Category Archives: Geocaching

12 of 12, Firefighting, Geocaching, Scott at Work, Work, Work Life

August 12 of 12 ….

August 12, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

Another day when I nearly forgot. You would think that I would have put it in my calendar by now. 🙂

This month I am doing a stint back on shift work as the Metropolitan Commander North on C Shift. I spent 17 years on C Shift as a firefighter and senior firefighter so it is good to get back to my roots but gee I don’t recognise a lot of faces. I guess that is understandable as we have hired over 1000 personnel in the last 28 years.

The day started out in my office overlooking the Engine Room of Adelaide Fire Station but I wasn’t there long as I was due out at my northern office at Golden Grove Fire Station.

After completing a formal visit with the crew at the Station, there was time to grab a cache on the way through to our Engineering Workshops.

During August there is a Geocaching Challenge to find at least one geocache a day. So far I have found one on every day so far. Today’s find was GC2JRQ0 – the Wreck Centre. 31 days should be a breeze as I have had a streak of 333 days a few years ago. 🙂

It was time to head back to my Adelaide Office to get a new rechargeable light fitted to the Command Car (always like new toys).

Lunch today was a “dog roll” which is our name for a Vietnamese roll as you never know what the meat really is. 🙂

And there goes another 12 of 12 ….

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12 of 12, 4WDing, Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

June 12 of 12 …

June 12, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

Once again, another month and on the road again. This time in the Northern Territory. We had a big drive today from Alice Springs through to Mataranka (1075 km).

Camp was broken on daybreak and after a brief stop in Alice Springs getting fuel and supplies. we headed north on the Stuart Highway.

We made a few stops for geocaches but not for me as I had found them all last year. I was travelling with a mate that had never been to the Northern Territory and I had him on rations with some cache finds each hour to break up the drive. It was 800 km between cache finds for me. 🙁

Some of the stops included the Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, Native Gap, Wycliffe Well (the UFO Capital of Australia), Tennant Creek then onto Mataranka.

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to stop at Devils Marbles, but you always need to leave something for next time. 🙂

A few more stops at some memorials and we arrived at Mataranka just on sunset and it was spectacular with the moon and stars appearing as the sun set.

A quick meal at the homestead and then it was into the Thermal Pool for a well deserved 1.5 hour soak. A great finish to the 12th of June.

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12 of 12, Geocaching

May 12 of 12 …..

May 12, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

After a very interesting and busy day yesterday as the Deputy Incident Controller of the Cherryville Fire, today was going to be a lot quieter and possibly not be able to even get 12 photos.

Instead of breakfast, I had more of a brunch after a much deserved sleep in after 3 days including a night shift at the Cherryville fire.

With the new purchase of a Garmin Oregon 600 pending when they came into stock, I took the time to watch a few videos going through the new features of the unit.

Jenny even discovered how to use a new vacuum cleaner that was purchased during the week – I know vacuum cleaners and Jenny are an unusual occurrence.

Much of the rain we received last night continued but it didn’t stop me heading out during a break in the rain to get some local geocaches.

I took Molly the geodog for a walk and of course as soon as we reached the first cache, down came the rain. It gets to a point where you can not get any wetter so we continued on to another couple of caches in the Blackwood Forest Reserve.

By the time I got home, there was one very wet and sorry looking dog. This was soon remedied with a hot bath and blow dry. Molly was again a happy dog.

A bit more time this afternoon to actually get around to doing the May 12 of 12. Certainly not as exciting today as a month ago.

Next month I will be on the road to Darwin so some more interesting photos then ……

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Geocaching, USA 2013

Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum …

April 8, 2013 Scott 1 Comment

After spending the weekend down in Port Aransas for the Texas Challenge, I headed up to San Antonio to take in some of the local tourist attractions. There are the usual spots such as the Alamo and the Riverwalk which of course I did but the next main attraction after these is Barney Smith’s Toilet Seat Art Museum.

Barney is one interesting guy who in his former life was a plumber and a volunteer firefighter. He is now 91 years young.

Thirty years ago, while Barney was still plumbing, one of his suppliers was throwing out some toilet seats and he grabbed them. Now what to do with them. Why not turn them into art and this is what he did.

What started out as a bit of fun soon became an obsession. He told his wife that he would stop at 500 but when I visited he was at 1060 so I guess there will be no stopping him.

In his time, he has appeared on a number of TV shows like “The Morning Show” and “Today” and he is very passionate about his pastime.

Being an Australian and a geocacher visiting him was very exciting for him and since he is looking after his sick wife, I didn’t want to take up too much of his time but 2 hours later I was still there being shown the seats.

I was privileged to sign a couple of his seats – the Australian one and one of the many Geocaching seats.

He has asked for some material from South Australia for another seat so I had better get a package together.

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Geocaching, Out and About

10000 Geocache finds …

February 9, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

Who would have known when I signed up to a website on January 31 in 2002, I would be talking about it today just over 11 years later.

That website was Geocaching.com. To this day, I am still unsure why I signed up. I may have read about it somewhere, or found it when I was looking for something to do with my GPSr at the time, a Garmin III+.

Whatever the reason, I didn’t really get into geocaching until April/May 2006 when I took the kids for a walk around the area finding a few caches. Even then it was pretty much forgotten again. It wasn’t until April 2007 that the bug bit.

So what is geocaching. From the website, “Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location“.

In basic terms, you use a GPSr to find an object that has been hidden by someone else, sign the log and move onto the next one. There are a number of tag lines associated with Geocaching, but one of the best is “using billion dollar satellites to find Tupperware in the woods“.

Some call it a sport, some a hobby and if you ask Jenny, an obsession. 🙂

Whatever you call it, it provides an opportunity to get out there among it. You can drive, walk, ski, kayak to find these and locations vary from shopping centre car parks to the top of mountains and in 11 years I have been to a lot of wide and varying locations.

It has taken me to 3 countries and 2 continents (It is a shame that it wasn’t around when I did a lot of travelling in the 90’s). There have been days when I have found 600 when I tackled the ET Highway in Rachel Nevada (GC2ZK7J – 0001-E.T.) and other days when I have hiked up a mountain to find just one cache (GC1Z4QY – Mt Cavern).

It is not just a journey of finding Tupperware but also meeting some great people. I have met a lot of people from both Australia and around the world. All have the same interest but come from different backgrounds and many friendships have formed. I have also met the #1 Geocacher in the world (Alamogul) who attended an event in Nevada put on for me during my visit in 2012 (GC3CMT4 -Fun in the Dirt (Meet the guy from down under)).

Well today was a major milestone in my journey and I had a number of Geocaching friends that wanted to be part of that milestone. It was going to be my 10000 find – quite an achievement for an Australian Geocacher.

Locus Cache had borrowed a 4WD for the day from a workmate (she needed to get some miles up on a lease vehicle). Along with Honeysucker and CPwanderer we headed south, hoping to find a suitable cache to mark the 10000th find.

Early in the day we made a run from Hallett Cove to Aberfoyle Park for a First to Find and then continued south along the coastline to Aldinga Beach. We were about to make a find on the lookout to mark the milestone when a new cache was published down at Mt Compass. It was 23 kilometres away. The cache was GC45MMP – Compass Wetlands.

With Locus Cache driving and the rest of us hanging on, off we went.

Pulling into the car park, we were the only souls here so off to GZ. All our GPSr’s indicated the orange thing in the middle of the water was the cache location was but we didn’t think we had to get wet feet so time to search the nearby structure and with no one around we were uninterrupted.

Eventually we found the cache with about 8m on the GPSr.

Drum Roll – I opened the log book to find it was clean. Hooray, a First to Find for my 10000th find. 😀

After signing the log it was time for a celebratory beverage at the Mt Compass Tavern.

Who knows what the next 11 years will bring and where it will take me. Keep on caching. 🙂

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Geocaching, Out and About

Going for a paddle …

January 27, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

Had the call that the Port Gawler Mangroves were ripe for the picking (well at least the geocaches) and would I like to go for a paddle.

Having bought a kayak 12 months ago and only used it once three weeks ago and not paddled for 15 years – why not.

We arrived at 10:30 as the tide was heading out, leaving an guard at the cars and started paddling.

We paddled for 2 hours covering 4.7 km in four canoes and getting 4 cache finds.

Mutiny on the Bounty 1 – The Bounty

Mutiny on the Bounty 2 – Stores

Mutiny on the Bounty 3 – Treasure

Bligh’s Revenge

I put together a video of the adventure – 2 hours of paddling in 48 seconds 🙂

4WDing, Geocaching, Holidays, Out and About

Down the Coorong …

January 18, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

With Jenny and Rachael on a cruise in the Pacific somewhere, I decided that a road trip was in order and the South East was the spot.

Met up with some fellow Geocachers at Tailem Bend and we headed off to tackle some caches around the Meningie area before hitting the Coorong.

We crossed the Coorong at Tea Tree Crossing which had low water at this time of year. There were a couple of caches near the campsite to be found and going to one, there might have been a momentary loss of traction in the mud 😉 but it was soon remedied by letting down the tyres. 🙂

It was time to head over the dunes and along the beach to a new Earthcache (Wild Dog Island) that we had hoped to find as a “First to Find” but having been unfound for almost 12 months, it was found 2 days ago. 🙁

We were a little behind time but it didn’t stop us finding geocaches further south along the Coorong at 32 Mile Crossing then at Kingston SE, Cape Jaffa, Robe (with a stop for some fish and chips) and finally Millicent before finally getting to Mt Gambier.

Not bad – a journey that should take 4 hours took us 15 hours. 🙂

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Geocaching, Out and About

Fishing for Red Herrings …

January 12, 2013 Scott Leave a comment

How hard could it be. After all I had canoed down the Zambesi River in ’98 contending with elephants, crocodiles and hippos and this was just a 200 metre paddle off the beach at Tennyson.

I think where my idea came unstuck was I was 14 years younger back then and at least 14 kg lighter but I was willing to give it a go.

12 months ago I had bought a kayak to tackle the mangrove caches but it has sat in the shed since I had bought it so today was the day to christen it.

The geocache on the radar today was “Fishing for Red Herrings“.

Arriving at the beach it didn’t look too hard but as we were getting ready the tide was turning and the swell was increasing – not the best for some one who hasn’t paddled for 14 years but don’t they say you always remember how to ride a bike. I wonder if that is the same for paddling.

There was a varied flotilla of craft assembled for the trek but in the end there was only 2 that made the journey out through the pounding surf – the floating barge of shonylogic and my untested kayak.

After the third attempt of getting past the breakers, I was finally on my way following in the wake of the barge. About half way out the surf capsized me and it then became a swim to the structure as I had failed to practice the remount in surf procedure.

No good caching story is complete without some blood and I managed to get some while being pounded into the ladder by the swell at the structure.

Cache all signed and I got back on the kayak and paddled back towards land. Again at about half way in, I was capsized again. (there must be a bump there somewhere ) Oh well, time for another swim. It wasn’t long before the barge came out to me and offered me a seat back into dry land.

Back on the beach and it was time to check my stuff I had carried with me. We soon found out that zip lock bags are not that waterproof and hopefully I will be able to resurrect my CB radio.

It was a fun morning and was thinking maybe the kayak belonged in the shed but we then went top West Lakes for another find and it performed perfectly in the calm waters.

I have put together a short 30 second video of the hour long trek 🙂

12 of 12, Geocaching, Work Life

December 12 of 12 ….

December 12, 2012 Scott 1 Comment

Today was a special day, in that as well as being a 12 of 12 day it was also the 12/12/12 – this won’t happen for another 100 years and I don’t think I will be here for that one …

Wednesday is bin day and they came around early today – it was going to be a hot day with a top temperature of 37C (99F).

The pool was ready and with the kids on school holidays, it would get a work out today.

What wasn’t working was the airconditioning on the Nissan Patrol. It had died slowly last night coming home from work but had nothing but heat this morning.

After calling into the post office to check for the mail, I was starting to get hot under the collar by the time I got to work.

Called the Nissan dealer to explain the predicament and they said bring it in – great.

After lunching across from Unley Nissan, it looked to be taking a bit longer than they expected so back to work for a few more hours.

Adelaide was subject again in this time with more of the tropical weather we are becoming accustomed to, with more thunderstorms and floodings. High humidity and high temperatures soon takes it out of you.

The car was ready by the knock off time but there was no one around to drop me back to the dealer. Time for a new experience (not that new – just haven’t done it for a while) with taking public transport to pick up the car.

Being the 12/12/12, there is of course a geocaching event and tonight’s was in the Badlands (north of Grand Junction Road) – 12.12.12. – The end of the Flippen ‘Numbers. It was a good turnout with a BBQ and good company.

My plan today was to find 12 geocaches today but lost count and overachieved with 13 finds. 🙂

Made it home around 10:30 pm and that finishes a very different 12 of 12 ….

$This morning\'s mail ...$

$I\'m on a bus ...$

$Macca\'s for tea ...$

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4WDing, Family Life, Geocaching, Out and About, Scouts

Yorkes again ….

November 18, 2012 Scott Leave a comment

I have wanted to get back to Yorke Peninsula and clean up more of the ever increasing geocaches that are appearing there. This weekend was my opportunity with Rachael and the Bleden Venturers looking for transport across to Yorkes for a different sort of clean-up weekend.

The Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources (DEWNR) have a Marine Debris Survey Program that has been going for a few years and the Venturers offered to assist by doing a survey on Gleesons Landing and Daly Head Beach at the western side of Yorke Peninsula.

Gleesons Landing is well known to me as all shifts in the Metropolitan Fire Service hold a 4 day camping break each year although I haven’t been for a few years. It was good to get back.

We finally made it to camp at 11:30 pm and the place was deserted which meant we had the pick of the campsites. The kids spent about 30 minutes setting up camp and were soon in bed. I was ready in 3 minutes since I was sleeping in the roof top tent. This gave me a chance to go for a wander around to the point and grab a geocache. 🙂

Saturday morning and making sure the kids were OK, it was time to hit the road. The plan today was to grab finds and do a lot of the walking geocaches in the Innes National Park. The temperatures were in the mid 20’s so perfect for some long hikes.

Considering the walks, I made 21 finds for the day and saw some spectacular coastline in the process. I had made my way across to Stansbury and camped there for the night. It was a little windy but slept well.

There was only a half day to go geocaching as I was due back at Gleesons Landing to pick up the kids at lunch time. Still managed 16 finds in the morning.

After picking up the kids, it was a quiet drive home as they all slept – they must have been tired.

It was a good weekend for them and me as well. Even our Japanese billet enjoyed the camping experience and I am sure she will remember her stay in Australia.