For the first time in a couple of years I have forgotten to do a 12 of 12.
I woke up on Friday the 13th and realised that the 12th had passed and I had not taken a single photo.
Oh well, I better remember February 12th ….
Category Archives: 12 of 12
December 12 of 12 – a caching day …
Quite a busy day this month with a start at the chiropractor to get everything in line as I had some walking to do.
It was then up the Freeway to Callington and then onto Rockleigh & Bondleigh to tackle a couple of hike-in caches on the Lavender Federation Trail. The caches on the radar today were:
The first cache took me past the old Preamimma Mine which is an old copper and gold mine which was mined in the late 1800’s. Like the nearby Kanmantoo Mine, there is a bit of interest to rework the area for copper, gold and zinc. However today there was just me, a few grasshoppers and a cache.
The second cache was further north towards Bondleigh, where I parked near a few old ruins and rusting old farm machinery. The walk around to the cache startled a couple of kangaroos but that was all the wildlife I saw. It was then a matter of picking the right crevasse in the rocks and I soon had the cache. The walk back to the car took me through an old stone walled drive to what could be called a hermits shed or at least an old weekender.
As I came up to the back of the shed, I got a bit of a fright as I nearly stepped on a snake all curled up trying to get some heat although today was a little cool and overcast. The cool conditions probably helped as it was very sluggish and gave me a chance to get a couple of metres away.
It looked to be around 1.5 to 2 metres long with a body the size of my wrist. Initially I thought it might be some sort of python but following a bit of research it was more than likely to be an Eastern Tiger Snake. I tried to get a photo but by the time the camera was ready it had slithered back into the stone wall.
Picked up a couple more caches in Kanmantoo, Nairne and Mount Barker. The cache in Nairne called Pumba’s walk has had me beaten a couple of times but I found it today. There were a couple of DNF’s (did not find) and these were both hidden by the same person – I think there is more work required in his hiding methods.
A quick stop at home to pick up Rachael to get her down to the bus depot to pick up her purse that was left on a bus last week. Luckily everything was still in it.
The project for tonight was to get the Xmas lights up and running. We actually pruned out a few of the old ones that have seen the end of their useful life and added a few new ones. All are good to go.
That’s it until next month.
November 12 of 12 ……
We were up at the Thomas Hill Hostel sitting around the camplight (camp fires were banned) for the “Come Remember with me” geocaching event and someone said it has turned midnight and shouldn’t I be taking pictures for the 12 of 12.
I didn’t realise it was that time again – this last month has flown but then again I have spent a bit of time all over the country in the last month.
I looked up at the sky and saw the full moon with a jet trail just under it. There was photo number one. 🙂
Not long after it was time to head up into the roof top tent and grab some sleep.
Woke up not long after dawn but couldn’t get a good photo so back to bed for another couple of hours sleep.
Went inside to find the big table full of laptops, GPS’s and mobile internet devices. There must be a lot of nerds here or geocachers or both.
After everyone updating GPS operating systems and loading the geocaches it was time to do the drivebys on the caches within the property. These would normally require a lot of hiking to get.
Didn’t take long to see our first snake but missed getting a photo – it was a 1 metre brown snake.
We headed out on the various tracks which 12 months ago were wet and slippery but today dry and dusty. I was out caching with Honeysucker, Skippy and Semik. Out of the 6 caches we did at this time, I had found them 12 months ago except for one.
Back to Thomas Hill for lunch then headed out to grab a few more very clever caches involving the use of water, air pump and magnets. We were joined by Scoobster and Dazzatron for these ones.
Time to head home then it was out for dinner at Jenny’s brothers to finish this months 12 of 12.
October 12 of 12 – Alice Springs fires …
One thing with my life, it is like a magical mystery tour – you never know where I will be.
This week I am in Alice Springs as part of the South Australian deployment assisting Bushfires NT with their current bushfire situation.
With some incredible rainfalls over the past couple of years, there has been amazing growth of both mulga and grasses in the Far North of South Australia and the south and central Northern Territory.
With the warming weather curing this massive growth and a lot of dry lightning storms there have been some large fires threatening townships and station homesteads.
Assistance was offered to Northern Territory and accepted with an ongoing deployment for the past 2 weeks from South Australia.
The role of the SA crew has been to burn strategic breaks around Alice Springs and provide a rapid response to nearby fires.
My role has been that of a Planning Officer within the Incident Management Team. The amazing thing about these fires is the sheer size of them (e.g. 4000 square km just for a single fire) and the small amount of resources managing these fires.
Today started early with lightning heading through Central Australia starting a number of new fires. So apart from chasing up information on existing fires, it was a case of chase up on the new ones as well.
The temps were high today with 35 degrees and some good winds so fires were moving well. The main fires giving more interest were east and west of Alice Springs.
The day flew by quickly and I got to deploy Alice Springs first Munzee as well.
We were starting to wind down when I starting doing a scan of the latest satellite data and spotted some new fires south west near Yulara and on the Stuart Highway north of Ti Tree. Another flurry of work then it was time to head back to the hotel.
It was only 5 minutes back at the hotel and a fire started directly across the road. Our crews were out working north of town so we rang the local crew and watched them get to work.
Time for an ice cold beer to finish the day 🙂
September 12 of 12 – Skiing Falls Creek …
Well there was no shortage of photos today – in fact it was hard to choose 12 from the 54 I took.
We are on Day 1 of our annual snow trip to Falls Creek.
Even though there isn’t a lot of snow coverage, there is enough to make it enjoyable and to make the muscles and joints tired and sore.
A couple of the runs were icy in the morning but softened a little mid afternoon before re-freezing late in the afternoon.
Bradley reckons he has what it takes to beat me in a race but a couple of races down Wombats Ramble proved otherwise 🙂
Even with only a few runs running, still managed 53 kms on the GPS track which is about normal.
You can check out all the photos at In the Snow 2011 – Day 1 on Facebook.
August 12 of 12 – another different sort of day …
One thing about working for the Fire Service is that you never know what your day will bring particularly when you are on call.
Looking at my calendar in the morning and it looked like it was going to be a normal sort of day with a lot of meetings finishing up with the AGM for my volunteer Fire Brigade in the night.
The first obstacle for the day was getting to work. It used to be that it would take about 20-25 minutes to travel the 12 kms to work but with weather, roadworks and an almost endless stream of vehicles it is now taking up to an hour.
I have been trying alternative routes to see if I can get in quicker – the one today didnt seem too bad. 🙂
First meeting for the day was the State Bushfire Coordination Committee. About an hour in, off goes my pager. It was for a radiation incident at a recycling company. I made a quick couple of calls and organised my #2 to attend in my place. I rang him a couple of hours later when my meeting finished and he was still there 🙁
Time for lunch and a group of us went off to Chinatown for a “#11 with extra chilli” from Singapore Delights.
Time for another meeting – this time with SA Police to discuss road closure procedures for motorsport events in the future.
Some more time back in the office before heading home to spend a couple of minutes with the family and “Molly” before heading back to the city for the Coromandel Valley Country Fire Service AGM. Not sure whether it was worth going home.
This year was an election year and there were some changes with a new Captain and Lieutenant for the Brigade.
After a great meal at Pellegrini Cafe it was back to the station to discuss the future over a few ales – but not for me as I am still on call ….
That’s it for this month.
July 2011 – 12 of 12 …
Today was to an average sort of day so I thought I would match Foursquare check-ins I had during the day with a photo of each location. It ended up I had too many photos today with the day almost ending up with a bang.
The day started out quiet in our street but heading to work I got held up by a freight train at the Blackwood Railway Station (Foursquare Mayor here). Stopped off at the Blackwood Post Office (Foursquare Mayor here) to pick up the latest Geocoin Club geocoin.
Got held up some more on the way into Adelaide with a number of roadworks. It is not too much of a problem as the car tends to be a mobile office these days anyway. Arrived at the Adelaide Fire Station (Foursquare Mayor here).
A normal sort of day and one of my cohorts suggested lunch at Chinatown and in particular one our favourite haunts – Singapore Delights (Foursquare Mayor here). We walked down through Victoria Square to a packed Chinatown but another great meal of #11 with extra chilli.
Walked back to work through the Central Market and finsihed off my Fire Service day or so I thought.
After work it was time to go to the Scouts Rally SA Office (Foursquare Mayor here) to put in another 5 hours with the Rally only 2 weeks away. On arrival, Ivar told me there was some sort of gas leak in the front office.
After a quick sniff, it was time to bring in some guys in a “Big Red Truck” to use the meters to find the source of the gas. After a bit of detecting and searching, we came up that it was a refigerant gas leak from the air conditioner. Thats a job for tomorrow and we had work to do tonight.
We rugged up, turned off the heat and opened the windows, got down to it and finally came up with a Draft Entry List for the Rally at 11 pm.
June 12 of 12 – Copper Coast Caching …..
The hardest part of this month was actually picking 12 photos for the day. We were over on the Yorke Peninsula in the Copper Triangle (Wallaroo, Kadina & Moonta) for the June Long Weekend Copper Coast Caching Geocaching Event.
This was Day 2 of the Event which started with an Egg & Bacon BBQ and Group Photo with 66 teams and around 250 geocachers heading out at 9:30 am to try and find the 80+ caches that were hidden by everyone on Day 1, with a few bonus caches and other tasks.
Our day started well with Rachael being able to solve the 2 Mystery Caches in the first half hour but as it would happen we would only have time to find one of them (much to her disgust). We did find the 2nd one on the way home on Monday.
We started on some of the Kadina caches before heading down to Moonta then up the Coast to Wallaroo grabbing as many of the northern caches as we could before 3:30 pm. After that time we had to pick up our 2 temporary caches and return to the start point at 4:00 pm which we made with 30 seconds to spare.
We didn’t pick up one of our temporary caches and took a 5 point penalty but we probably would have ended up with a 30 point time penalty if we did get it. (I made the hour round trip after to grab it). This temporary was published as a permanent.
At each of the events we have attended, we have left a permanent cache which is a letterbox out in the middle of nowhere. The three caches are:
There were a number of clever hides as well as some frustrating hides. The kids liked the Owl in the tree, Split log and Spooky Skull. The most frustrating one was the one hidden in the 10m x 5m pile of gravel which we didnt find. Rachael also enjoyed the tree climbing caches which there were a couple of. My favourites were those that involved some 4WDing to get to.
The day finished with a spectacular sunset over Wallaroo then the Presentation Night back at the Harness Club.
We didn’t win the Event with our score about middle of the pack. Jenny and Rachael blame me for stopping at too many “real” caches instead of the “event” caches. What we did win was the best themed table which was “Red” and also the Jim Beam raffle which was a 4.5 litre bottle of Jim Beam. 😀
After the Presentation finished and we did our bit to clean up the hall, I dropped Jenny and the kids back at our Office Beach Cabin and then headed out for some night caching with a group of other Geocachers ending up at 2:30 am. It was a big day considering we started at 7:00 am.
Until next month ….
May 12 of 12 …
Todays 12 of 12 started wet, continued wet through the day and ended wet. Winter is here and three weeks early. There has even been 25cm of snow at Falls Creek.
Had a couple of pickups this morning with a new mouse GPS to connect up to the Netbook when out on the road, then a couple of fluoro jackets for the Scouts Rally SA.
The Police HQ building behind the Fire Station is still being built but is looking closer with a lot of the external hoardings and scaffold being removed.
We then did an audit on our satelitte phones checking they worked and replacing the sim cards that didnt work. That was in between the rain showers.
You can see from the pile of paper on my desk, that I will never be short of something to do at work, but still had time to listen to the Geocaching Podcast live.
It was then lunchtime and of course it was still raining. Dropped off the jackets to the Rally Office then back to work to find a venue for some work meetings. I had been trying the Richmond Hotel for a couple of days but had no reply.
Tried a couple of Scout venues but they were unavailable but ended up booking the Maxwell Cooper Room at the Coopers Alehouse.
It was time to knock off and grab a couple of Geocaches on my quest to make 5000 finds by the Moderately Old Farts Birthday Bash on the Border Track on the 20th and with 8 Days to go and 34 caches to find – should be achievable ….
![\"Undercover Geocacher\"](http://firesafetyservices.net/sti/wp-content/gallery/may-2011-12-of/img_1351.jpg "\\"Undercover Geocacher\\"")
![\"Come to where the champions gathered\"](http://firesafetyservices.net/sti/wp-content/gallery/may-2011-12-of/img_1352.jpg "\\"Come to where the champions gathered\\"")
![\"Mrs Brown\"](http://firesafetyservices.net/sti/wp-content/gallery/may-2011-12-of/img_1353.jpg "\\"Mrs Brown\\"")
April 12 of 12 ….
Today was my first day back at work after 2 weeks in the US. There were a couple of jobs that needed to be done on the way in.
One task was to order a new cover for the roof top tent as the old one had seen better days. In fact it seemed to have disappeared while I was overseas.
The day was no where as exciting as what the last two weeks had been, so a lot of the day was spent catching up (or attempting to) on what has been going on while I was away.
I did get to attend a couple of meetings that required some walking through the city.
Left work early as we were having the extended family over to celebrate Bradley’s 16th Birthday. Where have those years gone. To me he is still 14 as I have missed the last 2 due to being in the US each time.
After the usual presents, food and cake, the day drew to a close ……
