National Safari

Karen, Gloria, Alastair and Teabag made up the Macleay contingent at this years Safari. Now Teabag being somewhat clever decided before leaving home that he couldn't shoot all the events so had decided to sit out the national IFAA titles. 81 shooters met the starters gun, the temp was climbing towards 44 C Teabag survived all this by sitting in the shade drinking cold drinks & eating tasty ice-blocks, the other people well that's a different story. Several people were badly heat effected with several actually throwing up. Our girls looked a bit like freshly cooked lobsters whilst Alastair didn't appear to notice it was hot. There is an old saying about dogs, mid-day sun & Englishmen. Now I know why. The club is set in the foot hills of the MacDonald ranges it has 4 ABA ranges &1 IFAA range. Another IFAA range is overlaid on ABA 3 and the 3d were overlaid on ABA 2 & 4. Range 2 was mountain goat country, range 3 ABA and 1 IFAA were half flat and half hilly Range 4 was just nice and range 1 was a bit like Hunter Bowmen's grounds. Many arrows were sacrificed to the archery gods with Lee-Anne Edwards breaking 8 in one round. I have to say how proud I was to be part of branch E, the enthusiasm had to be seen to be believed. As a branch we entered teams in all the events. We did have small meetings with input from several people to reach a decision on who would be in the team. It is really hard, much harder that it would appear.

Our team results were pretty good and were as follows IFAA Juniors First, Adults Second ( Alastair was in this team) ABA team Juniors First (you should have seen young Ashley Pecks face when she received her team medal. Just fantastic.) Adults forth ( Karen was in this team  and finished 3 in her section) 3D Juniors second, Adults third. All in all a good result.
Branch E supplied 26 of the 81 starters. Gloria shot reasonably well and won her division but had no competition. Karen had a first in her section. with competition and Alastair finished 5th only 41 points from 1st place. Teabag had 5 ice blocks, 3 cans of drink and 2 cups of tea quite exhausting really.
After a couple of lay days we hit the track in the ABA rounds. The weather had cooled a little by now and the local indigenous people were wearing hoodies and GLOVES. The shoot took 2 days and we shot each range once, well those that finished did, By the last range the lure of the ice blocks proved to strong so of I trotted. Branch E supplied 37 starters. Results were good for Macleay, Karen came third, Alastair was stuck in 5th position but only 36 points from 1st. Gloria came first, again but still no competition and Tea bag came in last I did however shoot a nice 380 1 arrow. Whilst Cupcake had no competition and she was feeling a little down it turned out she had shot a national record for a 3 arrow round. Another score worth mentioning was Cathie Munns Australian record 304 with a long bow. Karen & Alastair left the next morning and left the 2 oldies to carry the flag, bloody heavy it was to. Tea bag once again slipped in to the ice blocks and pulled out on range 4 and thus finished last, whilst Cupcake got a Migraine and also couldn't finish. One thing I nearly forgot was Cupcake won the major raffle prize of a trip to Norfolk Island at the end of June. I on the other hand won a Milkshake maker.
The next instalment will be the trip home. It would appear that 45 people looked at the site yesterday. Please could somebody anybody leave a note saying this is all worth while.
Cheers Tea bag