Event Programme

• 4pm - AGM 
• 4.30pm - start of social activities - orienteering maze
• 6pm - Dinner*
• 7pm - Prizegiving

Please BYO your own salads & drinks.

North West Member Results from Forest Cup 2026

Congratulations to all those NWOC members who finished on the podium in this year's Forest Cup Events.

W10 - Mona Ishida 1st
W12 - Emma Ishida 1st; Laura Thompson 2nd 
W16 - Emily Thompson 2nd
W40 - Sian Finn 3rd
W50 - Marquita Gelderman 1st; Kirsten Blake 3rd
W60 - Lisa Mead 1st; Penny Brothers 2nd 
W70 - Mary Moen 2nd

M14 - Harlem Hope-Jensen 1st; Daniel Bunyan 3rd
M18 - Quinn Harris 2nd; Cormac Gray 3rd
M20 - Tahi Harris 1st
M21 - Liam Stolberger 1st; Nick Harris 2nd
M40 - Stuart Lynch 3rd
M50 - Mark Lawson 1st
M60 - Geoff Mead 3rd
M70 - Dave Middleton 1st
M80 - Chris Gelderman 3rd

Congratulations to other NWOC members with top places in the Open grades. 

North West Member Results from Australian Champs 2026

The 2026 Australian Orienteering Championships were held in and around Canberra in late September/early October. This was a huge Carnival with 7 events and 1121 participants from 13 countries, including 186 from New Zealand. North West was well represented with several Juniors in the New Zealand Southern Cross teams and Senior members competing in many grades. 

Congratulations again to the NWOC Juniors in the Southern Cross teams - Daniel Porteous, Isaac Stewart, Tahi Harris, Eva Scott, Arietty Smith-Godoy, Jamie Appleton, Aidan Barrett-Hamilton & Alexander Finn. And Reserves, Emily Thompson & Quinn Harris.

Top Ten Results are listed below. 

Oceania Championship Middle Distance - the weather was notably hot and there were literally hundreds of kangaroos on the drive in and plenty hopping around on the map!
M14A - Alex Finn 1st
M16A - Jamie Appleton 3rd; Aidan Barrett-Hamilton 6th
M50A - Nick Harris 6th
M70A - Geoff Mead 10th
M75A - Rob Garden 1st
Mens Open B - Nick Thompson 6th; Tim Appleton 7th

W14A - Arietty Smith-Godoy 9th
W55A - Marquita Gelderman 2nd
W55AS - Fiona de L'Isle 8th
W70A - Penny Brothers 7th
Women's Open B - Sian Finn 1st; Sarah Barrett-Hamilton 8th

Oceania Championship Long Distance - Canberra received its heaviest 24 hour rainfall since 1976! The start was delayed 45 mins by lightning strikes. Lisa Mead comments, "I was drenched by the time I reached the start and the dry watercourses became raging torrents"! Pip Poole is said to have gone completely underwater crossing one creek!

M20E - Tahi Harris 4th; Isaac Stewart 7th
M14A - Alex Finn 4th
M16A - Daniel Porteous 1st; Aidan Barrett Hamilton 10th
M50A - Nick Harris 8th
M70A - Geoff Mead 6trh
M75A - Rob Garden 1st
M80A - Dave Middleton 2nd 
M Open B Tim Appleton 1st; Nick Thompson 4th

W14A - Eva Scott 3rd
W55A - Marquita Gelderman 4th
W55AS - Fiona de L’Isle 3rd
W65A- Pip Poole 5th; Lisa Mead 6th
W70A - Penny Brothers 7th
W Open B - Sian Finn 1st; Olivia Appleton 2nd; Sarah Appleton 6th; Sarah Barrett-Hamilton 9th

Oceania Championship Sprint
M20E - Isaac Stewart 3rd
M16A - Aidan Barrett-Hamilton 2nd
M50A - Nick Harris 6th
M60A - Andrew de L’Isle 8th
M80A - Dave Middleton 7th
M Open B - Nick Thompson 8th

W14A - Eva Scott 3rd; Arietty Smith-Godoy 8th
W55A - Marquita Gelderman 2nd
W65A - Pip Poole 8th 
W70A - Penny Brothers 10th
W Open B - Sian Finn 1st

Australian Schools Champs Sprint

Senior Boys - Tahi Harris 4th; Daniel Porteous 5th
Junior Girls - Eva Scott 4th
Junior Boys - Cormac Grey 6th

Australian Schools Champs Long

Senior Boys - Isaac Stewart 5th; Daniel Porteous 6th
Junior Girls - Arietty Smith-Godoy 7th 
Junior Boys - Aidan Barrett-Hamilton 5th; Jamie Appleton 10th 

North West at Oceania

Club Captain, Rob Garden organised for groups of North West members to stay and travel together at Oceania Champs. Rob has done this for many years and every time people return home 'buzzing' with enthusiasm for orienteering after a fabulous experience. We asked NWOC members, Nick Thompson and Sarah Barret-Hamilton who travelled as part of these groups to comment on their experience. 

Nick Thompson writes - Oceania 2026 was a great week, and I highly recommend it to parents or even to club members who haven’t been before. We were fortunate that Rob and Marquita had booked accommodation at the Alivio Tourist Park in Canberra early in the year. Huge thanks to them for this and for their hospitality. I was lucky to be staying with them, along with Nick Harris, Tim Cochrane, and Sian Finn. 
We would debrief our maps at the end of each day and have some discussion about what to expect for the next day. 
One of the highlights was our evening training sessions. Nick Harris hooked his laptop up to the TV so we could dissect our and others’ routes on livelox. We then put event sample maps up and Nick would put his map planning skills to use and plan a course for us to discuss how we would attack each control. This was great preparation for our events and even developing our orienteering knowledge in general.
One night we had the NWOC kids over who were in the NZ Development Team, as they were staying in the same facility, along with some AOC members, and families who are well known and/or have been NWOC members in the past, so a very cool orienteering vibe was prevalent for the whole week.

Over and above this, it was great to get to know club members better and also have some good conversations about many things outside of orienteering, and most importantly sharing a few laughs.
Many thanks also to the coaches and parents who were organising the NZ Development team. This was so well done. The kids were kept busy but had some nice downtime in the pool at the tourist park as well.
I will always look back on this week with fondness and really encourage others to get across in the future.
Thank you so much to my group, you all really made the week.

Sarah Barrett-Hamilton writes - Mark and I stayed at the Pinnacle Apartments with Tim & Sarah Appleton as well as their daughter Olivia.
Although we didn't know each other well initially, the "living together" experience worked brilliantly and is definitely something we'd do again. Some of the highlights for us were:

• sharing transport to the events each day and the cost of accommodation
• sharing meals as well as meal preparation - debriefing at the bbq most nights for the guys
• sharing the highs (and the many lows 😁) of our races each day - many laughs to be had there
• nightly bulletin briefings and map study for the next day
• the lesson via google meet with Nick H and Rob G
• hiring bikes and cycling around Lake Burley Griffin together
• the adoption of the $40 Spotlight marquee plus tarpaulin we bought by the entire North West crew - home away from home at each event!

While we were there essentially because our children were competing, having a big group of people (adults) we could share the experience with made it into a really fun holiday for us.

 Australia MTBO Champs

Following Oceania, the Australia MTBO Champs were held in Ballarat, Victoria from 8-11 October. This event included the annual AUS-NZL Challenge and again NWOC was well represented. 

Australian MTBO Champs - Middle Distance
M21 - Stu Lynch 1st
W21 - Marquita Gelderman 1st
W50 - Trudi Ringrose 4th
M60 - Rob Garden 3rd

Australian MTBO Champs - Sprint
W21 - Marquita Gelderman 2nd
W50 - Trudi Ringrose 5th
M60 - Rob Garden 3rd

Australian MTBO Champs - Long Distance

M21 - Stu Lynch 1st
W21 - Marquita Gelderman 1st
M60 - Rob Garden 1st

Oringen 2026 - A Bucket List Experience for NWOC member, Dave Middleton.

Dave writes about his experience here;  

If you have ever looked at a large orienteering event overseas and thought WOW, that's something I would love to experience, then you should think of going to Oringen. It's a huge 5 race, 6 day, "O" carnival held annually in Sweden in quintessential Scandinavian Orienteering terrain, what more could an avid O person want?
 
I had said to my daughter many times, I would love to go to an event like that and as my 8th decade was ticking in this year, I thought it was time I made the effort. Having said to her many times that 'If you are a Muslim you have to go to Mecca at least once in your life' … well Oringen is my orienteering 'Mecca'.

So in mid July we went to Gothenburg and with about 16 thousand other like minded humans, ran around finding little round circles on maps and terrain that I have been looking at for years. Finally, I got the chance to  experience the complexity and uniqueness that you don't get from NZ or Australian maps.
 
The other great thing about Oringen is the sheer number of runners at the event, as I said up to 16k people, who are either going out or running in. There were 9 start areas and 9 finish shutes, everyone is allocated a sponsor's name and you have to go to your sponsor's start, and when you get to running in you have to find and go down the sponsor's chute. That makes your finish with only 4 or 5 grades an easy run in and downloading is a breeze. One anomaly is there is no results board; just a row of laptops that you can look at for your grade and see how you did - that is, if there's no one just scrolling through a lot of grades!

If you're not an early riser just hope you don't get a start like my daughter did at 8.30am (I am not sure when the last one is as we always left before it finished). The only advantage to getting there early is that you get the best sitting area. As you can imagine that can be awfully cramped, my analogy is like being in the middle of a penguin colony with a maze to get in or out!

With all those entries and spread-apart starts, you don't see a lot of other runners through the early to middle of your course, but as you get to the finish controls everyone comes together and its a mad dash down the track to the last control.

All ages enter the event from really young kids to an M95 who was walking with me to my start. There's hope that I will maybe make that one day?
 
So I can say that if you're a young "O"er, Oringen is definitely something you should put on your bucket list, and if you're older, it's a marvellous way to wind down the sport that you love. It doesn't get any bigger or better than Oringen, the maps, the people you meet, the joy of running down the finish shute with all your dreams actually happening.

North West Club shirts

New stock of Bryzos brand club shirts has been ordered.  The shirts have short sleeves, mesh side panels and a short neck zip in North West's distinctive colours. Cost $45 per shirt - go to Shop on our website.

To order, contact Lisa Mead mead10b@gmail.com.