| What better way to start the month than attend a major competition in the form of the Kings Birthday orienteering events hosted by CMOC and Waikato. Three very entertaining and testing days, starting with the complex sprint map at Waikato Campus, then fighting the cutty grass and swampy conditions in the middle and long. Congrats to both clubs for putting on a really great set of events, super friendly, and some really well set courses which tested many of us (sometimes more than we wanted!). With my local club hat on (OBOP), it was super exciting to get hosting rights to host the 2024 foot Nationals (thanks CMOC), along with Taupo club. Fellow OBOP member, Greg Flynn and I have done some good recces of one of the main areas we will be using; Crater Block under Mt Tarawera. Many orienteers may remember this from the 1990’s when it was last used, and which once again promises to be a fantastic area with very interesting terrain and features in a great setting beneath Tarawera. OBOPs success in securing access to this has very much been through the forging of relationships with local Iwi, the landowners and custodians of Crater block, to whom we are very grateful for allowing this access. This relationship building is a key theme in a piece of work Board member Guy Cory-Wright has been doing on Landowner Relations. Guy presented a discussion paper to the ONZ Board at our June meeting, and this in turn is being shared through this Compass Point. This topic is so critical to the sport, and we are increasingly hearing of challenges in land access across different parts of the country. The danger is that if we remain passive and reactive to this, we will have problems and potentially lose access to many of our maps in the future. So we need to be pro-active in tackling this and adopting practices which enhance how we engage with landowners and maintain this critical resource. Many clubs are already doing great work in this space, and we see an opportunity to share these and explore new things we could do, which we plan to do in a virtual workshop in the next few months. Stay tuned for information on this, and in the meantime enjoy Guy’s paper – we hope it prompts discussion and gets you thinking ahead of the workshop taking place. Lastly, we will shortly be sending out a member survey, which we haven’t done for 2-3 years. More information to come on this, but am giving you this early heads up so you can start to think about what ONZ is doing well or could do better, as well as other issues you may be experiencing. Happy running Peter Swanson Chairperson Ph 027 302 4863 Email onz-chair@orienteering.org.nz |
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