Picture the scene: Two blokes sitting in the shade on a warm and sunny Saturday afternoon in Darwin. They're glancing through the NT News, but don't seem to be taking too much of an interest. It's more just to pass the time. Eventually one of them picks up a piece of equipment with strange orange and white markings, and takes it to the middle of the nearby lake.

Who are these people? They're METROGAINE ORGANISERS!!! It all started several months ago when I was brave (or foolish) enough to volunteer to set the course for the NTRA's second metrogaine.

There was a map available, used last year, which showed Darwin city and the suburbs as far as Nightcliff and Rapid Creek, but I thought I'd try something different. Around Darwin, the two other obvious metrogaine areas seemed to be Palmerston, or the northern suburbs of Darwin. I figured Palmerston was too far away for me to set the course (I live in Nightcliff), so the northern suburbs it was.

After demolishing several phone books to get the street directory pages, I had a working map to start planning the course. Using the previous year's event as a guide, I figured about how big the map would need to be and started looking for somewhere about the middle as a suitable hash house location.

Fortunately, Leanyer Recreation Park was in just the right place, and there was a lake which gave me the perfect opportunity to use one of NTRA's most unique assets- the famous floating control. So there it was, the middle of November, and I was driving around northern Darwin looking for interesting or unusual things. Actually, anything that would make a good control location.

In a couple of sessions of three or four hours, I had about forty locations selected. When I looked at my map, it wasn't a bad start but there were several gaps. Large areas of a couple of suburbs with no controls at all. So I went back and filled the gaps. At that stage I was less discerning about the control features and clues; I just wanted something in that street or the next one. This is where most of the "what's the number on the PAWA box" questions came from. Yeah, I know they're not very interesting, but they were in the right place to make the course fit together.

Early in December I went away for a week, and on my return I found to my horror that two of my carefully planned control locations just weren't there any more. I was intending to use a sign at Darwin Aero Club ("What colour is the arrow on the sign?"), but the club had moved, and the sign was gone. In another location I had counted the number of white posts on the side of the road, but returned to find that the posts had been knocked out of the ground. The perils of setting the controls too early!

Late in January, I made contact with the good people at MapsNT. These kind souls put up with several iterations of trying to get the maps just right. And when I thought I was happy, in stepped the course vetter to find all (or at least most) of my mistakes. And there were a few. And another lot of corrections for the folks at MapsNT to apply. Finally, the maps were finalised about a week before the event, and ended up being printed by Maps NT the day before the event happened.

I mentioned the course vetter. Rogaining tradition states that, after organising an event, the course setter and course vetter will not be on speaking terms, having disagreed violently on every aspect of the planned course. I am pleased to say that in this case, although there were a few places where we disagreed initially on the exact placement of a control circle or the wording of a question, that all disputes were settled amicably to our mutual satisfaction. Something must have been seriously wrong.

The entries began to trickle in. By the week before the event, we were confident that we at least had enough entries to make it worth while. And the entries continued to come in, right up until a few minutes before the start of the event. After spending a couple of hours shuffling paper to and from the participants, it was time to give the final pre-start briefing. And then they were off.

I had never realised just how peaceful it can be at the hash-house only five minutes after the start. And this is where the scene in the first paragraph comes in....

Later that evening, the participants returned to a scrumptious feed, and to the organisers furiously tallying results. In a form reversal from the Manton Dam event, most of the NTRA committee entrants finished towards the head of the field, including the overall winners Jon Potter and David Palmer. Now if we could only get some of the other committee members (John and Annie) to fill in their entry forms correctly we might be able to announce their results in the correct category.

Almost finally, I'd like to say that it was really great from an organiser's perspective that so many people enjoyed the event. Or at least they said they enjoyed it, which is good enough for me.

And really finally, a huge thank you to all of the people who contributed their time or services to make this event happen. I've mentioned most of them before, but here they are again: MapsNT (NT Department of Lands, Planning and Environment) for production and duplication of maps used for the event; NT Parks and Wildlife Commission for use of Leanyer Recreation Park as the Hash House area; Annie Whybourne, Jeff Jackson and Susi Bertei, for preparing/cooking the post-event food, and thanks also to Jane Burford for her offer of help; Top End Orienteers, for the loan of their drinks cooler; and Peter Slade- course vetter - I couldn't have done it without him. Tony Galliford Course Setter, Leanyer Meander Metrogaine