I had finished early at a Workshop at the Fire Service Training College and needed to find a cache for the August Geocaching Challenge.

Looking at my map, there were plenty to be found in the “Badlands”. The “Badlands” is a term given colloquially to the area north of Grand Junction Road and is one of our busiest areas in the Fire Service.

I gave my mate Garry a ring to see if he was up for a walk along the Little Para River behind the Old Spot Hotel. I had heard that there were some very good caches up in that area. What I didn’t tell him was that the terrain on one of the yet to be found caches was “4”. The highest terrain rating is a “5”.

But a “First to Find” is a “First to Find” especially out north where they don’t normally last longer than about 30 minutes. I guess the terrain scared off the local cachers. 🙂

We parked the cars and counted the tyres and headed off up the river. The going was easy to start and the caches were just as good. In fact the work put into the cache containers was exceptional.

The bar has certainly been lifted with these caches. They have been engineered by a new cacher called clojo1 who is also a boiler maker.

The caches included:

GC4FTT2 – Ophidiophobia – a snake;

GC4G7G5 – Arachnophobia – a red back spider;

GC4FWY1 – Chelonaphobia – a turtle;

and GC4K56W – Apipobia – a bee.

The terrain for the 1st three caches was 1.5 and 2 but the fourth cache was the terrain “4” cache. It wasn’t raining today but by the time we got to this one, the heart was pumping and the shirt was saturated with sweat. Lucky I have been hitting the treadmill lately. 🙂

After removing the impressive bee from its honeycomb home, time to check the log book and yes it was blank – yay a”first to find”. 😀

A easy walk back down the river to the cars and a check to see if all the wheels were still there and time to head south home. Today’s walk was 3.5 km but it certainly wasn’t a flat 3.5 km.

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What are you here for? We are here to rescue you!! What, do I look like I need rescuing!

Lets start at the beginning…..

A geocaching trip and event had been planned for weeks to take a couple of US Geocachers – RoadRoach58 from Alabama, on a boat ride to Wright Island which had one lonely cache – GC12E7X Yeah Wright.

Mark had organised a tinny and I had borrowed my brothers SeaDoo. Fast forward to last night and the weather was getting rough and we are talking gale force winds and 3 metre swell. All the stuff that Gilligans Island is famous for :).

After some phone calls and checking radars, satellite loops and any other weather thing we could find, it was decided that we would cancel the tinny but would keep with the SeaDoo for those that want to rough it.

On the way home from night shift, I grabbed a new wetsuit as the old one seems to have shrunk in the wardrobe, then onto home to start up the SeaDoo and hit the road to Victor. An hour later and I still couldn’t get the SeaDoo started.  Mark had arrived and rang to say it was still fairly rough so there was no need to bring the SeaDoo down.

I threw the kayak on the roof on the off chance that conditions would change in the next hour.

Arriving at the meet point and we were greeted with some friendly faces as well as flat seas and sunshine. What a difference an hour makes.

Well the decision was made, the kayak was in the water and I was on the way. There was still a breeze which was coming from behind assisting in a quick passage to the island. The distance to travel was 1 km.

Around 3/4 way, I encountered a couple of large waves and was soon in the water. Oh well, time to paddle the rest of the way like a surfer.

It wasn’t long and I was on the beach on the northern end of the island. Made a phone call to the others back at the boat ramp to say that all was well and I was on the way up to the top to find the geocache.

It was very windy up top with a few rain showers but apart from that it was easy going to GZ. Unfortunately the vegetation was reasonably thick and I was finding the cache a little elusive. Again I rang back to the boat ramp to see if anyone had any clues to where I should look but no luck there.

Another 5 minutes of looking with no luck and the phone rang. Gary said that I had better cut the search short as the rescue boat is waiting on the beach for you.

“What the hell!!! You are pulling my leg aren’t you.”

“No lies, they are down there waiting for you.”

I made the trek down the hill back to the beach to find the Sea Rescue “bogged” on the beach.

“Hey – what are you guys here for?”

“We are here to rescue you!”

“Do I look like I need rescuing.”

“No, but because the Police called us in, we have to rescue you.”

“To me, it looks like you are the ones needing rescue at the moment.”

The tide was going out and the boat looked like it was going to be there a while. In fact they got on the radio to organise another boat to pull them off.

“You won’t need another boat guys. The waves will be here in a minute as they are coming in sets and the boat will float off.”

I am not the local and knew that and sure enough another set came in and the boat was floating again.

So we loaded the kayak onto the boat and I got the limo ride back to the boat ramp. It was a shame as I was looking forward to riding the waves back to shore. 🙁

On arriving back to shore there was a huge welcoming party including Channel 9 News. There must have been a big breaking story around here somewhere. 😉

No chance of not getting photographed around here.

After talking with the local cop, it seems that one of the locals saw me go from being a paddler to a surfer and reported me as drowning and unconscious.

The Sea Rescue guys were good about it and the cop didn’t hang around and even the News cameraman lost interest very quickly. So much for my 15 minutes of fame.

So at the end of the day, I still have to go back to Wright Island to find the geocache.

But I don’t need rescuing ….

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