Kalang at Last - Day 1

Friday 6 July 2012

Quite a few months ago Barad Bunch suggested trying to find some of his Kalang series, so Peter had a look and realised that it was going to require a bit of brain power to solve. At first it looked like A|C|G|T (KK 04) may be the easiest, but several attempts to work it out failed. The only thing to do was email Barad Bunch for some help; the reply was “well that is probably the hardest, try some others first”. Well we did but it became clear that this was seriously tough work and Barad had to put up with several more requests for hints of what to do. The only one of the five solved that didn’t need his help was Noughts and Crosses (KK 02). So a really big thanks to Barad for his forbearance.

We worked out the route to take with a bit of Google Earth plotting and set out on what was a superbly beautiful day; in fact it reached 17 degrees. Not long after ticking off the first one a woman walked past with her dog and, on seeing us with a GPS and a looking at a sheet of paper, asked if we knew where we were. Perhaps we looked a bit lost.

After collecting our third we struggled up a steep, weed ravaged, hill then down the fire trail to Kalang Road and back up the track there to collect the other two for the day. This leaves two to tackle some other time, if we can solve the puzzles.

Noughts and Crosses (KK 02)

The hint for this one finally dawned on Peter and a bit of find and replace with Word and a web site offering string conversions proved successful.

Silver Caesar (KK01)

Peter ventured into Excel to try to convert the puzzle after guessing from the hint and knowing of Barad’s profession. All looked good until the result was put into a web based convert to a string where the outcome had a lot of hieroglyphics (for example “coordinates are� S ���”). Help Barad; and he came up with what Peter did wrong and what converter would do the job.

Binasky Binasky (KK 03)

A bit of Google search went on with Binasky and again a hint from Barad, but was almost stumped by the fact that the data in looked the same as the data out when using the web converter. From frustration more than design a second press of the convert button brought up the English. Perhaps that’s the reason for the double Binasky in the title.

My Incomplete Mishandled Email (KK 06)

Peter thought he was on to this one, but searching the web did not get him any closer to the solution, but Barad mentioned a web converter site and it was soon solved.

Our Dog (KK 05)

Pondering the clues seemed to draw a blank, until Barad gave a hint that made a big difference; however trying to convert was taking a lot of time and not getting anywhere. In frustration Peter wrote some visual basic code and out came the correct answer. On telling Barad about it he mentioned a particular web converter that would have saved Peter all that time; never mind.

The view from the Kalang Sites

IMG_6879 View from Kalang Geocache Sites

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Frogs and Water

We knew that " Swimming Hole " was a cache not far from home and finally decided to seek it. Earlier in the week we had picked up " Spot the Frog ", a moveable cache found under the Geocache Australia website and needed to deposit the little fellow somewhere. As frogs like water and this one had spent a few months on a dry hillside it seemed appropriate to lodge near a creek, so finding "Swimming Hole" was combined with the task. We could work out the starting spot even without a GPS and soon had the next stage entered in the GPS. Much to Peter's surprise it led us back down rather than up the creek and we ended beside a fence. A bit of searching and head scratching saw us give up for now and head off to lodge our little froggy. On return home Sue scanned through past logs and discovered several people also ended up where we did and then found this was several metres out. This has encouraged us to head back to the GZ soon and to ignore the GPS for on...
Read more

Tasman Duo

Image
9 and 10 May 2012 It was hoped to be Tasman Trio as the story below will reveal . Hauy We camped overnight at Fortescue Bay and planned to take the opportunity to collect the aHauy there! cache at the end of the Cape Hauy walk, and pick up a couple more whilst on a walk to Shipstern Bluff the following day. The new track to Cape Hauy was very impressive, with a huge number of rock steps and the rest hardened to a high standard. It is a very expensive construction but, as it is a single file track, maybe money could have been saved by making it narrower. Mind you any saving would be most unlikely to get spent on another track elsewhere. We have been on this walk quite a number of times over the years and felt that although it was a good surface it was actually not any easier because of all the steps to be climbed. The scenery is so impressive that we almost forgot about looking for the cache. A search about by Sue, Peter and Mike the Muggler did not locate it and we t...
Read more

Freycinet Bushwalk

Image
3 – 5 October 2012 As we were going on a bushwalk to Freycinet Peninsula the potential geocache finds in the area were checked and several were close to our route. We went for three days, camping at Cooks Beach for both nights and heading down to a rocky peak beyond Passage Beach. Graham (Graham51) was with us although he took the longer return option over Mount Graham where he also managed to locate a cache on his journey. On the way back in the car we picked up a couple in the region. Top of the Pass Our first for the day, located by Graham, and although a few muggles were about none took much notice of us,   Half empty or half full ? We dropped our packs and with two people holding GPS’s and three heading to GZ it was surprising how little attention the muggles paid to our activity. One looked up for a while but soon turned back to look at the scenery elsewhere.   Blue Champagne Our objective for the days bushwalk was the southern peak on the Freycinet Peninsula above ...
Read more