Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

While on holiday with my daughter, visiting my sister and her family in Dubbo, I decided to stop on the way to the Blue Mountains and find a Geocache for a quick break.

I had my iPhone 3GS on the dashboard monitoring the area and found a geocache not too far from the main road, so our deviation would not be too much on the long trip.

I parked the car and got out with my daughter.  We headed up the slope along a well-worn track towards Ground Zero.

We soon found a pile of rocks and quickly discovered the hidden treasure.  I stickered the log with my Two Goth Geeks “Found it” sticker and signed it as well.

I took some photos of my lovely daughter standing on the rocks and she hopped on my back for a piggyback ride back to the car.

She decided to be the GPSr and pointed the direction for me to walk back to the car.  She really loves Geocaching.. or “Treasure hunting” as she likes to call it.

Just a quick post this one.

Out on a longer lunchtime walk I headed to the area where this cache was hidden. I looked all over for about 15 minutes when a woman arrived and sat down on a park bench right nearby.  Well, this little alcove is not big enough for me to be pretending to do anything non-strangely so I walked away a bit and kept an eye on her in case she left.  I hid for a while under an overhang as the rain was on and off the whole time, but people kept coming to sit on the benches for lunch.  While looking at my GPS for something to do, I heard a guy next to me ask “Are you looking for something?”.  Hmm.  He turned out to be toadmeister7 out looking for the same cache.  I had noticed him walking up and down the stairs for a few minutes, but he could have been there for exercises.  I said “Yeah. My group name is Two Goth Geeks, what’s yours?”. He said “toadmeister7″ and that he had just started Geocaching that month with his son.  Since nobody was leaving soonish he headed off again. I stayed around for another 45 minutes, but had to get back to the office.  I logged onto the website to report the cache as missing.  Others had looked recently and had not found it either, so we assume it had been muggled. Unfortunately, it had a bunch of Travel Bugs in it which are now forever lost.  Oh well.  Later that afternoon I received an email from the cache owner who said to have a really good look as people misplace the cache in the wrong location nearby often.  I went back that afternoon after work and looked for another 45 minutes, but no luck.  I emailed the owner back and he said it must have definitely been lost then.  A while later I see he has replaced the cache so I will have to take another look some time.

I was out for my lunchtime walk, surveying the area for a new Geocache I had been planning for weeks when a new cache popped up on my GeoSphere application’s radar.  Hmmm. I was concerned for a minute as the area is not that big where I was surveying and I did not want another cache too close or I would not be able to find mine. However, this one was far enough away and from the name of the cache “Great Balls of Iron”, I knew exactly the area it should be in since I’d walked past the location many times.  It took me about 20 minutes to find the cache, but after waiting for some joggers to get out of the way I snagged it, stickered it and rammed it back home again. Add another cache to the list!

On the way back to work I walked past a cache called “Midway” which I had technically found before but could not retrieve due to it being hidden in a popular location for muggles to visit… a little park with some nice benches.  Well, this time nobody was around so I quickly fished it out of it’s hiding hole and marked the logbook and put it back again. Glad to have that one completed, I headed back to the office.

Today during my lunchtime walk I decided to give this elusive Geocache another looking for.  I looked over, under and around everything then tried something I never had tried before.  I looked further under than I expected and there was the dang Geocache.  I quickly retrieved it and opened it. The logbook was wet so I just stickered the side of the inside of the container and carefully.. oh soooo carefully back.  This cache has been lost before very easily and I can see why.  I secured the Geocache in it’s hiding spot and walked off, whistling non-chalantly.  I was very happy to have finally found this one as I had looked for it on about 10 different occasions.

This drizzly rainy day there was a Geocaching meetup called “Geocaching 101: Paperless caching”.  I drove to the Carlingford bowling club and sat down to listen to the lesson. They taught us a bit about the GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) program and we discussed other things about Geocaching.  Afterwards, I had a nice chat with some Geocaching people and grabbed a few Travel Bugs to drop in caches on my adventures.  I had a fantastic time meeting everyone and highly recommend it. I joined the Geocaching NSW group and got my Geocoin and badge. I was very happy.

Once the meetup was over I wanted to find a Geocache. It was in my mind and I could not shake it.  They told me there was one out the back of the club, so I headed off.  I got to the bush behind the club and there seemed no way through.  Every time I went cross-country I found a lot of trees and bushes in the way, plus a LOT of orange and black scary-looking spiders.  I phoned up the GeoTalk phone number to record my attempt and plug my website I left a quick message about the “Cox Park” Geocache I was at for them to play on their next show.  After a lot of pacing back and forth I decided to try a different tact and headed to the far right of the park and found a trail.  I followed the trail along to not far from the cache and took a sharp left turn, headed down the next trail and got close to the cache.  I looked round and round where the GPS said it should be, while getting bitten by many mosquitoes and sweating like a pig!  I checked the hint and with some deduction looked in another area not too far away. Sure enough, there was the cache.  I stickered the log and left a Travel Bug I had picked up.  I phoned the GeoTalk hotline again and left another message about finding the cache and how much fun I had at the meetup.

I was just going to head home and decided to throw in a few other Geocaches before I got there. There are a group of them called the “M7 caches” along the M7 motorway.  First up was “Sh…it’s a brick” ( an M7 cache )”. I found it without too much trouble and dropped in a Travel Bug.  Next was “Mount Cecil ( an M7 cache )”. Another quick find and TB.  Two more, including “Just out of sight (an M7 cache)” and “Lighthorse” (an M7 cache)”.  More Travel Bugs dropped and my day complete. I was tired and wet from the rain on me, but had a nice time. I did, however slip and fall near one of the caches and bent my finger back at a bad angle, but that’s what happens when you are out adventuring on your own in the rain.  I also updated my “Jay and Silent Bob” Geocache with a new, non-broken container.  A really big Geocaching day, but lots of fun all the same.

I was so close to my 100th Geocache find that I could smell it and had to get out and about this afternoon.

First up was “Dad’s Pride”. I had gone to look for this one with Lord Striker in the past, but there was a guy nearby where I thought the cache was so we didn’t even bother. This time, however the park was totally empty. I followed my GPS arrow to where I had expected the cache would have been anyway. I had a quick look around and quickly had the cache in my hands. A quick stick of the Two Goth Geeks sticker in the logbook and a few photos at GZ and it was off to the next on the list.

I quickly drove to “Cinema Scope” for my 100th Geocache — what we in the business call a Milestone.  This one I found after about 5 minutes and quickly logged my find in the book.

I drove past a cache I had been near with Lord Striker before, but we weren’t keen on looking for it right next to a major road. This time, however I thought “STUFF IT!” and had a look. It was my 101st Geocache anyway and I could not resist the urge to up my total. Well, I looked around a lot and had to check the hint for this one as it was a tricky little bugger! I hunted around for another 15 minutes before I decided to try the logical thinking thing. I looked under where I knew it should be and there she be! A teeny, tiny little Geocache not much bigger than your fingertip! Well, I thought I had seen them all, but this one took the cake!  I unravelled the tiny tiny logbook carefully and put my sticker in, then rolled it back up and had to try and shove the damn thing back inside it’s tiny container. I shortly put it back and had a few photos then headed to my car.

I rushed home to update the website log as I wanted to have 100 Geocaches listed.

Out for a walk at lunchtime during a work day. I knew there were a few Geocaches around Hyde park so it was time to find them.

First up was “Jekyll and ????” (Hyde?) – This one was quite easy as you can walk straight up to it and see it there, plain as day! I’m very surprised it hasn’t been muggled yet. Perhaps it has in the past and has been replaced. Anyway, I opened the container and found the log book. It was very damp so I stuck my Two Goth Geeks sticker in there and headed off to the next one.

Next up was “Tolkein Tree”. This was a large tree with many nooks and crannies. I searched around in circles for a while then reached inside. Lo and behold, there was ye cache.  There was no Travel Bug inside as the log page had said but the logbook was there so I put my sticker on it and headed to “Shallow Depth”.

I got to Ground Zero (GZ) of “Shallow Depth” easily enough, but searched for ages and could not find it. I tried getting clever and looking in areas the GPS didn’t say it was, but alas no cache.  I went round and round this cache location for about 45 minutes, not wanting to be beaten. In the end, however, I had to admit defeat and head back to the office.  All I ended up with was green fingers and hands from the moss growing around the location of the cache.  Perhaps another day I will have more luck. Many others have not found it since and it has since been taken offline for maintenance, but apparently it was definitely there when I was looking.