About Us

Our History

Our Club was established in 1980 and was first named 'Southern Overlanders Orienteering Club' to be known as 'S.O.L.O'. In 1982 the name was changed to Southland Orienteering Club to be known as SOC. The Southland Orienteering Club Inc was registered as an incorporated Society in 1989.

The formation of the club was initiated by Dunedin Orienteering Club who also produced our first map of Sandy Point. The production of a second map, Pebbly Hills, was also instigated by DOC but not completed because a disease in the trees caused the forest owners to close the forest. It was made available to us again in 1984 and we had a British orienteer, Jack Maitland to complete the map. Over the years more areas have been mapped and Sandy Point was extended as more forest matured. Our biggest mapping project was in 1988 when an area of the Waikaia Forest was mapped for the Moro South Island 7-Day Orienteering Festival in 1989. Three Swedish mappers did the fieldwork and DOSLI (department of survey land information) did the cartography. The map has been extended and updated a number of times since then. It has been considered one of the best orienteering maps in New Zealand.

In 1997 our heavy steel control stakes were replaced with lightweight fibre and aluminium stakes and in 2012 we advanced to electronic punching when we purchased the SPORTIdent timing system.

Today, we continue to keep up with technology using OCAD, OpenOrienteering and Purple Pen computer software to produce courses, instead of hand-drawn.

We regularly hold monthly or more frequently events, ranging from classic point-to-point orienteering, mountain bike orienteering, night orienteering and score orienteering.

Committee & Contributors  2024

Andrea Patterson (President) 

Micheal Young (Vice-President)

Nathan Harrison (Treasurer) 

Ayrton Shadbolt

Ciaran Thayer

Evan France

Helen Stewart

Karen Burrows

Liz Gill

Mark Hotton

Paul Horner

Sally Duston

Simon Welson

Ron Munro