The Taupo Katoa Po event was the brainchild of Graham Teahan who was a member of the Taupō Orienteering Club in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Graham had read about the Swedish night relay teams event called Budkavle and the Australian equivalent initiated by Bjorn Blomqstedt and suggested that the Taupo Club organise a similar event in early 1981.

Elaine Brighouse researched the details of the Swedish and Australian events and this information was used as the basis for the Taupo event. The concept was that teams would be made up of members of mixed abilities and mixed ages and that the camaraderie of on site camping, event centre campfire etc. would be promoted where ever possible. Graham then asked some Maori friends what would be the Maori language equivalent of & ‘all night’ and they came up with & ‘katoa po’. Having come up with the idea for the event Graham was of course then landed with organising it.

Like the Australian version, the first Katoa Po began at midnight and teams were required to be of mixed abilities with the toughest legs being the 3rd and the 6th and these were open to any grade of competitor. The map used was Tauhara on the farmed foothills of Mt. Tauhara on the outskirts of Taupo an area with a network of erosion gullies which provided a real orienteering challenge at night. Only five teams entered this first event and Taupō provided one and a half of them. Taupō also provided the winning team by just 59 seconds with Tony Trass the last leg runner just holding out a fast finishing John Rix of Auckland over the last few controls as the rising sun lightened the eastern sky. (John was a National Elite Champion and member of several NZ World Cup Squads before returning to Great Britain.)

The presentation of the winners trophy was then followed by a Champagne Breakfast. The next year Tony Trass became the organiser on a new farmland map – Rangatira – near Acacia Bay on which he had done much of the mapping. The event centre was at the farm shearing shed which was next door to the Camping Ground. This event generated much Katoa Po folklore. Firstly, it was a real  ‘all nighter’ with the first runners being set off at dusk and thanks to some long courses, long grass, prolific areas of thistles and the presence of some large bulls around the last control the final leg runners finished with the help of the light of the rising sun. This event was also famous for the disappearing orienteer trick. A male competitor on the first leg racing along behind a young girl competitor in the dusk was surprised to see her suddenly disappear into the ground. A closer inspection revealed she had gone down through a narrow hole into a 3 metre deep unmapped ‘tomo’; which also contained a large upset black cow. A step up onto the cow and she was able to grasp her fellow competitor’s hand and was hauled to safety but for some strange reason she did appear at future Katoa Po’s. The winners of this event were the Brighouse Bush Bashers made up entirely of the members of the two Brighouse families.

1983 saw a move away from the proximity of the comforting lights of streets and houses to Whakaipo Bay – a public reserve and farmland area. Jim Lewis and Morna MacFarlane used the Girl Guide lodge near the lakeshore as the event centre and had the longer courses come back through the start area in two loops providing good spectator interest on a beautiful moonlit night. As the start time of dusk drew near Jim and Morna raced about setting out the last controls and then panic set in as they realised they had lost one. However a replacement was made up and and the first leg runners went off at dusk as a bright full moon rose in the east. Again the Brighouse Bush Bashers came through to win and to hold on to the owl trophy for another year.

Terry Brighouse volunteered to organise the 1984 event and mapped the Wharewaka Lakeshore Reserves and streets along with the gullied farmland adjoining the Taupo Airport. Many of the club had gone to Central Otago to compete in the Asian and Pacific Orienteering Carnival in January so it was a race to get back to Taupō in time to finalise the organisation of the event. The event centre was beside the lake and the longer courses traversed under S.H.1 via two large, but long and dark, culverts. The remaining Brighouses again provided a strong team but Ross Morrison tried to take a short cut down a scrubby gully which contained a hidden 5 metre deep dry waterfall which was unmapped. The sudden stop at the bottom broke his compass and cracked his ribs but when he finally staggered to the finish after completing his course he got little sympathy as his slow time had lost his team several places. The young team from Central Club in Auckland were the eventual winners.

In 1985 Tony Trass was the first to organise a second Katoa Po in a return to the foothills of Mt. Tauhara now remapped and called Mountain Road. For the first time some rain showers fell during the event but this did not worry the Brighouse Bush Bashers who cleared out to win by a comfortable margin in just over 8 hours. Nothing to date however had prepared the Taupō club members for the weather to be experienced in the 1986 event. Jim Lewis and Morna MacFarlane again planned the courses on the new Rogue Bore map and using the covered stand at the stock saleyards it seemed would give cover from the elements for results etc. The strong winds and driving rain that began in the afternoon and continued all night however soon drenched everything at the event centre and few tents survived the combined onslaught and a number of competitors opted out and headed for the nearest motel. The hardier types however were not daunted by the conditions and continued to slosh their way around the courses and having to realise that a control set in a depression was actually in the middle of a small lake. The Taupō team coped best with the conditions and recorded their second win in the event. This event was also notable for the feat of Jack Maitland of the U.K. who was in the Taupō area doing some mapping and also training for the British Fell Running Championships and for the British O Squad. He showed his fitness by entering as a one man team and running all seven legs in a time considerably less than the winning team. This must have helped his fitness because on his return to Britain he went on to win the Fell Running Champs.

The new Kinloch map was the venue for the 1987 event and organiser Dave Sayer’s precaution of having the shearing shed on the Holyoake property available in case of inclement weather proved to be unnecessary. The areas of intricate gullies on parts of this map proved to be a tough orienteering test but the ‘Swedish Export’ team had no problems with it and raced away with the event. This team contained 5 Swedes plus Steve Sherburn of Taupō and Pat Collins from Pinelands.

Another new map, Punetakahi, was completed by Jocelyn Reeves and Jim Lewis in time for the 1988 event and Jocelyn set the courses. The mosaic of gullies on this rolling farmland was another good night O  challenge. Mark McKenna had however trained up his ‘Sulphur City’ team and they stormed away to win the trophy.

In 1989 it was back to the slopes of Mt. Tauhara and the comforting sight of the street lights of Taupo nearby for those nervous of the dark. For Les Galloway this was his first experience at setting courses for night orienteering and he set all the courses, drew all the maps by hand and organised all the event. Again the weather was kind to the participants and the winning team for the event was a group of juniors who called themselves ‘Bratpack Attack’. They were in the middle of the field after the first leg but steadily improved their position to third at the end of the sixth leg. Then ‘The Missing Link’; alias Phillip Wood arrived at the last control 10 metres behind Jim Lewis who knowing he couldn’t outsprint Phillip to the finish decided to take a shortcut – via a 5 metre cliff. Alas it was to no avail and the Ratpack won by 10 seconds.

In 1990 the event returned to the other side of the Rogue Bore map to courses set by Athol Lonsdale. Many of his courses went by the huge hole in the ground left by a steam bore which went out of control and blew out the impressive crater in the valley before it finally became silent. Thirteen teams contested the event which was won by Hawkes Bay for the first time by 12 minutes over the Taupo Terrors. This was the year when Bill Teahan ,who was mapping at Phoebe’s Lake near Dargaville, decided he had to take part so he finished his days mapping, leapt in his car and drove for 6 hours to Taupō and then completed legs 4, 5, 6, and 7 nonstop!

Ian and Les Galloway volunteered to organise the 1991 event and used the Kinloch map again. It was at this event that the Egmont Club emerged as skilled exponents of night orienteering aided by training sessions and coaching from expatriate Aussie Greg Barbour and Swede Ingrid Perols. The Egmont team won in a slick time of 4 hours and 21 minutes. Rob Jessop catapulted his team into second place with a brilliant time of 39 minutes on leg 6. This year it was our own Paul Henderson who demonstrated his desire to compete. At 5.30pm on the evening of the event he was standing on the summit of Mt. Ngaruahoe with a school group. A quick trip down to the road end then onto his trailbike for a quick ride to Taupō in time to run the Bloody Murder leg. Then a brief sleep till 7 am when he was back on his bike and off again to National Park for more outdoor adventures!

In looking for a venue for the 1992 event the club remembered the attractions of the Whakaipo Bay area so Jim Lewis set to work to update the old map and to expand it by including by including Tony Israel’s farm on it. The shearing shed and adjoining paddocks provided a good event centre and Jim set out some challenging courses. The winners were the ‘Centraleers’ who won by the huge margin of one hour and six minutes. Terry Brighouse was ‘press ganged’ by the few remaining club members to run the 1993 event and it was decided to re-use the Punetekahi Map. The overnight camp site was under a lovely stand of large poplar trees in a broad valley in the middle of the map. The event centre was nearby with a good view of the surrounding hillsides and the longer courses were set so that competitors went through a spectator control beside the event centre before completing their last three or four controls across these hillsides. At this event the running order was changed so the legs were run in ascending order of difficulty thus avoiding the slow period when course 3 used to be the second longest. This event also had the closest finish ever. 6th leg runners, Max Kerrison (of Taranaki Turkeys) and Shaun Collins (of Hamilton Holocaust), came through the spectator control neck and neck and also came to the finish within seconds of each other. This meant 7th leg runners Greg Barbour and Bill Teahan raced off together and though they took different routes between some controls they were still together when they came through the spectator control and began the last four controls. There was great speculation as to who was in the lead as the two points of light traversed the ridges and gullies on the hillsides but finally it was Greg and the Taranaki Turkeys who made it first through the finish by 7 seconds.

In 1994 Jim Lewis agreed to take on his fourth Katoa Po using the Opepe Map which had not been used before for this event. The bush and scrub covered gully area on this map is challenging enough in the daytime so at night it was likely to be extremely difficult. The remaining open farmland however provided scope for setting courses suitable for the junior and less experienced competitors. The original map however was virtually unreadable at night so a complete remap was done of the area. The Central Club from Auckland came back with a very strong team determined to wrest the trophy from the Taranaki Turkeys which they succeeded in doing in a time of 5 hours and 18 minutes. Rob Jessop with his ‘better than daylight’ headlamps again showed his skills at night orienteering with a very fast 7th leg.

By now the club was running out of good maps for the Katoa Po that had not been over-used. Jim Lewis had fieldworked a map of the Craters of the Moon area in the Wairakei Tourist Park but due to the uncertainties over what was to happen to the forest areas the printing of the map was deferred. Terry Brighouse looked again at the Punetekahi Map (used twice before) and decided that the western end of it would still provide a good challenge because it had had little use because a steep escarpment separated it from the rest of the map. There was however an easy saddle through this escarpment and there was a good campsite beside the road and good areas nearby suitable for the easy courses. As usual we selected a date for the 1995 event which coincided with a full moon but unfortunately had to change it to a week earlier with the result that the moon was sinking below the horizon just as the first leg runners set off at dusk. Later runners therefore had to leave the comforting glow of the campfire and depart into the surrounding blackness. Once they got up onto the escarpment though the bright lights of Taupō spread out to the east so it was easy for competitors to orientate themselves. The Taranaki Turkeys again stormed back to take the trophy owl in this the 15th Katoa Po in a fast team time of 3 hours and 46 minutes.

The 1996 Katoa Po was on new map of part of the Wairakei Tourist Park close to town, with forest areas to add to the challenges of orienteering at night.

Early history by Terry Brighouse – written in 1995