IT Consultancy and Adventure Racing

http://www.xpd.com.au/

With Rachel having survived Keen in 2009, she was keen to step up to the most extreme rung of the Adventure Racing ladder, and try an expedition length adventure race - a multi-day, non-stop 4 person mixed team event.

The closest expedition race to NZ is the Australian XPD, a round of the AR World Series, a race which I've attended the last 2 editions of, and, most importantly, a race taking place in tropical Cairns at the start of the dry season, virtually guaranteeing that it would take place in the heat, suiting Rachel.

We formed a team based in Wellington, and after even more trials and tribulations than are normal in the build up to one of these races ( including a spinal operation ), we approached XPD as a team of 3 Wellingtonians ( Mark, Rachel and Liam ), and an Auckland based Captain ( Mike ) with one 24hr race ( ARC ) under our belts.

Arriving in Cairns over the weekend before the race, the time flashed by, filled with the minutae of race preparation - checking into the fantastically helpful JJs backpackers, ensuring that nothing had been broken by Air New Zealand, QANTAS or Pacific Blue, deciding on, buying and preparing race food ... the usual.

On Saturday night we headed to the pub with part of the rest of the Wellington contingent ( there are 7 kiwi teams here out of the 50 racing, 3 of them mainly from Wellington ) to watch the Hurricanes lose their last round match of the Super 14, and then had a team dinner out at a super-dodgy student type pub in Cairns, sporting our new 'Tough Like Jelly' team shirts.

On Monday we breezed through the checks, the only issues being the length of time it took the GPS to locate our new position, and a bit of confusion about what bearing a declination adjusted compass gave out. The pre-race dinner was a pleasant affair catching up with friends from previous races, and formally introducing ourselves as teams to the throng - it was good to see Orion and BlackHeart start the trash talk right from the start - this was going to be a good race at the front, with BlackHeart and Orion going head to head, and CBD, Alpine Epic, McCain adventure Addicts, Merrell and a couple of other international teams waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces.

On Tuesday we had a reasonably early start, with 200 eager racers crammed into the ballroom at the Rydges Esplanade anticipating the course, rumours had been flying as usual, including one of a 3am departure, fuelled by the organisers moving the briefing forward to 8am, and the trunk/ bike box deadline being moved forward to 1500, but thankfully this rumour was quickly dispelled, and a relatively civilised 0630 departure was announced - we'd get another decent night's sleep before the start!

We already knew that the course was 'only' 700km, therefore the fast teams were expecting the race to be over in under 5 days (in fact Carl Bevins from OrionHealth had only given himself 6.5 days max, booking his flight home for the Tuesday evening ), but race director Craig Bycroft tried to dispel these thoughts as he went through the 11 stage race, with the 2 core stages in the middle of the race being an Epic 70K backcountry paddle on a rapidly dropping river, and a 60K utterly cross country trek through outback scrub completely devoid of roads, tracks, or human influence.

The description was of an epic race, and by 9am we had the full complement of maps (we'd been given a couple the day before for Nav competency checks), and Mark and I headed off with them to add the corrections that course recces had found, while Mike took the course description handbook round to a friend's workplace and put it through the photocopier, so that Mark and I could work on maps while Rach and Mike concentrated on logistics.

By 10 am we were all back at JJs, Mark and I had taken over the table tennis table for maps, and the other 2 had 5 trunks, nearly 200 bags of race food, and a vast array of other gear spread over the car park.

The race was on, and these first 5 hours passed in a blur, before we headed over to the gear check in bang on the deadline, with all of the maps prepared, cut up and contacted, with food an gear suitable distributed, and feeling quite pleased that we'd hit the tight deadlines as several other teams were lagging behind already - some choosing to prepare the maps after the boxes were finished, and therefore have to carry all their maps with them until they could distribute them into boxes.

A final night eating well and discussing how we were going to approach the race came to an end with a reasonably early bedtime, and after a little time reassuring Rachel that she was going to be fine, we woke to an 05:50 alarm and walked over to race HQ in our race bibs, raring to go (to sleep on the 2 hour drive).

The large boat that was supposed to take us all to the start of the race had broken down a couple of days before, but Craig did a great if slightly delayed job of getting us over to Dunk Island with the help of a number of local operators, and soon we were hugging fellow team members and counting down to the start.

Day 1 comprised of a run round the Island, a paddle out to some snorkelling, then paddling back to the mainland where we would jump on bikes for about 100K of relatively flat riding to the Tuly Gorge, where there would be a dark zone, the race restarting on Thursday morning with a rafting section. Due to the way the morning departures were staggered (12 pairs of teams leaving at 5 minute intervals, followed by a 30 min break before the next 12), and given the dark zone, we intended on pushing pretty hard from the start in order to make the top dozen.

Having spent the last few days telling everyone that my ankle was too sore to run due to a MTB crash a couple of weeks before, the team let me set the pace, and of course it was quickly a jog - something commented on by Securify.co.nz, who I noted were also breaking their 'no running policy'.

The run was a great introduction to the heat we were going to have to deal with - we were sweating like rapists within seconds of starting, and didn't look like stopping. The navigation on this run was pretty straightforward, and after a couple of hours we headed out, 4 to a Sevylor boat (rated capacity 2 people/ 800 lbs) in search of buoys to snorkel around. We were hanging in with Securify, which was pleasing given they are a strong paddling team, and Nga Rakau were also in the vicinity, so it was nice to see a bunch of friendly, competitive faces around.

Slightly more sour were the faces of Merrell as we left the Island for the mainland, as they had managed to puncture their boat leaving the beah, hitting some shellfish, and were waiting for a replacement to appear and allow them to continue.

A paddle that could easily have been mistaken for a long, salty bath ended at Mission Bay, and we did a pretty good job of discussing transition roles on the way into the beach, just for all plans to be discarded once we hit dry land and started unpacking our sodden gear with a freshwater shower looming.

Despite this, we jumped on our bikes a few minutes behind Nga Rakau, and a little ahead of Securify, though nowhere near far enoough ahead of Merrell who came flying past about 20 minutes up the road. We hung on to the back of their train for a couple of minutes, but it was obviously too fast a pace for us, so we canned it and formed a pace line.

Entering El Arish, Rachel asked whereabouts the checkpoint was, to which I confidently replied 'not on this leg', to which she confidently replied 'are you sure'? A stop at a servo and a check of the route book showed that I'd missed 2 checkpoints of this leg, and the first sure enough was in El Arish - DOH!!! We found 'Team 4 Cancer' searching in the wrong location, and (unintentionally) led them to the correct one, where a bit of map confusion had me head towards the main (out of bounds) road, before turning round to find the correct route through the cane fields, and catch back up with T4C. They accelerated slightly as we caught them, and weren't very chatty, so we just hooked in behind and let them do the work for a few kms before they turned off and we headed straight on, to a snide 'going Out of bounds again?' from their navigator.

My team quite enjoyed the chance to do a little bit of off roading, and the walk across a cane train bridge, that my route choice gave them (and later confirmed as perfectly legal after T4C protested), and we came back onto the 'conventional' route again with no sign of any other teams.

Down into Tully, and we were looking for the 'Golden Gumboot', which I assumed was a pub, but turned out to be a Taihape style giant gumboot in the main square, so after clipping the CP, we formed up for the last 45K of gently rising tarmac up the Tully Gorge, which passed pretty uneventfully other than overtaking poor Nga Rakau about 2K from the TA with a puncture.

Mision accomplished : we'd managed to make it to the rafting in 8th place, and with plenty of time for a sleep before getting up for a 4:00 departure to the rafting get in, with Securify, Mawson and Nga Rakau fighting out a bunch sprint for 9, 10 and 11 about 4 minutes behind us.

We now had a chance to relax - we had to be 10K up the road at 06:00 for a safety briefing and then an 06:45 raft departure, so we had a good feed, packed the bikes up, set an alarm and got our heads down for a decent sleep.

We had a pleasant walk up to the start of the rafting, arriving with about 10 minutes to spare, so got our heads down again (sleep when you can!), before getting a pretty relaxed safety brief - it seemed that this leg was going to be as much fun for the guides as for us, as they were going to get down the river in about 90 minutes rather than their usual 4 or 5 hours.

Hanging around after the first couple of teams (BlackHeart and OrionHealth of course) had left, we got a bit more of a safety spiel from Al, but this obviously cover all of the details, as going through the first rapid, Rachel got pitched forward into the bags anchored in the middle of the boat, and came back up with a split across the bridge of the nose, and blood everywhere!

Having a bleeding disorder, this was a bad situation, so we pulled over and gave her some drugs to drop her clotting time, and then pushed on, after all, the only way was out.

Not surprisingly with the raft repeatedly being washed clean through the rapids, and then getting spattered with blood again, Rachel really didn't get into the fun of the rafting, but at least we made it down in one piece, with Securify and Mawson coming in just behind us.

Leaving the boys to drop the raft off, Rachel headed straight over to the medical team, where she was given the unsurprising news that the nose was probably broken, and that the split needed stitching.

We settled in for a bit of a wait while the medical team prepared to shuttle Rachel into Tully, get her stitched up, and bring her back out to continue the race, which didn't sit well with Rach, having an expected 4 hour time cost!

Thankfully she came up with a viable alternative - Sonja, Nga Rakau's Tim's partner was here, and is a doctor. She was happy to stitch Rachel up if we could get the suturing kit, this would still take some time, so we decided to use steri-strips for now, and do the stitching at the TA at the end of the next tramp - in about 12 hours.

Packing up, we were on our way just as the 2nd batch of boats started to arrive, walking 3K down the road and crossing the river by the bridge (the race rules prohibited swimming the river to the track as a large Crocodile had moved in!) and back up a forestry road on the other side. Towards the end of this road we were caught by Aberdeen, and moved off the map together.

This leg was sold to us as a pleasant walk along well maintained walking trails, so we only had a tourist type plan of the trails, not a proper map, and they certainly started out well enough, but after a couple of hours we found ourselves having misplaced the trail. Backing out, we ran into Aberdeen again, and between us found the marked trail which had jinked off to the side. The rest of the walk up to the CP was pretty uneventful, but far from what I would call 'well maintained walking trails', but the Marshal at the CP thought the rest of the track would be even easier going.

WRONG.

There was a heap of windfall over the track, and due to the damage that had been caused, a lot of wait-a-while (nastier Queensland version of Bush Lawyer), and the quite evil Stinging tree had grown up in the spaces that had been left in the wake of the cycones a coupl of years ago.

The second half of the track DID however have reflective track markers, so as the light faded, we managed to maintain decent progress - slowing for a while to be caught by Aberdeen and Nga Rakau, but this just just spurred us on to a turbo charged boost through the nasty flora, that put a gap on the other teams that would last into the next Transition - despite Mike starting to have issues with his ITB and his GI tract, and us having to stop at a random house and ask exactly where the Ravenshoe Pony Club was!

This leg had been a total screw up for the organisers, who had taken the word of locals, and not actually walked the leg, and therefore did not know the extent of the stinging tree, which they had expected to hit about 10% of the competitors, and was actually hitting over 90%. Like everything nasty in North Queensland, this tree takes an international standard such as stinging nettle or onga-onga and elevates it to a horrific new level - this stuff feels like someone has set fire to the affected area, and continues to return when provoked for several MONTHS afterwards.

Luckily there was a new, experimental treatment that had recently been devised, and the medical team was either at this TA applying it, or heading out to find more ingredients for it as so many people were being affected.

Just so that you're aware of how bad leaving it untreated is, remember that this treatment is preferable : apply toilet tissue to the affected areas, and then pour (admittedly dilute) hydrochloric acid over the tissue, leaving it to soak into the area for several minutes (yes, this STINGS). After at least 5 and preferably 30 mins, remove the paper and wax the area - hopefully removing the stinging tree hairs (plus the patients of course - more stinging), before finally applying spray on bandage to the now raw area (which anyone that's used it will know REALLY STINGS!).

The TA looked like a military hospital, with people sitting around whimpering and passing out all over the pace, Rachel had to have a little lie down when she was being done, so Sonja swooped with the needle and thread, and sorted her face out, and I was very thankful that I had obviously only got a very light dusting of stinger - apparently most members of the first 6 teams had been crying and passing out they had taken such big hits!

Getting the bikes set up, we headed out of the Pony Club in the late evening, to quickly discover two things :

1)The air brushing over the stinging tree as we rode set it off again, leading to a constant background aching from the still affected areas.

2)We'd forgotten a couple of bits and bobs, so headed back into the TA to grab them, where I also grabbed my arm warmers to keep the air off my stung forearms.

Leaving the TA for the second time, Securify were ready now, and we enjoyed the 20K gentle downhill in a paceline with them, before some mutual confusion as we turned off the main road, caused by some changes in the roading. This confusion continued for about 7Km north, during which we just followed our noses and hoped we were right, until we came across a junction that looked like it should on the map, and after that the map and the ground started to align quite nicely.

Again, this was supposed to be a warm up leg with relatively easy Nav, and once the map and the terrain started to line up, it stayed good as we rode through the night, slowly pulling away from Securify, until we arrived at the old mining town of Irvinebank, and the first checkpoint on the ride. Here Rachel needed to relieve the pressure on her feet, so we had a 20 minute powernap, and Securify arrived during this time and set up for a longer sleep. A third team was just arriving as we headed out to continue the ride, and then an hour or so later we arrived at the next CP, which was a foot orienteering section to break up the ride.

Our timing was pretty much spot on - we arrived at about 05:00 and the fire was still giving off good heat, so we spread the tent on the floor for a 40 min kip, then I got up and marked the Orienteering controls on our map, and we left at sunrise, just after Alpine Epic arrived to discover they'd had a good leg, and were now in 2nd - about 5 minutes ahead of OrionHealth.

The map and the ground were slightly inconsistent again in this region, but it was brain fade that caused me to miss the first control on our first pass - that and the assumption of a team mate that because they'd seen Merrell coming out of a side stream that the navigator had ;-) Back on track, and we slogged through the next 2 CPs and up onto the road that led to the 4th ... and obviously was the route out, as we had about 4 of the leading 6 teams ride past us on our way to our penultimate CP by the lake.

Unfortunately brain fade returned at this point, and after dragging Mike and his worsening ITB up onto the wrong ridge and back down again in search of a miner's hut that Mark and I eventually found, I then took us on a poor route, compounded by poor navigation over the hill and back to our bikes. We'd just taken almost as long in daylight as Alpine Epic had taken in the dark ;-(

Back on the bikes at about 10am, we had an exposed ride in the rapidly increasing heat of the day. There were a couple of serious climbs, that I would be amazed if anyone had ridden - I'm pretty good at technical climbing, and I think they would have been right on my limit fresh and carrying no gear. Leading into day 3 with a big pack and a tent on a rack on the back of the bike I was pleased with how far I made it, and pleased with the chance to get off and walk!

Once we'd crested the 2nd, it was mainly a gentle downhill on farm tracks, during which we had a couple of brief interludes for Mike's worsening GI issues, and for Rachel managing to split a sidewall, during which we expected to be caught, but even when we arrived out on the long, flat, roads (after some depressingly poor quality, sandy farm tracks), we still couldn't see anyone behind us ... phew! A final push along the main road, slightly uphill, and it was 14:00 and Adele, Danielle's mum, was welcoming us into mid camp in Dimbullah in 7th place - all good!

Midcamp is a feature of the XPD races, with a 6 hour compulsory stop and a fry up breakfast, along with a chance for a sleep in the airconditioned luxury of a team tent with the flaps open. We dumped our gear near a tent in the shade, and got our bike boxes out under a gazebo, preparing to have everything ready for our departure - a 20K wheelbarrow push with boats in homage of the early gold rush pioneers who loaded their worldly possessions onto wheelbarrows and pushed them and their families into the interior in search of their fortunes many years ago. Our pneumatic wheeled modern barrows, 30Kg loads and paved roads would be a breeze in comparison!

Unfortunately our 20:00 departure soon started to look unlikely as Mike's GI situation worsened, and I joined him in the race for the toilets. When it was obvious that this wasn't just an aberration, and was an issue we were going to have to deal with, we got together as a team and decided to stay in camp overnight and see how we were in the morning, and whether Mark and Rachel went down too - after all, we'd all eaten and drunk the same food/ water.

While Mike and I got an early night wearing down jackets in 20+ heat, Mark and Rachel went to the pub to try and use alcohol to fend off the nasties. Both approaches worked for Myself, Mark and Rach, but unfortunately Mike was still crook as a dog in the morning.

Tentative eating on my part confirmed that my system was now capable of holding food, so we tested it further with the cooked breakfasts - mine revitalised me while Mike's obviously wasn't sitting well, though at least it was sitting.

It soon became obvious that while I was recovering swiftly, Mark and Rach were still fine, and Mike was getting deeper into Calorie deficit, and was really in no state to continue, and at about midday, he made showed his mettle as a Captain, and made the call himself that the 3 of us should continue without him.

Back on the road again as an unranked 3, we set off up the road with a nicely weighted barrow proving very easy to push, especially when Mark put it on tow up the hills, and we made good progress for about a km until the tyre popped off the rim - a blowout on a wheelbarrow!

Jogging back to get a replacement, a couple of teams took the opportunity to nip past, but we'd caught them all again before the end of the push, and then there were 4 teams pumping up boats to get on the water within a short perriod of time about an hour and a half before dark.

'The water' soon proved to be a forest with a trickle running through it, and we were continually in and out of the kayak manhandling it through/ between trees. Further on we would come to water holes that would allow us to actually paddle the boat for up to a kilometre at a time, giving us a chance to rest before the rocky, tree encroached channels that connected the holes, where we would be scooting/ pulling/ cajoling the boat forward, trying to decide whether it was better that there were 3 of us and 1 heavy boat, or if we would have been better with 4, and 2 lighter boats. We never did decide, though we spent quite a lot of time debating that, and whether there was any danger posed by all the little crocodiles that we kept seeing watching us slog past.

The plan was to make it to the first CP about 24K into the paddle, which we figured would be about 04:00, grab a couple of hours kip, and continue, but the best laid plans ... this time were waylaid at about 01:30 when we were paddling along a waterhole and saw a roaring fire on the bank, where 2 teams were already enjoying the lovely soft sand, and 5 or 6 teams in total ended up spending the night.

Unfortunately it was at this point that we discovered that the dry bag holding the sleeping bag was similarly permeable to the one that had held Mark's torch on the first leg, and it was now soaked, so that got spread out in front of the fire rather than used - 10 hours sat in the bath that was the bottom of the boat was just too much for it!

Up before first light and we were the first team to leave, pulling away from all but one team - another 3 man team called the Adrenamen from Perth, who we would end up spending a couple of days with, as they decided our route finding out of the waterholes (exits were often left or right, a couple of hundred metres before the end of the hole, covered in trees, and thankfully, remarkably well mapped) was better than theirs. It was nice to have 3 guys just behind as one of them would often help us with an extra shove if we needed it, so it was quite a symbiotic relationship.

Towards the end we had an awesome sunset and came across some beautiful patterns caused by trees reflected in the water - great reminders after all the hard work of why we play this silly sport!

There was some confusion caused by bumping into a team coming towards us - they'd smelled smoke and were worried that we'd passed the TA, but no there was still a bit further to go, and eventually 3 teams chugged into 9 mile together at about 01:00, thankfully for our 36 hour bath to be over, and to finish the 'bouldering with kayaks' leg.

Here we found that Jill and Jerry from Securify were waiting for us, as Colin and Dave had had to pull out with a severe case of the botts ;-( Oh well, a bit more company for the long trek that was coming next!

Another fire (Australians love setting fire to stuff), and a much firmer sand bed gave a reasonable nights sleep, and then a leisurely start to the morning saw Jill and Jerry head off with a team of 4 that they had picked up (and were keen to benefit from Jerry's Nav) about 8:15ish, and then Osprey Packs/ nitelights.co.nz and Adrenamen crossed the Walsh river, dried and taped their feet, and headed into the unknown at about 09:00.

First job was to get out of the sandy river bed, which took us a while, but paid dividends with faster travel once we did, and then we headed straight off across the savannah towards the one visible hill, only having to avoid the 1 snake on the way. From here we left the flat river flood plain and climbed straight up a ridge onto a plateau a couple of hundred metres above us, where the serious navigation started - there was a maze of dried up stream bed and ridges between us and the first control, and unfortunately somewhere in the next 6 hours I managed to misplace our position by about a Kilometre to the East. Thankfully (I'm sure that was what my compatriots were saying), this put us on top of the highest hill in the area, from where it was a slightly frustrating, but relatively simple (we only followed one incorrect ridge and quickly spotted it) hour or so's slog through to the checkpoint, which we found with some relief around 17:00, a good hour before the light started to run out.

I had been so in awe of the map, and so concerned about reaching the checkpoint, that I hadn't really looked at the remaining 40+K ahead of us, so while we grabbed a bite, I formulated a plan, that was unfortunately made slightly more difficult as I had cut off some map that would have been useful, and discussed it with the extended team, who were still in good spirits, and happy with my general direction.

We dropped down into Hot Springs Creek, at the bottom end of which we had been having trouble locating the 2nd CP on the paddle about this time the previous day, and gladly filled up at the first water hole we found - resolutely using water purification tablets now! We had just been trekking through open ground in temperatures approaching 40 deg. C and had been trying to be conservative on water for several hours.

About 4 K down the Creek, darkness had fallen and we were getting back to well hydrated when it was time to head away from the main creek again - heading up a tributary and over into the next main body of water, we would try and get this 10 or so K dealt with in the cool of the night, and then see about camping in the next creek bed or pushing on into some more techy Nav.

Unfortunately Rachel had other ideas, and started feeling quite ill about 3K or so up this side stream. A quick rush to the toilet and extreme Nausea pointed to a late attack of whatever had got Mike and Me, but without the luxury of flushing toilets and road access - we were 30K from the nearest road and in a relatively narrow, rocky gully - even to get outby helicopter we'd almost certainly have to move a reasonable distance from where we were. The Adrenamen weren't phased by this early end to the evening's trekking, and while Rachel simply collapsed where she was, they built a fire, and gave up some foam matting they were carrying so that I could try and get into a comfortable position to share body heat with her while they located whatever surfaces they could to sleep on.

Everyone managed to get some sleep - despite Mark's snoring and the incredibly unfortunate location of our camp, including Mike shuffling around 360 degrees during the night and at one point having his feet in a pool of water, and thankfully Rachel woke up feeling significantly better.

In fact she thought that a couple of hour kip may in hindsight have been all she needed. It appears that we weren't being hit by GI issues at all, but by heat stroke causing our body control systems to shut down for varying lengths of time, thankfully we'd caught Rachel's early, unfortunately we'd pushed Mike way too far into the red zone before backing off (he ended up taking another 48 hours after our departure before he started feeling human again).

Up and away at first light after a decent feed to start the day, we reached the top of our sidestream, but due to my map editting, rather than dropping down from our current 540m, we had to go over another ridge at 750 in order to stay on the map - sorry again guys, but at least we were heading in the right direction for our route, and we got a spectacular sunrise!

Off the back side and into another major creek, we headed north to my preferred sidestream, passing another team who had just been for a lovely dip in one of the waterholes en route, and thoroughly recommended it, but having just had a full overnight rest, we were all keen to push on, and only really stopped to fill our water systems to capacity before turning into a cross creek that had some awesome cliffs with water trickling over them.

Though Mick from Adrenamen, Mark and I are all climbers, we took the sensible route up the ridge on the right hand side, coming out onto a rock plateau, and then just a short walk up a lovely 10 m slab to the top. Briefly interrupted by Rachel sliding down said slab on her face, scrabbling for grip, and thankfully, somehow, steering herself away from the 60m waterfall and sheer drop. Watching your fiancee slide to her death is a horrible feeling! Seeing her avoid it is quite elating! Hearing her shout that she's OK, and approaching to see her all in one piece, but a rather strangely shaped piece, I got her to wiggle the fingers on the hand attached to the wonky looking arm. They moved. As did the arm, and all her other appendages, so Duncan and I unravelled her, removed her pack and sat her down for a couple of minutes calm, getting out her next dose of tranexamic acid, even though the cuts she had sustained in the fall didn't appear to be gushing at all.

Regrouping at the top of the slab a few minutes later, we had a short break while everyone's Adrenaline levels lowered themselves back to normal, and to ensure that there weren't any immediately obvious issues, before we carried on towards our first meeting with Branch creek.

We followed a creek with a reasonable amount of water in it all the way up to it's source, and then crossed a saddle that was obviously reasonably high, as an easterly breeze started to be felt as we approached and crested it, which was very pleasant, and lasted with us a fair way down into Branch Creek, which we passed straight across, in order to cut out a huge meander.

Following a lovely gully down to our 2nd meeting with the Creek that we would follow out to the road, the temperature soared, but at least it smelt nice as we pushed through and disturbed heaps of wild mint. It was here that we started to spot the inimitable footprints of team Goldfish (2 of them do the whole race in Dunlop plimsols), who had doubtless overtaken us either while I mucked around finding the CP, or while we slept.

Down into the creek, and it was apparent that there would not be flowing water for a while - just a series of disconnected billabongs, and after cooling off in the first of these, we followed the stream down, cutting off as many of the oxbows as we could, before we arrived at what was mapped as a road, but actually turned out to be nothing!

A little later we found a cutting that had obviously been a road many years ago, but was now totally overgrown, and we couldn't follow it even with the aid of the map, so after losing it good and proper, we decided to head back to intersect the creek and follow that, and while doing so, came across a 4WD track. This headed in the right direction, crossed a large waterhole, and then turned into a graded road - hurray, we were on the home leg of the epic central section of this race!

Shortly afterwards, Goldfish appeared from cross country, where they too had been unable to follow the mapped road, and they joined us for a while on the way to the TA at Mount Mulligan, though we left them behind when they stopped for snacks, and we walked into Mount Mulligan station with the Adrenamen, to be greeted by a couple of kiwi friends and hot showers!

We were heading out on bikes next, and all decided that the time for a shower would not be wasted, especially as we all had clean bike gear to put on, and it was here that we bid adieu to Mick, Mike and Duncan as we headed out about 2am, to try and get the easy section of the bike ride under our tyres before sun up. A short ride up to Mount Mulligan Cemetery to collect a CP, then about 20K on dirt roads back past where we had come out from, and we camped up at a road junction for a couple of hours, waking after 6am but still in the dark was a bit confusing until we sat up and saw the heavy veil of fog that was covering the land - we could hear a truck thundering towards us, but couldn't see it until it was within 100m, which would make for a nice cool start to the day!

The navigation on this leg was described as 'tricky', which mainly meant that roads on the map didn't exist on the ground, and you therefore had to alter your route to use the roads that actually existed, and then in one section of course there was a brand new road that would have saved me half an hour of detailed navigation if I'd known all I had to do was carry on to the end of the road and turn left. Ah well, at least we managed to keep making forward progress, catching a couple of teams talking to the station owner in a creek bed. He'd invited all and sundry back to his place for coffee, but again having only been on the road for a couple of hours, we decided to carry on, catching up to the Wild Prawns at a CP on a hill.

Like (it would appear) most teams, we then backtracked to what we thought was the obvious route onward, to discover that the roads we were looking for had been grown over, so once more we went past the CP location, and carried on round the longer marked route, finding ourselves firstly at the farmhouse with a signposted, and very tasty cold water tap, and then on the main road out of dodge.

With the afternoon starting to wear on, we made good progress across the Well irrigated Paddy Fields of Walkamin until Mark started bonking badly and we needed to find shade. Seeing a leanto in a field, we dumped the bikes at the gate and decided to get 20 minutes, though this increased to 25 as we had to spend the first 5 minutes bathing in DEET as mosquitoes the size of which you would only expect in this vicious country tried to steal all of our belongings.

A short snooze was ended by Rachel telling me that there was a guy over by the bikes waving at us. A guy with a gun. And attack dogs. Thankfully the attack dogs were still in the back of the ute, and the gun in it's holster. We'd bedded down on the farm of the Lotus Glen Correctional Facility, and were very politely asked to move on by the officer who had spotted our bikes ... though not before a chat about the race, and he noticed our nitelights.co.nz headlights, one of which he had just ordered for himself.

We were still making great time, but it was shortly after here that the wheels pretty much fell off Mark, and after a little lie down beside the Savannah Highway, Rachel and I shepherded him into Tolga, where we were all thankful to hit the cafe and bakery for pies, cake, cold drinks and a nice cup of tea. Here we were joined by the Wild Prawns and another team, and a guy Scott who was looking after the Girls On Top, and said they were only a couple of hours behind us.

Suitably refreshed, we trundled into the Tinaroo ski club shortly before sunset, just as the Yogi Bears headed out on their paddle. There was a journalist at this TA who was eager to experience the paddle across the lake (he'd already been down the Walsh river with Shane), so we happily accepted his offer to join us, and we set off across the lake as 2 pairs in kayaks that for the first time in this race felt light, responsive, and most importantly, dry! This was actually quite an enjoyable 3ish hour paddle, though I think I took us about 10 minutes further than I needed to, it was quite eerie paddling through the nearly submerged trees, where Rachel experienced her first sleepmonsters, as instead of trees poking out of the water, there were people trying to jump into the boats.

But despite this, the 4 of us made it to Kairi Creek campsite, where along with quite a few other teams (Yogi Bears were just leaving), we made sure that all was well before embarking on the grand finale, a 60km rainforest trek back to Cairns.

Unfortunately, 'making sure that all was well' in the case of my feet meant quite a long time drying them by the fire and then taping them, so Mark and Rachel were asleep by the time I was ready to leave, so I had to wake them, which wasn't very popular, and then we headed out for a bit of a road slog, as the trek started by following the main accessway into the forestry, and a major uphill slog to Mt Edith.

We put on a good pace, and passed and ditched the couple of teams that left transition just before us, and had made the 500m or so climb by around 04:00, still on a good road, and decided to stop and sleep at a point where there could have been a side track going off.

There was moisture dripping from the canopy, so for the first time we put the tent up, and it was so warm inside that we didn't really need the sleeping bag, though we really should have changed into our usual 'compulsory gear nightclothes', as the tent reaked of our race gear when we woke up. Rach tried to get me to head outside and chat to the American team that held a conference outside the tent, but I couldn't be roused - a shame, as when we got up and put the tent away, we had different recollections of whether they had carried on along the road, or taken the path down beside the tent.

Though the road bore little resemblence to that on the map, we decided to follow it, and though we could see no footprints, there was a little other 'sign' that humans had come this way recently, and we pushed on further than I was really comfortable with before finally coming across a junction that may or may not have been the one on the map.

Turning off the road we headed onto the track, and soon caught one of the teams we had seen last at the TA, and again started to put some distance into them, following the marked route, keeping an eye on the compass, and pretty much hoping the direction was good. At one point we missed a junction and started heading south, but quickly caught our error and started heading North again, soon heading seriously upwards into the process, and I made the mistake of believing the team we passed who said we were on the way up to 1222 - the height of one of the hills.

Down into a saddle, back up the other side and then down again, we reached a good track heading North with no markers while another track headed South West but was well marked. I decided to follow the compass, and we were soon on a degrading track that turned into a bit of a hunter's track with occasional tape, and eventually petered out into a bit of a water course, which we followed down to a major stream.

It took a while to locate us as my understanding of when we'd crossed '1222' would have meant we should have been on the other side of the main North South ridge to where we obviously were, but putting faith in the features and the map, we struck out westwards, and after missing a valley that Rachel spotted, and miscommunicating what I was looking for, I spied what looked like a distinctly man made edge above me.

Climbing up, there was a lovely little flat section and a distinct cutting on the other side of it - not only had we found a lovely old logging road, but it even appeared to be on the map!

Following the road, it was soon apparent that we knew exactly where we were, that the going was good, and that the map was with us - yeehar, we made good progress to the next decision point, where we were hoping to find even better tracks as it was supposed to be a proper touristy area.

Yeah right, Queensland must really hate it's tourists! We followed the start of the track as mapped, crossed a river (where we found a camera - score), and on the other side, there was a clearly marked route that clearly wasn't as mapped. Surely the published tourist documentation would be accurate? Nah! Oh well, let's try following the track and see if it works out.

Despite being the steepest track I have ever made my way up - you could literally have run a ropes course on it, and the speed of altitude change gave Mark a nose bleed - it kept heading in the generally correct direction, and eventually, after sorting Mark's nose and passing the shiniest black snake I've ever seen, we arrived at what appeared to be the access route to Kahlpahlim rocks and our penultimate CP.

Again Queensland Government showed their disdain for anyone silly enough to come and give them a tourist dollar and expect to survive in the outdoors, with a quite dangerous tourist 'attraction' surrounded by myriad taped tracks, and a woefully inadequate 'map', but eventually we found Lookout number 4, the CP and a rainwater collection tank.

Unfortunately, what should have been spectacular views over Cairns from 1300 metres up were clagged in, so we simply had a quiet lunchstop and then got on with the final navigation challenge - billed as 'entering the lost world', and with warnings of "don't follow taped tracks, and stay high".

Being from NZ where there are taped hunters tracks through all our bush, and having talked to the owners at JJs, we decided to stay high and follow the tape, which we did extremely effectively and efficiently - Rachel and Mark looking out for, and following the tape, while I followed along behind tracking our location on the map.

Thus when we came across the BMX Bandits, also following the tape, but not their position, and I was able to show them our exact location, they decided to just let us get on with it and tag along.

A Km or so later the tape veered hard to the West, while we still wanted to head North, and possibly East, to the Pylon track that was just 2Km away.

It was about 1530, and NZ bush at it's worst allows progress at about 1Kmh, so we decided that it was time for route 1 - so I handed the map over to Mark, and we set a bearing for NNE.

Dropping into the nastiness, it was soon obvious that we wouldn't be able to maintain NZ speeds due to the prickly spiky nastiness of Aussie bush, so we headed a lot more East in order to head up onto the next ridge.

After a moment of indecision when we found a lovely wide, easy going stream we decided to continue with the 'find ridge' philosophy - we later found out that Merrell had lost around 18 hours trying to use this stream to get out - and with a lot of good work from Mark and the Bandits, relatively soon we made it onto the ridge, just as the canadian team were coming down.

So 3 teams emerged shortly after onto the Pylon track, during daylight, to a huge sense of relief, amplified by the Canadians when we re-united them with their camera.

A brief rest where virtually everyone gave their feet 10 minutes of air, and then we were off, the Canadians hobbling slightly slower, while we walked with the Bandits to Lake Morriss where we left them and got on with the 20Km road walk we had left.

This walk was the only really bad part of the course, and was the victim of Australian safety Nazis as Craig couldn't allow us to ride into Cairns in a sleep deprived state (Pah!), and gave everyone a chance to really munt their feet if they were still doing OK at this point.

Thankfully Simon and Tracy from the backpackers realised how hellish this walk was going to be, and came out to see us, bounding up enthusiastically out of the dark and trotting along with us for a while, before heading off to raid their fridge and meeting back up with us a bit later with some cold beers.

We took a bit of a break and sat around for about 15 minutes having a chat and having a drink before they headed back to their family, and we wandered off into a cane field and to wade across a river.

Back out into suburbia and we followed the hellish Cairns ringroad for an interminable distance, broken up by the odd attempt to run, a visit to a service station for pies and chocolate (the attendant didn't seem even vaguely fazed), and random yells from a few passing cars.

Onto the Cairns waterfront for our final CP about 500 m from the finish and Rachel and I decided to have our one big yelling match of the race, before eventually wandering across the finish line at half past midnight on Friday morning.

The Fizzy wine was being drunk and the pizza had only just arrived when the BMX Bandits followed us across the line, though they graciously allowed us to keep the poolside recliners (standing in for a finisher's couch) as a thankyou for the amount of time they were sure we had saved them getting out of the bush.

So a race we had been confident of finishing strongly as a 4 in 6-7 days, we had finished as a 3 in 8.5, crossing the line in 11th place, we'd overtaken 6 teams on the final trek, knocking it out in the 2nd fastest time of 24 hours - Yogi Bears would be in there for another 20 hours yet, taking 46 hours in total!