Orienteering at the Nature Festival

Orienteering SA offered a choice of free orienteering courses for individuals and families to do around Pakapakanthi Park and Victoria Park Wetlands as part of the Nature Festival. Pakapakanthi/Victoria Park has undergone a transformation to create a wetland with path network, boardwalks, viewing points and picnic areas, enhanced with plantings of trees, grasses and aquatic plant species.

Orienteering helpers were on hand to introduce newcomers to orienteering, and they could try courses ranging from short introductory courses from around 0.5 to 1 km, to longer ones around the wetlands.Courses used SPORTident to record course time. One of the longer courses around the wetlands is shown below.

Also offered were free children’s KID-O orienteering activities for the younger ones up to around 8 years of age.These were:

1. Number Ob- a basic maze course based on numbers
2. String courses - with controls punched selected from animal cards
3. Make your own map - of the surrounding park using orienteering symbols
4. Scavenger Hunt - find varous items in nature
5. Wombat Hunt
6. Playdough Mountains.

Each child received a card to be stamped at each activity.

Over 100 participated in all the activities, and some of the younger ones doing KID-O are below.