New Adventures

We had the pleasure of Makhaya and Luca's company for a day during the first week of school holidays. So needed an activity to break up the day…and remembered about friend who tried geocaching. Described as the real world outdoor treasure hunt and according to their website there are over 2 million active caches!

To become involved one firstly subscribes to a membership (~$12).  This allows you to see the locations of caches. Participants navigate (we used our mobile phone) to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the cache (container). The cache will have a logbook and in some cases 'treasures.' The rules are simple - if you take something from the cache you must leave of equal or greater value; write your find in the logbook and log your experience online (we weren't very good we the last two.)

Armed with a collection of treasures from our house, we set off from car towards our first cache - ACE - Aranda Currency Exchange. The details on this cache described it as a small cache (a container sized between 100ml - 1000ml) and contains foreign coins! After a shaky start with Ella reading the mobile compass incorrectly, we began to close in on our first cache! You can use a setting which shows a compass needle pointing towards the cache as well as the current distance to the cache. Eventually we arrived at GZ (ground zero) and began searching!

Makhaya spotted the white container hidden in a log. We retrieved it and opened our treasure. Each child deposited a coin from our collection and chose one from the cache. Unfortunately the pen in the cache didn't work so couldn't write in the logbook and it wasn't until later that I realised we should have logged out find online with a note or at the very least TFTC (geotalk for thanks for the cache!)

Next cache was about 600m away and rather than slowly trek through the rough bush, I used my local knowledge of the track system to get suitable close before using the mobile compass. This cache 'You're pulling my log!' was much harder to find. It took us several minutes of searching various logs before we discovered it! The children were excited to see that it had treasures inside and so they spent several minutes deciding on what to take and what to leave.

We devoured some food en route to the 'Fore!mic Acid' our first micro cache (a container like a 35mm film canister). Reading the details of this cache, it was suggested to bring tweezers which I'd failed to do, so I was a little concerned we wouldn't be able to retrieve it. However at GZ, eagle eyed Makhaya spotted the cache. With no treasures we returned this one to it's hiding hole.

Our last cache, Aranda Hill, a hill top cache near a trig. As we were climbing the rather steep fire trail to this one, my phone started beeping warning me that the battery was fast running out. Nothing like a little bit of motivation when energy levels were flagging! We found the trig just as the phone gave up the ghost :( Initially thought we were going to get stumped on this one….not many hiding spots near the trig. Then I realised that the trig was probably not GZ. Suddenly Ella yelled - she'd came up trumps finding the cache in a stump! A quick swap of treasures before retreating to the car.

We finished the morning off with well deserved milkshakes/juice at the cafe. A lovely morning and fun activity with the children. I was suitably impressed and will hunt more caches in the next school holidays or while on any holiday when we are at a loose end or need to fill in some time…..