nillumbik Emus Social Weekend - by Fiona Fell