The Original · Est. 2005
The One That
Started It All
The original. Running since 2005, the Wimmera event is a chain navigation challenge across the sandy mallee tracks of western Victoria. You arrive Thursday, set up camp, and spend Easter weekend doing something genuinely different.
Each morning starts with tea, coffee and hot chocolate at the catering tent, then a group briefing where the day's course is explained. You receive your course notes — 20 or so questions, some that make immediate sense, some that won't until you're standing in front of the answer — and one UTM coordinate to start. From there, you're on your own.
Every clue card you find in the field gives you the information to find the next one, with routing constraints that force real map reading decisions. "Use less than 1600m of bushy track and enter from the north." The correct route reveals the answers. The wrong route just looks like empty bush.
There's no answer reveal until presentation night on Sunday. For three days, every team is convinced they're right. Some of them are wrong. That's what makes the campfire conversations interesting.
On Course
What Actually
Happens Out There
The course notes come with all the questions for the day — 20 or so, sitting on paper in your lap before you've driven a kilometre. Some are obvious. Some make no sense at all until you're standing in front of the answer. A photo question might show you an object and ask for its UTM coordinate. You need to recognise it first.
You start with one UTM coordinate. You go there. You find the instructor card. It gives you the next one with constraints — how much of a particular track to use, which direction to enter from. You study the map. You make a decision. You drive.
The correct route puts you in front of answers. The wrong route puts you in front of empty bush. You won't know which one you chose until Sunday night.
At the end of the day you pull back into camp, hand in your notes and GPS logger to an official, and go back to your camp. No peeking at the answers. No asking other teams. Just the fire, the theories and three days of genuine uncertainty.
After The Course
The Bit That Keeps
People Coming Back
Everyone camps in the same area. The evenings are communal — campfires, war stories, and strong opinions about whose route was correct. Nobody actually knows. That's the point.
Most nights there's a pizza run to the local takeaway. Order early, pick up later, eat around the fire. Nobody goes to bed early. There's too much to argue about.
Easter Sunday morning, a large man in a rabbit suit arrives on the back of a ute and hands out eggs to the kids. It happens every year. It never gets old.
Sunday night is presentation — a big buffet dinner around the campfire, followed by the results everyone's been guessing at for three days. Top 10 read out, kids results, and the best wrong answers of the weekend called out for everyone's amusement. Then it's a late night of celebration, commiseration and plans to do it again next year.
Drive home Monday. Easter is a public holiday. There's no rush.
On course — everyone out, working it out on foot.
