Ella Goes Bush

Today was the first day of the proper orienteering season in Canberra, so the whole family trekked down to the other end of town to have a run. Ella hasn't been orienteering for some time now -- last time she was shorter than the control stand -- now she can actually see where she's putting her dibber. The highlight of the day remains hearing the control unit beep, again and again, as she puts her stick in.

The event was at Mt Taylor, and Nat & Ella did the short blue course together (where the walk to the start was almost as long as the course itself). As you can see, Ella can at least do part of the course on her own two feet, but Mum had to resort to the backpack on several occasions.

Meanwhile, I went up & over the hill a few times on the long course. Took me a lot longer than expected, which meant we had to jump straight in the car afterwards to make it home in time for some visitors. In all this haste, I left my compass on the roof of the car. It slid off on the first corner and I ran back, just in time to see it get crushed to smithereens by the next car ....