Adelaide had some wild weather overnight and it had made it through to Albury this morning. There was some heavy rain for the first couple of hours of the journey.

This didn’t stop me grab some geocaches and munzees but it was heading towards the Australian Alps.

Rain in the Alps at this time of year (one week before we were going skiing) is always bad, combined with warmer temperatures tends to melt and wash the snow away.

The weather cleared and I set the Tom Tom to find an alternative route and it took me through some of northern Victoria I had not travelled before.

The route took me through Wandella, Quambatook, Towaninny, Nullawil, Ninda and Speed.

Travelling west there was a spectacular sunset and it was another 6 hours before I would get home.

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Bidding farewell to the McHenry Clan, it was time for a quick visit to my relatives in Duffy. A cup of tea, a chin wag and it was back on the road.

The plan was to do the Canberra to Cooma Geocaching Trail then head through the Kosciuszko National Park visiting Adaminaby on the way.

Grabbed plenty of caches on the way to Cooma then travelled west towards Lake Eucumbene.

Adaminaby used to be located a bit further south than today but with the building of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, there was a need to move the town before Lake Eucumbene covered it up with water. The location is now home of the “Big Fish”.

It was starting to get dark. Managed to see a little bit of snow then the wildlife started to get restless.

There were plenty of roos bouncing around but it was the moving rocks that were the problem. I am talking about the wombats. They were everywhere as well – didn’t want to hit one of them as it would make a real mess.

I survived the dusk and finally made it through to Albury for the night but not after a pizza from Sweethearts Pizza – nom nom 🙂

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Sydney to Canberra is around 300 kilometres and should take around 3 hours to do but if you add in some geocaching along the way then you can blow it out to 7 hours. 🙂

I left Sydney CBD around 9:00 am and after doing 20 geocaches, arrived in Torrens in the ACT at about 4:30 pm.

There were some interesting stops along the way including a secluded spot alongside the Hume Highway at Paddys River as well as an sculpture at Marulan commemorating the only town in the world on the 150th parallel.

Spent the night with a mate from University reliving the old times with a few beverages ….

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Some perfect weather for the drive through country New South Wales passing through a lot of small towns that were all unique in their own way.

In Urana, I managed to get swooped by a magpie while grabbing a geocache – the nesting season has started.

In Lockhart, the verandah town, there a number of sculptures using galvanised iron as well as a spectacular showgrounds entrance.

It was then time to join the Hume Highway to Sydney but no journey is complete without a stop at the “Dog on the Tuckerbox“, 5 miles from Gundagai.

Traffic was getting heavy and in fact 50 km from Sydney it came to a standstill.

I eventually made it to my hotel for the week – The Mecure at Ultimo. Went to park the car in the car park and kept going down and down as the car park went 7 levels under the hotel and was dripping water from the walls.

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International Geocaching Day nearly slipped by without me making a find as it wasn’t all that well advertised. If it wasn’t for me reading a reference to it on Facebook, I would have missed it all together.

There was a multi cache down at Frank Smith Park that I hadn’t done yet so off I went. The cache was Thanks Frank and involved finding 5 points while walking 1.2 km around the Park.

Geocaching initiated Challenges yesterday and although there has been a lot of discussion over their introduction, I carried out a couple of the Worldwide Challenges while on the walk – 10000 Fewer Pieces of Litter and Ecosystems Around the World.

I also checked up on one of my Geocaches here – 10 Years of Geocaching – Coromandel Valley as the council is doing some work putting in a cycleway right next to the cache. At this time the cache is still safe.

The last thing on the agenda was to deploy a Munzee called Frank Smith Park. What is a munzee you ask?

Munzee is a real world scavenger hunt game where items are found in the real world and captured using your smartphone and makes use of QR codes.

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While the Scouts were out hiking through Mount Remarkable National Park, this left me at a loose end and an opportunity to head up to Alligator Gorge and Kingfisher Flat to grab a couple of Geocaches.

The only issue was that the legs were feeling a little sore after yesterdays trek up Mount Cavern. 🙁

Today was again overcast with the occasional rain shower which made for some good hiking weather.

First stop was up through Alligator Gorge to the Terraces and then the Narrows taking in two Geocaches on the way – Gators and Crocs! The Gorge was spectactular with a 4km walk up and back with the only issue having to walk up those stairs – sure felt those muscles 🙂

Next was an 8 km walk to Kingfisher Flat and back. With the rain over the last 2 days, the track was very muddy and I grew about 4cm higher on the walk. At Kingfisher Flat, there was a mother Emu with 6 chicks but they wouldnt stay still for a photo.

Oh, and of course there was Kingfisher Flats – a Geocache 🙂

I got back to camp around dark – it had been a good couple of days, caching and hiking but tomorrow was going to be a rest day to recover …. 🙂

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