The Red Dwarf team, consisting of myself Jason and my girlfriend Catherine, went on a trek to find the “Bridge out ahead” cache on Saturday 10th November 2007.
I used the Google Maps and an old Refidex to get us to a road close to where the cache lies and we set off on foot. There was a clue that we should head down a wide track and we found one and took it. We followed the arrow on the GPSr down some trails until the arrow pointed offtrack. The cache notes did say that it wasn’t exactly on the track and we would have to go offtrack at some stage so we went into the bush. We walked along until we came to an uncrossable creek. We walked up and down a bit to find a way across and eventually I saw something blue in the distance. We walked back up the trail and along until we found a big pipe across the creek. We tested our balance and walked across the pipe carefully, noting we are no longer as young as we used to be and should have been able at one stage to practically run across. Catherine suggested in her wilder younger years she probably would have tried to ride a pushbike across the pipe had she been dared to, even if it meant injuries hehe. We made it across and tried walking over a pile of dead grass which turned out to be a foot or so deep, so we went back and around. We saw we were on some park land which didn’t seem quite to be public land, but nobody was around. We followed the arrow back in the direction we were near before we had to find a way around and it pointed across another area of the creek. It appears just where we wanted to do our crossings the creek forked and the bit we wanted was again on the other side of the creek.
We decided to head back over the pipe and see if there was another way across further downstream. I suggested to Catherine that at times I’d done this before always following the arrow almost exactly only to later find a much easier way down a trail instead of bush bashing our way through. Catherine sat down for a rest while I scouted around the area along the creek much further in the other direction. Not too much further down I found a big rock in the creek bed which would allow us to walk across without even getting our feet wet, so I headed back and left some sticks pointing the directions as well as dragging my feet in the loose soil to mark another turn. I told Catherine about the rock crossing and we were off again.
We walked back down, following my arrows and crossed the creek to the middle section of the fork. We followed the arrow and found an area which had been set up as a bike play area where they’d constructed many mounds and a track going around the area, along with a couple of old tattered lounge chairs. We passed that and followed the arrow to the creek bed again, this time finding a way across some unstable rocks. We got across that okay and followed the arrow down the creek some more only to come to an area which was on a very large and wide track made for four wheel drive cars, which also happened to be only about 300 metres from a tarred road we could have driven right to. Unfortunately, this tarred road wasn’t marked as such on the Google maps, nor the old Refidex street directory.. with only some dashed lines depicting a road which may be created in the future. I laughed as I said “See, I told you there would be an easier way to get here” lol!
Catherine sat down again and I searched around. We’d been walking for over an hour and a half, so I looked all over to find the cache. After about another 45 mins of searching we’d still not found it and a large ute came down the dirt road and stopped next to us with a rather large black rottweiler dog in the back. It turned out to be the security guard whom watches over the nearby school sports ground and he’d seen us nearby and wondered if we were some graffiti kids hiding until he had gone. On seeing us up close he was satisfied we weren’t going to deface anything and drove off. I said to Catherine “Well, at least he could have offered us a lift back to the car!!” - he had seen the car over the other side of the bushland area and asked if it was ours. We gave up and walked back up the dirt road to the newly tarred one, turned left and headed back up the hill. Before we left I had marked the starting point so we could find our way back easily. Unfortunately, the GPSr had not locked onto any satellites yet so it thought the car was 25km away. We walked up the road we figured would be the way to go and at the top of the next hill Catherine asked which way we should go. I said “Well, the GPSr says we need to go another 25km into the town over there” and she said “I think it’s more likely down this hill to the left!”. I went across the road and looked down the hill and sure enough there was her car. We headed off down the hill and jumped into the car, feeling very tired and hot and sweaty and thirsty. We drove back home only stopping to pick up a bottle of Mt Pleasant red wine to drink in the bath at Catherine’s home.
We both agreed it was a nice day out walking which we should do more often, if only to get the exercise and get out of the house. We were going to take Sienna (Lil Dwarfette) out Geocaching yesterday, but it was raining all day and it’s also raining today, thus preventing me taking her out for a trip again. A pity, since she loves “Treasure hunting” and has been looking forward to it all weekend. Oh well, we shall see how next week goes.
