The Compass Club (new adventurer club)

Appears in 9 episodes, first in episode 27.

Every appearance

• Episode 136 - Kelly Hodges

  Mel flags her Tasmania trip as the final leg of her own Aussie Compass Club — heading to Geeveston parkrun, the southernmost event in Australia, to complete all four compass points. She dismisses the alphabet-style clubs ("that's not a real compass club"), Scott counters that he's in one, and Mel appeals for a graphic designer to help with artwork for the medals she's having made.

• Episode 121 - Mark Musk

  Mel notes the Geeveston launch shifts the southern Compass Point for the third time this year and is the last point she needs to become a navigator. She proposes that anyone holding all four compass points simultaneously should keep navigator status permanently even after the points move, and announces she will make (not sell) engraved navigator medals — pending agreement from her co-conspirator Chris/Christine Timms.

• Episode 100 - Lyndell Murray

  Discussed inside the launches item: Nightcliff is "a new point on the compass club", prompting Mel and Scott to observe how expensive the club has become now that compass points are being replaced almost weekly as parkrun Australia expands toward the coasts - contrasted with the Peel Club, where one event per state or territory suffices.

• Episode 82

  Melissa Erbacher breaks news of upcoming compass-point changes: Western Australia's point shifting from Geographe Bay to Margaret River, and a new Tasmanian event launching in January that will create a new southernmost point. She then rules, with co-creator Christine Timms, that compass points are fixed by the start/finish pin rather than the furthest extent of the course — settling the Kingscliff vs Ballina Coast debate in Kingscliff's favour. She notes she is a co-creator of the club but not yet a Navigator herself.

• Episode 65

  Discussed inside the Kingscliff interview: Mel points out Kingscliff is currently Australia's easternmost event and asks whether the Compass Club has brought extra visitors. Dawn hadn't heard of the club until recently. Talk turns to the upcoming Ballina-coast launch, said to be 500 metres less easterly, and to Weipa having challenged Darwin for northernmost — with Mel noting that being bumped out of the club by a new launch is "another adventure to be had".

• Episode 59 - Nicola Forwood

  Scott and Mel refine the listener-proposed Pirate Club that was floated in episode 58 ("your friend from the West"). Rules locked in after consulting the originator: seven "C" events (the seven seas) plus one "R" event — [00:02:13] "You have to have done the seven C's and an R ... it's the letter that comes immediately after Q in the alphabet." The original 26-C proposal was judged unattainable. Ian Hay is later tasked with crunching the numbers ([00:45:52] "Seven seas and one R ... I'll crunch those numbers") for a reveal next week.

• Episode 58

  Mel reveals a new adventurer club dreamed up by a Western Australian (possibly with alcohol involved, at an airport): the parkrun Pirates, for anyone who has run "all the Cs" — every parkrun beginning with C — and, after she pointed out the pun, all the Rs as well. You can be an Australian pirate or an international pirate. She has put the question of how many events that actually involves, and whether Australia has any pirates already, to Ian Hay for next week's Facts in a Haystack. Headlines the episode's show notes ("explore islands and talk about pirates").

• Episode 29 - Jessica Trengove

  Follow-up on Mel's listener initiative for parkrunners who have run at all four compass points. Listener suggestions for what to call qualifying members are read out (Peter Pohlman's ideas, Nicholas J. Sando's "navigators"), and Mel confirms she and her co-creator Christine have settled on "navigators".

• Episode 27 - Dani McLaren

  Mel announces a brand-new parkrun club she and Chris Timms invented on the Friday night before the Gold Coast Airport Marathon: run the easternmost, westernmost, northernmost and southernmost events in Australia (currently Kingscliff, Geographe Bay, Darwin, Hobart). Sits alongside the show's existing Statesmen/Peel Club/Southern Cross Circuit club talk, and the hosts invite listeners to suggest a name for members ("compassions").