It is time to look at Taupō as it is this club’s 50th anniversary this year (29 April 2025). So the Taupō Orienteering Club plan to celebrate this in a low key way towards the end of the year and provide the opportunity as much as practical for past members to take part.

The club is based in what is one of the smallest – if not the smallest towns in NZ, which makes it an ongoing struggle to remain viable and relevant. 

Taupō has been very fortunate or perhaps there is some magic formula in the central location of the area. They have a wide and challenging range of maps that they have used over the years with some very keen and skilled orienteers who have stayed in the area. Names like Terry and Elaine Brighouse (Brighouse trophy and the first ONZ Life member etc), Graham Teahan (the moving force behind the establishment of the Katoa Po night relay), Jim Lewis (technical maestro and the main implementer of the colour code system for course difficulty) and quite a number of others come to mind. Tony Trass, Les Galloway, John and Robyn Davies, Laurie Baxter, and Judy Martin.

The Katoa Po night relay has and continues to be perhaps the signature event of the Club having run now for 44 years while still maintaining the original concept of “the Club teams would be made up of members of mixed abilities and mixed ages and that the camaraderie of on site camping would be promoted where ever possible”. The format of the night relay has evolved over the years to maintain relevance with rogaining now playing a significant role and events added to make it a weekend of orienteering rather than just one event. This year the relay has evolved further and there will be only 5 person teams instead of both 5 and 7 person teams and eligibility for each leg has been made more flexible.

The Club like at least some others has struggled at times to keep going but there has been always a small core of keen and dedicated people to keep orienteering alive in Taupō. Over the years the club has run quite a number of National, Regional and School Championships – in recent times in conjunction with our nearby Club OBOP.

The main focus of the Club these days is to bring orienteering to Primary Schools with the aim that “every student in Taupō schools knows what orienteering is and has done it at least once”. The club has been quite successful over the last couple of years, introducing orienteering to almost all of the local and country schools with a primary/intermediate school orienteering big day out at the end of term 2 which had around 450 students taking part in 2024.

Taupō encourages rogaining alongside standard orienteering courses for family groups and would-be trail runners, in particular in urban environments including permanent urban/park maps using Maprun. The club hopes this will lead to more adventurous rogaining on farm / forest maps. The club maintains a supply of challenging farm and forest maps by running the occasional major event such as the Northern Regional Champs event this November on a “new” map at Opepe – an area not used since the 80s and 90s – that some may remember!

Taupō Orienteering Club  – early history

The club owes its beginnings to Alan Brown, a BNZ Bank Manager, who came to Taupō in late 1974 from Auckland. Alan had been one of the initial converts to the sport of orienteering and had been a member of the early New Zealand teams which competed against Australia in a Trans-Tasman competition. He obtained some base maps of the forest plantations around Taupō from the forestry companies, (1:16 000 scale and 6m contour interval!), purchased some red plastic buckets for control markers and some clippers to hang from them, and set out an orienteering course in Tahorakuri Forest in April 1975.

A number of orienteers travelled to Taupō to enjoy this first event along with some locals who were curious about this new sport. Alan subsequently called these few locals together for a meeting on the 29 April 1975 and the Taupo Orienteering Club was born. Alan was elected as President and Spencer Wallace as Secretary/Treasurer. A Club Captain was also appointed but he was never seen again after this inaugral meeting!

At the end of its first year of activity the club had $60 in the bank. Three of the early club members were Ken Scott, Ray Best and Spencer Wallace and they enjoyed a keen rivalry with each other.

Terry Brighouse and his family arrived in Taupo in 1975 and with his background in forestry, and tramping and his interest in maps the family was soon attracted to one of Alan’s events and became hooked on this new sport. Terry then set to to find new forest areas suitable for orienteering and to upgrade the basic forestry maps into more detailed orienteering maps.

Sadly in 1977 tragedy struck when Alan collapsed and died whilst competing in the the relays against Australia in Woodhill Forest. Alan was held in high regard by the Australians and as a tribute to him the team members contributed to the purchase of a cup and named it the Alan Brown Trophy for competition between Australian and New Zealand orienteering teams.

Around 1977 / 78 Jim Lewis, Morna McFarlane and the Teahans joined the club and it wasn’t long before Graham Teahan was pushing the club to take on the major task of organising the first 3 day multiple event to be held in N.Z. (nothing changes!). Despite the inexperience of the club members two new colour maps close to the Iwitahi Education Camp in Kaingaroa Forest were produced, courses were set and 235 competitors descended on us in Easter 1978. Dick Burbidge of the then Bay of Plenty Club, (now Dick Carmichael, chief of the Carmichael clan and guru of the Scottish 6 Days orienteering events) wrote to us after this event as follows;

“Those orienteers who were not at Taupo over Easter missed the most glorious feast of orienteering yet presented in N.Z. The above average course setting, the impressive new maps, the good runnable terrain, the excellent organisation, the beautiful sunny weather coupled with the friendly camp atmosphere at Iwitahi Outdoors camp made for an unforgettable experience.” 

1981 saw another notable milestone for the club when it hosted the N.Z. versus Australia International classic event on the Wharua map and held the first of its Katoa Pos or All Night Relays. Again at the persuasion of Graham Teahan. The Katoa Po has been held every year since then and has become a classic on the N.Z. orienteering calendar and has generated a host of stories and legends which form a large part of the history of the Taupo club.

In 1987 the club undertook the major task of holding the National Championships on the Paetataramoa map produced especially for this event. Over the years many well known orienteers have been involved in the club’s activities as well as those mentioned above. They include the Trass family who later moved on to triathalons, the Galloways, the Brownings who moved to Pinelands, the Davies family who stayed for a while as they moved in stages from Pinelands south to PAPO and Judy Martin and Laurie Baxter who came from Auckland and then moved on to Whangamata. Athol and Kathleen Lonsdale arrived from Auckland and continue to be hardworking members of the club. Other names in our early records are Tony Stallard and Wendy Barker, the Palmers, John Love, Dave Sayer, the Hendersons, the Bates, the Dentons, Anne Salisbury, Darren Scott and many others.

Currently the club has a total of 22 affiliated members and 2 social members with a core of about 12 adults who are the major contributors to keeping the activities of the club going.

In the early years we had access to considerable areas of older plantation forest where the dense canopy arising from high stocking had eliminated most of the undergrowth and made for some great runnable orienteering areas. These stands have all been felled now and replaced with more open grown stands where undergrowth can survive making them largely unsuited to orienteering, at least until near maturity. However a few years ago Fletcher Challenge Paper began planting large areas of Eucalypts in the region generally on grassland and from about three years of age these plantations are providing some excellent orienteering areas especially if they contain the complex gully systems typical of the Taupo region.

Taupo club members have been prominent in all spheres of orienteering with a number having served on the NZOF executive and committees, in national teams (up to 6 representatives at one time) and in gaining placings at national and regional competitions. Jim Lewis is our OCAD guru and also largely through his efforts the club supplies most of the clip cards used in NZ orienteering events.