Category Archives: Geocaching

Windy with some wildlife …

There was no chance of a sleep-in this morning with the plumbers and road workers turning up in the caravan park to start their day around 7:30am.After putting up with the noise for a little while, it was time to get up and pack up. They had already pegged out the next lot of digging right up to my car so I guess they were keen to see me pull out.

A quick stop at the Wax Garden just out of St Arnaud for a few geocaches then westward bound for South Australia.

At Rupanyup, there have been a few additions since I was last there. They now have chainsaw cut sculptures up the main street and a mural on the Shire Office as well as the Silo art. Of course there are some geocaches near all of these so some time was spent in town, checking out the art and grabbing the caches.

Just before Nhill, I got the evil eye by a highway patrol stopped on the side of the road with his roof lights on. I slowed down to 25kph even though it only has to be 40kph in Victoria. I guess he wasn’t happy that I didn’t slow down far enough back.

It is good to be able to drive over the Border into SA without having to do COVID checks and the associated permits.

It was into Bordertown for a pasty, vanilla slice and iced coffee from the Morning Loaf Bakery (a bit of an institution here).Another stop for some geocaches just out of Bordertown at Poocher Swamp. It was a little dry here today. We will need to come back here when it is full of water and a bit greener.

It was back onto the Dukes Highway to Tintinara, then left turn to Woods Well on the Coorong to my final campsite for this trip at Parnka Point (Pelican) Campground.

Even though the website had a number of the campsites booked, I was the only one here. Maybe it was too windy for them. I had meant to book site 3 on the waters edge but my fat fingers picked 2. On trying to book site 3, it was already gone.

Site 2 was a little protected from the wind but it came with a pet.

After parking up, I went to walk around the back of the van and found a 1 metre Eastern Brown snake taking in some rays. I pulled forward to give him some room while keeping an eye on which way he headed. Luckily it was into the scrub away from my van.

It ended up that Site 3 didn’t turn up so I could have grabbed it.

Some more Geocaching …

Another day of Geocaching with Jenny staying back at the Taj and me undertaking some of the caches that required some walking.

There were a number of caches in the Holmes Jungle Nature Park and I probably should have brought some shoes with me but I managed to do the walking in NT safety shoes (thongs). It was warm but not uncomfortable.

After tackling the Park caches, I headed into the Berrimah Industrial area for some urban caches but shouldn’t have bothered with a few DNF’s.

I eventually gave up and picked up Jenny from the Taj as we were meeting up with a softball buddy of Jenny and Rachael for a BBQ at their house in Leanyer.

Danielle And Troy had moved up from Adelaide after Troy started a new job with NT Police in their call centre.

Geocaching in the City …

Today was a geocaching day in the Darwin City area. What I mean by that is I geocached while Jenny stayed in the airconditioned car reading her book.

Ratio of finds to “Did Not Finds” was not that good, with few finds which is normal for the Darwin area. Many in the Darwin CBD are micro caches and tend to go missing regularly for some reason.

This evening we ended up with a clash of activities. Normally the Supercars Officials night is held on the Wednesday night and I hold a geocaching event on the Thursday night at the Mindil Markets.

I organised my normal Geocaching event, Mingle at Mindil 9, tonight even though COVID-19 has stopped the Thursday market. The problem was NT Major Events changed the Officials night to Thursday night this year as well.

We attended the Officials night early around 5:30pm but it was a very different night due to the postponement of the Race Meeting. There were no credentials and every team were staggered. We grabbed a couple of drinks then made our way down the road to Mindil Beach to my Geocaching event for an hour.

There were a few locals as well as some travelling cachers from Germany. It was good to catch up with the locals and get some hints to some of the DNF’s from earlier in the day.

After watching the sunset, it was farewell to the cachers and back to the Officials night for a meal and meet all the fire crew. Even though it was a different sort of Officials night, the fire crew continued the tradition of being the last to leave.

Another Geocaching Milestone …

With Garry having completed his 14 day quarantine at the Burra Showground, I met up with him at the mighty metropolis of Maggea in the Mallee.

This looks to have been an old railway siding with what might have been an oval, a tennis club, a hall and a few houses. You could see where the railway must have gone through but the rails and sleepers are long gone.

We camped at the oval, well we think it was once an oval.

There was no-one around so the generator could run all night and not disturb anyone. It was certainly needed to keep the heater going as it hit 0C overnight. I must fit the diesel heater at some time. After all, it has only been sitting in the box since August 2018.

Today we were targeting the “On your Bike” series of geocaches to the north of Maggea which consisted of 100 caches. It was a mixture of ground based and tree based caches.

I managed to make another milestone, this time up a tree of 23000 geocache finds.

We finished up early in the afternoon so I headed back to the block at Sedan and Garry headed up to the Riverland.

The Murray River

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The Taj needs a shakedown …

With a big trip planned next week, my 4 day break between shifts was a good opportunity to do a shakedown on the Taj to make sure everything was working.

The first night was up to the block at Sedan and the first thing that seemed to not be working was the hot water service with the 240V switch not turning off. Although I have changed the anode every couple of years, there hasn’t been other maintenance.

Found the switch and an element online at a caravan parts place in ACT. Paid extra for some express post. Hope they arrive before we head away.

Didn’t seem to be any other issues with the van which is a good thing.

The track to the block ...

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A Bloody Cold Day for some Geocaching …

Had a phone call from Bill Griggs earlier in the week to see if I was up for a challenge to find 52 unpublished caches in the Kuitpo Forest. Sounded like a fun challenge and it was decided that an early start Saturday morning was in order.

Well our challenge was somewhat thwarted with the 52 caches being published at 0400 Saturday morning so it now had become a “First to Find” (FTF) run to see how many we could get before the forest was besieged by FTF Hounds.

So with me and my $100 bike and Bill with his somewhat more expensive eBike arriving at 0730, we set off on our anti-clockwise journey.

Even though we were not going to do our original challenge, we had some other challenges to contend with.

One – it was bloody cold and even though there was no wind the temperature remained mostly in single figures.

Two – my chain on the $100 bike decided it was not up to the challenge and promptly broke at 3km, 4km and 5km. We repaired it two times (handy to have a doctor with the right tools), but in the end it became a 5km ride and 11km walk for me.

The outcome in the end was 52 FTF’s with coffee at the end at Tinjella Hut where my brother and sister were camped for the weekend (was unaware they were there when we started off).

Time for some Supercars …

My time down the south east had come to an end and although I didn’t achieve all the geocache finds I had planned, it certainly made a dent in the available caches. I am sure there will be a lot more caches placed around the area prior to the GeoVenture 2020 so another trip will be in order to get them.

My next week of holidays will be a bit closer to home. This coming weekend is the Supersprint at the Bend Motorsport Park. I will be taking up residence in the Big 4 Caravan Park at the track from tomorrow, catching up with Garry and Deb.

It is only for a couple of days before moving into the temporary Officials Campground located in the East Circuit Pit Area. By being already on site, we will be able to get the pick of the campsites before everyone else moves in on Thursday afternoon.

Not too cold for a Sinkhole …

There was some heavy rain and strong winds overnight, but it started to break up as I headed out to find some geocaches around Millicent. It was short lived with continual heavy showers hitting me every 10 minutes or so. It was not much fun caching. Combine that with a few DNF’s (Did Not Find), I decided to go back to the caravan for an early lunch, put on some dry clothes then made tracks for Mount Gambier.

There was a few more geocaches along the way but the wind was getting stronger and the rain heavier, so I gave up on the geocaching and went straight to Kilsby’s Sinkhole.

This is one of many sinkholes that are located on properties around the south-east but there is a difference. The owners have made this a commercial venture where you can go swimming, snorkelling and diving, depending on your qualifications.

I was already saturated so why not get completely wet. It was down to 8C outside and the sinkhole was 15C so that was a plus. They also supplied wet suit, boots, hood, gloves, mask, snorkel and fins. There was some instruction at the start after signing the waivers (making sure it is all our fault and wont sue) then it was down to the sinkhole.

They can handle 8 people at a time but I guess the weather has scared others off as there were only 5 in our group today. We were told that most people only last around 30 minutes in the water and the other 4 in the group proved that. I stayed in for 1.25 hours. They only reason I got out is that our minder, Jen, had to stand on the deck and she was getting cold.

The best bit was with all the wet suit material you are wearing, you become neutral buoyant so there is no effort to keep yourself up in the water. By laying forward, arms stretched to the side over the deepest point at 30 metres, it is the closest thing you could get to feeling weightless. An added bonus today was the 2 divers down on the bottom. It was fascinating floating above them in their air bubble stream coming to the surface.And the big question is, how much for this experience. For a 2 hour session with all the gear included is $49 per person. I think it was well worth it.

The weather actually abated during the time we were in the sinkhole but as soon as I left the property, it all started up again. Hopefully it clears up a bit tomorrow as I leave Millicent and return home for a least one day.

Caching into the Forests …

It doesn’t look like I am supposed to sleep in during my holidays. At 830am (some might call that a sleep-in) there was some strange noise coming from my laptop, phone and tablet. It was Bradley calling from Chicago for a Family chat using Messenger. Bradley had just got home from work (Friday afternoon his time) whereas the rest of us were still in bed or just up.

After a 30 minute catch up on his movements, loves, work and his new apartment, I might as well get up for the day.

It was another glorious day with no clouds and plenty of sunshine but it was only around 14C. Today I was going to leave the farming areas around Millicent and move onto the pine forests and caves of Tantanoola.

I had a list of around 45 caches for the day but as I would find, that caching in the forests was not going to be too easy with a lot trees having been blown down in our many storms and fallen down over tracks blocking any access to the caches.

I did get to do a couple of earthcaches, both in disused quarries. The first was a sandstone quarry that was used to carve out the Mount Gambier Limestone which was used in a lot of building from the 1870’s. The other quarry was the Mount Watch volcano dome which was used as a source of scoria.

A lot of todays caches were at many of the limestone cave entrances scattered around the south-east. All of those visited today were filled with water which can be explored using scuba gear (provided you have the right credentials), but it has been about 20 years since I have donned scuba gear so no cave diving for me today.

At the back of Tantanoola, I had one of those empty buildings filled with stuff moment. It was the old Tantanoola Butter, Cheese, and Produce Company Factory. Each year since 1960 on Christmas Day, there is a group of people that meet up and there is an honour board on the front of the building of all the attendees, life members and those that have passed on.

But there is even more. The front door has seen better days so I had a look inside and there were old model cars (spotted some old Holdens and Chryslers), motors and who knows what stacked up all through the factory. If this place ever goes up for sale, I am sure there will be some amazing stuff to be found.

The weather for tomorrow doesn’t look too good so have a list of geocaches to find in the morning if the weather is right, but in the afternoon I am going into a sinkhole where I am going to get wet anyway.

Another Geocaching Milestone … 22000 Finds

I think they didn’t get the memo at work that I had started holidays or maybe they just wanted to see if I was enjoying my time off. Either way there was an early morning call from work.

There was some wild weather overnight with strong winds buffering the van as well as some heavy downpours. By the time I headed out there was sunshine and broken clouds but no rain.

Today was another day of geocaching going for the caches to the north of Millicent. I had picked out 90 for the day but some took a bit longer so I only managed to get 60 before it was getting too dark to spot them.

A highlight was getting another milestone with 22000 geocaches finds at no particularly special spot. It was GC6X0ZA – Commurra Bus run # 6 McEwens, on the side of the Princes Highway.

Tomorrow I will go south of Millicent into the pine forests around Tantanoola.