How the Red Kiwi Club came about…
How the Red Kiwi Club came
about…
The following was taken from a letter from Desmond Dawe to Bruce Collins (NZ
Orienteering Editor) 22 August 1994.
‘The Red Kiwi Orienteering club was formed by Larry Sykes at a meeting after an event at
Santoft
Forest
on 16 November
1975.
The committee included Frank and Beryl Keenan, Wayne King and myself.
Previously Larry had run an event at the Palmerston North Esplanade, which was
probably the first such event in the area. With some help from a contact in the
Evening Standard office which included publicity, Larry organised the first forest
event at Waitarere on 12 October 1975. Joyce (Dawe) and I attended the event but got hopelessly
lost looking for the first control. At the conclusion of the event we discussed
‘O’ with Larry but vowed not to take part in any other events. However after
sleeping on it, we decided to try again at Santoft when we introduced our young
son Barry to ‘O’. Larry had first tried orienteering in
Melbourne
,
Australia
where he
became a member of the Red Kangaroo club and on returning to
New Zealand
decided to start the sport in Palmerston North. The map we used was indeed drawn by Robin and John
Davies in May 1975 but with some changes it became the base map for
many future events at Waitarere.
Larry was the driving force for Orienteering in this area and full credit
should be given to him for what was a momentous occasion in the forming of the
first club. Frank
Smith had not formed the
Wellington
club at
this time and it was two years later on the 16 October 1977 when he ran the
first event at
Ngaumu
Forest
on a coloured map
to a scale of 1:16,000. An item also appeared in the PN newspaper Town and Around
in September, 1977 which carried a photo of Joyce and Barry taken during the Santoft
event. The accompanying article advertised an event at Tangimoana on the first
to Red Kiwi colored map drawn by Larry and on 25 September 1977.’
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