Geocaching

Wednesday 27 June 2012 Well the weather was just ideal for a bushwalk to the Three Thumbs and to collect a few geocaches during the trip. However, the geocaching part looked a bit shaky as Peter’s GPS did not display any in the area. A later check at home showed the records were on the GPS and when overwritten with a new copy they displayed OK; puzzling! All was not lost because Barad Bunch had notes on the caches and the grid on his GPS. This enabled us to locate the one near the cars. After morning tea at the lookout over Maria Island we commenced the walk to the Three Thumbs. Shady spots had plenty of frost but a fair bit of the way was along the tops of the main ridge and in the sun. Eventually we w ere on the highest peak, presumably the third Thumb and also what we presumed would be the hiding placed of the “ Three Thumbs Up ” geocache. But when Barad checked his GPS it indicated it was over 400 metres away on the peak previous climbed and descended from. Oh well that would have

Thursday 28 June 2012 A message came through that Kirby the Frog could not be found so we planned a walk to check this out. Before going, however, Peter looked at the web site and noticed that several other moveable caches had just been planted in the area, so some of these were downloaded to the GPS. This meant we could check that Kirby was there, collect some more and get in a walk and a stop in Lansdowne Crescent for a coffee. To top that off the day was very pleasantly sunny. Leaving the car near Fielding Drive we were quickly up to the frog ponds on Knocklofty and found that Kirby was in fact at home. Kirby’s hiding place From there it was a short distance to “ Leaps the Frog ” and “ Freddo ” which were both quickly located. “ Woodleigh Gnome ” had been down as one to collect when he was at the Waterworks, but someone beat us, and he was one of those dropped off here. This was more of a challenge as it was up through the bush and when the GPS settled down a suspicious

Friday 22 June 2012 It was a nice sunny, if quite cold day, and we decided to go for a walk in the suburb of Dynnyrne and collect a geocache “ Log Cabin ” on the way. At first we went up the wrong street in attempting to locate the underpass of the Southern Outlet highway, but eventually found it and Sue worked out the cache location quite quickly.   A schoolgirl muggle appeared just before we had time to return the container, but had it back soon after.  A walk further up the hill brought us past various architecture style of houses; with the most unusual one being a replica of a castle.   Beyond this was a walkway to Tolmans Hill and for somewhere high above the highway it was amazingly noisy from the traffic.

20 June 2012 A bushwalk to the top of Collins Cap was in the plan for the day, with a couple of caches to hopefully be the bonus. On the way up we had a quick search for Myrtle Park, but didn’t latch on to it and left finding it until the return leg. As we got high frozen snow on bushes was met and as planned we went down part of the old Glen Dhu track before seeing if an ascent of Collins Capo could be made from that side of the mountain. However the snow on the bushes was going to make us a bit too wet, so it was back to the track and the normal way up. It did not take us long to discover that it was quite overgrown with very wet chest high scrub which caused us to give up on the attempt. There were four of us on the walk and on returning to the “ Myrtle Park ” cache site all began the search based on the hint. Greg managed to find it fairly quickly. The log was interesting in that two entries were made by people who wrote they knew nothing about geocaching, but spotted the cache c

Monday 18 June 2012 The last attempt at Total eclipse of the heart C was frustrated by the close proximity of two gardeners just over the fence from the cache site, plus all the noise coming from their equipment. So we quickly gave up on it on that occasion and left. That was in October 2011 and in the intervening period we have seen a variety of cache containers and, on arriving at the site today, we promptly noticed this little one. When you have seen ones like this it is amazing that muggles don’t spot them, it just goes to show how well they blend in.

Monday 18 June 2012 The cache “ Around The Twist ” had us a bit frustrated, because others had found it quite quickly and yet even on this return visit we did not stumble on it for several minutes.   On our first visit we hunted around where the GPS told us was and the closest we got to seeing anything likely was a single light coloured rock.  Peter turned it over and declared that it was in fact a real rock and with not much time available we had to cease searching and head off to collect our granddaughter.   After study the logs and seeing people still easily finding it, we thought that our return visit this time would be a cinch.  That rock looked out of place and we felt fitted the clue, so Peter again examined it, more closely this time.  He thought there may be a fake rock with a hidden opening or perhaps a real one that lifted apart.   But no it really was a real and solid rock, even though it was where the GPS pointed. We had our granddaughter, Ella, with us and the three of

Wednesday 13 June 2012 We had an early lunch then drove to Lambert Avenue to commence the walk up through the gully to the summit of Mount Nelson. Eight caches would be passed on the way and the day was pleasantly sunny and it was quite warm walking up from close to sea level to the summit at 340 metres. At the top there is an historic signal station, but having seen it many times before, we were more interested in coffee and cake from the nearby café. As well as caches we also discovered a few weeds that the local Bushcare group have now been told about. There were a few muggles about but they all failed to see us when we were off the track with a cache. Just before the top of Mount Nelson we heard a person say “what was the clue again Dad”, so when Peter passed them he enquired if they were seeking a little plastic box. “May be “came the reply. From a perusal of the logs our guess is that it was the “fennwal”. Our score for the day was seven out of eight, plus a 200 metre diversion

1 June 2012 For a few weeks we have been meaning to head back to the Ridgeway Park and collect a cache out on the eastern side. There was also one not far from Two Views which we ran out of time to attempt when we were here in April just gone.   The Kong Foo Sing Cache Walking to the site was quite pleasant and it was somewhere we had never walked before, although we had been on the tracks in other parts of the reserve over the years, and our resolve was to follow some of the other tracks before too long and maybe score a cache or two in the process. The container took a bit of extracting as it was a tight fit and we were surprised at the number of fortune messages that were in it. Although there were no other items present, we still decided to leave a bird card and took one of the fortune messages.   A Waterworks Quarry We parked the car at a spot east of the GZ but when we got closer noticed a closer area that could be used. Anyway we soon located the best way up to the old quar