COASTAL ULTRA SEES GROWTH EVERY YEAR

Contributed by Convicts and Wenches race director Ian Cornelius

It was the 10th edition of Convicts and Wenches this year, with the run course being 25kms out and 25kms back along the Bass Strait beachfront from the Tamar River in the east to the Mersey River in the west, then back again.

The race started at Greens Beach and followed the coastal track to West Head (mouth of the Tamar River), then Badger Beach (5km), then the coastal track around Badger Headland)m then Copper Cove Beach – a more coastal track – and then to Bakers Beach (6km) with a turn at the mouth of the Mersay River (Devonport) and back to Greens Beach.

Badger Beach and Badger Headland is thought to be named after the notorious Charlotte Badger, an escaped convict and Australia’s first and only female pirate. Badger was a convict from New South Wales having been convicted at the Worcester assizes in 1796 of the capital felony of housebreaking and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.

In 1806 she had just two years let of her sentence to serve when she gave birth to a girl and was assigned as a servant to a settler in Hobart, so she sailed from Port Jackson on the Venus with the child and a group of male convicts. The convicts mutinied and took control of the ship, with accounts of Badger’s role being one of rebellion.

Back to the race, Convicts and Wenches has grown from a handful of starters in 2010 to 400 plus entrants in 2019, and there are race options of 5km, 12km, 25km and 50kms.

The event has adopted a fancy dress theme with many contestants dressing up as, you guessed it, convicts and wenches, and it’s thought to be Australia’s largest fancy dress run.

The male winner of the main event for 2019, the Topo Shoes 50km, was course record holder David Bailey, now a six-time winner.

The winning female and second outright was course record holder and now seven-time winner Amy Lamprecht.

Next year’s Convicts and Wenches will be held on March 29 (TBC).