I had the day off today and as the weather was great, I decided to go geocaching with the kids. We packed a picnic lunch and a couple of litres of water and hopped into the car for the short drive to Clifford Park, an activity centre belonging to the Scouts.
We arrived at the park around midday and I set off with my 2 year old and 4 year old to do the two nearby caches – Bend of Isles (GA2111) and the Bend of Isles II (GC28EG2) cache.
We set off down the firetrail, climbing hills and bashing through some bush. After about 1 hours, we reached Bend of Isles II. I unpacked the picnic and while the kids ate, I hunted out and found the container. I signed the log and the kids picked out a toy. I also took a TB and dropped in three geocoins. We then set off back up the hill towards Bend of Isles II.
The GCA cache was also an easy find. I logged it before strolling down to the river to take a few photos.
The walk back up the hill was the hard part. The kids were getting tired by now and complained most of the way back. Three hours and 5.1km later, we were back at the starting point. The short drive home was enough to put both children to sleep.
This is a short video of the Oz Mega Wagga Wagga Event held over Easter 2010. The entire video was shot on my iPhone and edited on my PC. Beware of spoilers if you HAVEN’T cached in Wagga Wagga!
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For more posts on the Wagga Mega Event, click here.
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On Friday morning, 2nd April 2010, we set off at 7.15am from the outer Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Ahead of us was a six hour drive – myself and my four year old, Josh!
I’d download a pocket query for the drive up, but wasn’t too fussed about grabbing too many – I’m not a numbers chaser. If it was an easy roadside drive-by, we’d stop. Otherwise we’d just stay on the road.
Our first stop was in Yarra Glen about 15minutes after leaving home. It was still dark and the temperature was a mere 9ºC! We needed a torch to search for this one and Josh was happy to get this logged and jump back into the warm car! The next town that we passed through was Yea where I grabbed another cache while Josh slept. This one was a little tougher to find as it was hidden on an old gun (see photos). But, too cheer me up, there was a fantastic sunrise.
By midday we were in Table Top, NSW. We pulled over at the Ettamogah Pub (see photos) where we found our 5th cache of the trip. From here it was going to be a straight drive through to Wagga Wagga as I was getting tired and we were both quite hungry.
We eventually arrived at Camp Kurrajong around 3pm after stopping for Maccas in Wagga Wagga. I quickly pitched our tent with no help from Josh as he had already made friends with 4 year old Toby from across the track. Once this had been completed, we went to register and collect our goodie bag. We spent some time talking to other cachers, looking at coins and TBs and checking out the campsite before heading back to our site for some dinner and a welcome cold beer!
We waited until dark for the bonfire to be lit then headed back to our tent and crashed!
Day 2 started at around 7am. It was already light outside, so we had a quick brekky and a wash before heading over to the stage for the Official Opening Ceremony. Unfortunately the organisers couldn’t get through to Groundspeak but a recording was made so the cachers headed off to complete the various games/challenges and to hunt caches.
We headed into town and managed to grab 5 ‘treasures’ in the morning before Josh got bored. Everywhere you turned, there were geocachers hunting for a clue or a container! We took a 3 hour break to have some lunch and Josh had a short nap before we got back to work, finding another 10 caches in the afternoon.
This evening’s entertainment included a magnificent fireworks display and some live music. We waited until quite late for the bonfire, but Josh passed out before they lit it so we headed back to our campsite and hit the hay.
Day 3 was a 6.15am start thanks to daylight savings coming to an end overnight. We had an easy morning with breakfast, a Mega Easter Egg hunt and a helicopter ball drop. I left Josh to play with Toby until his family headed off to go cache hunting. We had lunch around midday before taking off on a cache hunt again. This afternoon we managed 10 finds including 2 GCA caches.
This evening brought the awards ceremony and another magnificent bonfire before hitting the sleeping bags around 11pm.
The final day started early too. Breakfast, tent packing, coin purchasing, a CITO event, farewells, petrol top-up and off we set. Back to Melbourne.
A fantastic event that was extremely well organised by the Riverina geocachers. Congratulations to all! We look forward to the next Mega event!
On the last weekend of November, I went caching in Heathmont, a suburb of Melbourne. I filmed the whole experience on my iPhone for your viewing pleasure.
I only managed to find one cache in Heathmont because of time constraints and LOADS of muggles, but I grabbed another in Vermont in the afternoon.
While I was away in South Africa and during my stopover in Singapore, I managed to do a few geocaches. I didn’t get to as many as I would have liked to, but I did manage to get 3 earthcaches! I had planned to do 2 (2 Oceans – GC1H9WR and Table Mountain – GC1ABZK ), but when the opportunity presented itself for a third (Cango Caves – GC1DTQF), I grabbed it!
I didn’t have much time for caching as I was “acting tour guide” for most of the holiday as I had my in-laws and a friend with me. Luckily the friend doesn’t mind a spot of caching. I dragged him all around the top of Table Mountain to help me with the Earthcache answers. It was a mere 7C up there too and we both had shorts on!
The 2 Oceans Earthcache was much easier to log which is just as well as it was pouring with rain and the wind was howling. We quickly took the required photo with the “Southernmost tip of Africa” marker, took some notes, grabbed another nearby cache and then dived into the warmth of the car.
The Cango Caves Earthcache was by far the simplest to log. We did a walking tour through the caves, I asked all the right questions (to log the cache with) and then some photos. Thanks to Adrian for allowing me to log this (I had taken the group photo in the wrong place).
In all, March was quite a successful month. I have also applied for my Earthcache pin from Earthcache.org. April is not looking too flash on the caching front as I am yet to log a geocache!
