All over, Rover

What a brilliant weekend!

What with the scenic location up in the high-country at Glenthorne Station, the almost (let's ignore that fog up on the saddle of Cottons Sheep Range) perfect weather, and the amazing positive vibe coming from most of the teams, this has been something of a T'Walk to remember. I think the brutality brought on by swamp and matagouri just helps intensify the memories…

The costumes were really something this year with a notable effort put in by several teams to last the whole first leg (and beyond, in some cases) in ridiculous garb and great character. This included the winning team, the Pied Pipers, who included a cleverly disguised musical means of signalling that carries well through thick scrub and is fit to organise such a large team (aka, really annoying recorder-playing). We were also pleased to see the Ministry of Silly Walks keep up the character effort throughout, and the metre-round Doughnuts, the 4-person Dragon, and the Posties and their bike make it all the way through leg 1 intact.

I really hope you all had as great a time as I did, though my 'just for fun' effort in legs 2 and 4 left me with scratches hardly comparable to those who battled it out for the full race. I have seen some truly astonishing battle scratches from all that scrub, and smelled some memorable swampy socks after the boot-removal began on Sunday afternoon.

As it happens, the prediction I wrote into leg 1 half came true, not in the form of a Porters Pass fault quake, but in the Hash House indeed getting close to running out of food due to you all eating an unprecedented amount! This was quickly remedied by the ever-resourceful Euan and our amazing cooks in a secret night-mission to Ashburton for another thousand dollars worth!

I have a small collection of lost property, so if you're missing something, email me and I'll see if I've got it. If you've found someone else's gear, let me know what you've got, and if possible bring it along to a club meeting. I will also be taking further orders for t-shirts (we can post them out) as there were quite a few people who have been asking so we're doing a re-print. Thanks again to all those people involved in making it happen:

• The very supportive landowners at Glenthorne Station, especially Cristy Brown, who gave us the all-clear to use the woolshed, and all those at neighbouring Coleridge Station for letting us drop bits of costumes all over their land on leg 1.
• The cooks: Terra Dumont (Head cook), and all the amazing helpers who made the food happen (in no particular order):
  • Kieran
  • Mike
  • Carlyn
  • Yu-An
  • Brendon
  • Mathew
  • Sarah v. E.
  • Rosanna
  • Jack
  • Tim
  • Daniel
  • Sasha
  • Anne
  • Sarah H.
• The route setters and checkers:
  • Adam Kuang (Chief setter) and myself (leg 1)
  • Simon Bloomberg (leg 2)
  • Jac & Les Woudberg (leg 3)
  • Euan Cox and Wouter van Beerschoten (leg 4)
  • Colin & Chris Dixon (leg 5)
• Euan Cox, organised the hash house
• Adam Kuang, for being my voice, a charming front-man, and generally running the show all night
• Bill Kennedy, provided map data
• Alex Opie, T'Walk expert of 2011 for telling me what on earth it is I'm meant to be doing the last 4 months, and for tech support
• Red Cross first aiders, Simon and Ellen
• Our kind sponsors:
  • R&R Sport
  • Pica Print
  • HireQuip
  • Map World

Congratulations to the overall winners, the Pied Pipers; the student winners, Dangerous Muffin Catchers; and to the winners of Best Costume, Rumpus Racing Racing (the doughnuts).

And with that over and done with, we can now start counting down to the 47th T'Walk…

Hopefully we'll see you all back again next year, for another thrilling instalment of TWALK!

Sharon Hornblow
2012 TWALK Organiser

8 May 2012