Today I was given a “kitchen pass” and took the opportunity to go geocaching by myself for a few hours. There were a few newish caches that were relatively close to home in the Mount Gower scenic reserve. I planned on getting all 8 caches, and 1 earthcache in the reserve and had earmarked two other caches that were on the way to the reserve.
I took off a little about 10am and got to the first cache at about 10:30am. This one was a multi and required me to answer some questions with the answers coming from a plaque placed at the site commemorating the Yeungroon School which first opened in 1877. We, as a family, had originally tried to get this one some time ago, but didn’t manage it. Today was a different story, and I managed to imput the correct coords into my GPS and took off for a quick stroll down the road and found the cache. One down, 10 to go!
Yeungroon School plaque
Back in the car, a few more kms up the road was the next cache. This particular cache is named “Ingenious fencing – a rock and a hard place” and is very appropriate! 🙂 My GPS was jumping all over the place here, so I did a walk around and eventually found the sneaky little cache in the last place that I looked. Great, one more crossed off, things were going well!
Ingenious fencing
I then started my way towards the Mount Gower reserve and was following my map well, until I got to a part of the road where I should have been able to turn left and continue onwards, but instead a farmer had decided to commandeer the road for himself and had a makeshift fence and closed gate running across the road! So this is where I ran into my first headache. My GPS was not working as it should and my phone navigation said was I was somewhere totally different to where I was! I fluked my way onto a road that I recognised and after a bit of extra driving out of my way, managed to make it to the reserve.
Initially, I had planned to park the car at the entrance to the reserve and walk to all the caches but the road actually looked quite good so I continued to drive all the way to the top. I confess that my 4wd skills aren’t as honed as my husband’s and I did have a moment (or two) where I wondered if I should have walked as planned but with careful driving, I made it to the top and what a view! The summit has both a traditional cache, and an earthcache. An earthcache usually involves you having to answer questions relating to where you are, which can range from points of interest, to geology of the area etc. You then send your answers to the cache owner who will let you know if you are correct, and then you can log it as a found cache. In this particular instance, most of the questions relate to the weathered rock features here, the main one of which most people have referred to as looking like an eagle with its beak open. I tend to think it resembles a dragon instead especially with the rocks jutting out of what would be its neck. You can be the judge! 🙂
Eagle?
Dragon?
The traditional cache was a relatively easy find not far from the main dragon rock. The grass around here is sort of long, and if I was a snake, I would like to hang around up here…lots of rocks to sun myself and even a water feature for me to drink from! So, I carefully took off on foot following the track to the next cache which was about 200m away. This cache had me walking in circles and still I got nowhere. Being a micro does make it a little more difficult to locate and in the end, I decided to give in and look for it on my way back.
The next cache was another 150m away, through more snakey-looking grass and my GPS went crazy again. No matter how many times I triangulated my position, it was pointing in the same direction which was scrambling up rocks dodging twisted tree bits as I went. After about 40 minutes of searching (yes, you read that right!) I had reached my limit. I was hot, completely frustrated, and had managed to bruise my hip pretty nicely on a large rock so I threw in the towel. Back to the car I stomped, completely annoyed! I didn’t even bother to look for the micro on the way back as planned. I will, of course, come back to find them another day..it’s just that today was not to be that day!
Oh, and thanks to the losers that decided to take the road name signs from their posts on the proposed way back home…it made my navigating slightly more interesting and scenic!!
Next time, I will pack the portable gear and play radio instead!
VK3FQSO 