NEWS FLASH: We’re Leaping into Love

This month our highlight post features the caches that we love, the caches that need some love, and a couple of challenges to work on where these caches will be helpful.

We introduce you to a rose shaped geo-art – because we all know where there’s love, there’s roses!  We show you a very photogenic traditional cache location for Valentine’s Day.

We are also introducing our first Kids Caching Corner that highlights a cache that matches our monthly theme, is kid friendly and has been found and reviewed by kids!

Tim Williams of Capture the Dog Photography shows us one of the hidden location gems that we find by geocaching.

So, lets kick off the month by talking about some of the digital souvenirs up for offer this February.

Souvenir: Fun in all Directions

Recently it was announced that there will be a new souvenir called “Fun in all directions” to be earned on Sunday 2nd February. This special date is an international palindrome, 02.02.2020!  By simply finding any geocache, Adventure Lab or attending an event on the day you will be able add this pretty cool looking digital souvenir to your collection.

Souvenir: Leap Day

Who doesn’t love an extra day to geocache, well this month on February 29th we can earn the special Leap Day souvenir by finding a geocache, Adventure Lab or attending an event.  Currently there are six Leap Day events planned around Queensland:

GC8HNV1 – Look Again Before You Leap
Hosted by Orange Crew
29th February 2020 from 9:00am – 9:45am @ Whiteside
Four years on from the first Orange Crew event it’s time to get back together.  There will some nibbles on offer for morning tea so bring your own beverages and any trackables or pathtags you wish to trade and come join the fun.

GC8J56D – A Small Step 4 Me, But a Giant LEAP 4 My Calendar
Hosted by SunCoastGeocaching
29th February 2020 from 9:00am – 10:00am @ Mapleton
This will be the second event planned for the Sunshine Coast Geocaching Community as they visit various locations in their region.  Bring a plate of food to share and maybe a chair or blanket to sit on while you chat and make future plans.

GC8JMZJ – Leap Day 2020
Hosted by OzGeoker
29th February 2020 from 12:00pm – 12:30pm @ Mackay
A nice quick catch up in the middle of the day to earn your special souvenir. So stop in at Goose Ponds in north Mackay to celebrate this special day with other geocachers.

GC8FV5D – Caching Goals
Hosted by burgo78
29th February 2020 from 4:00pm – 5:00pm @ Bushland Beach
After a fantastic trip away with some amazing personal geocaching goal achieved, burg78 is keen to share his insights for the locals who are planning to head to Seattle for the 20th Celebrations this year. So come and have a chat and share some of your own goals for 2020.

GC8GZJA – Leap Year Event
Hosted by Sweet-Sour
29th February 2020 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm @ Gympie
A sequel to the last successful Leap Year event it’s time to have another one.  The location is well suited to hosting an event so BYO everything.  Bring a pen as it’s hinted that some new caches might be available.

GC8HQA9 – Leap Day Dinner
Hosted by Tenkae
29th February from 6:00pm – 8:00pm @ Ormeau
Join the host to celebrate the special date with a social dinner at the Shearers Arm Hotel.  A family friendly place with a kids room for the little geo-kids.  No need to purchase a meal you can just drop in and socialise.

So grab your calendars and make a note on the 29th to get out and get both a smile and souvenir.

The Loved Cache

With February 14 being Valentine’s Day let’s talk about those highly loved caches.  When the CacheQLD team were planning for the upcoming Mega in Millicent (GC82DAN) this April we discovered this awesome challenge: SFE Challenge – The Best of the Best (GC8CQDD). 

In order to qualify you need to ”find 10 of the best 15 caches in any one of the Australian States or Territory.”  Now, not only is this challenge inclusive to all geocachers as you can find them in your home state, but it also highlights the great caches in other states too. Sure, in order to get the actual smile you have to sign the challenge in South Australia, but what a great resource the checker is if you’re traveling interstate.  We would like to point out that you need to have found at least one cache in that state to see their top 15 list.  Just in case you are planning on visiting Queensland for the first time, and don’t currently have a smile in our great state yet, here is a list of the current top 15 favourited caches at time of writing.

Queensland (#1♥171) GC22EBF Crazy Caterpillar Zipline
Queensland (#2♥150) GC3JH1P T.A.R.D.I.S.
Queensland (#3♥140) GC3DP9H Noah’s Ark
Queensland (#4♥136) GC8E Queens land
Queensland (#5♥128) GC1JHWA On A Dark Night
Queensland (#6♥126) GC5JZ6P Postie Dog
Queensland (#7♥125) GC131 Bravo Hotel
Queensland (#8♥122) GC2WXQ9 The Box, the Bicycle and the Bus
Queensland (#9♥121) GC18WXV Map Monkey’s Lament
Queensland (#10♥120) GC58EJJ Measuring Gum
Queensland (#11♥118) GC5JZ6W Gnome’s Country Home
Queensland (#12♥116) GC3TK2J Kings View
Queensland (#13♥114) GC71AG0 The Hunters Building project
Queensland (#14♥109) GC3VWCD Wheel of Fortune
Queensland (#15♥105) GC5HM4H Turn back time

How many of these loved up caches can you tick off?  Perhaps you need to organise a little heart gathering road trip to see some of these caches that others have thought so highly of. 

The Unloved Cache

We can’t forget about those lonely caches that need and deserve some love. You know those who are desperately waiting for someone to come and spend some time with them. To have their logbook held in a tender embrace as you write your geocaching name, then leaving their proud owner a nice detailed story about the adventure of the find. Letting them know how much you appreciated the opportunity of discovery – because let’s face it, really unloved caches aren’t hidden in a guardrail down the road.  Nope, usually they are up a mountain or massive tree, down a tricky river, somewhere really remote or perhaps they have a doozy of a puzzle attached to them. These are the lonely unloved caches.😢

On Project GC, under the Statistic tab, you can search ‘Days since last found’ for the most unloved caches in a region.  The top 30 caches in Queensland all have over 1200 days since their last log.  You could use the list as a guide for adventure!  Gather some geo-buddies, leave some detailed travel plans, and head off on mission to gather up some unloved days. 

However, if you’re attempting Comet Kingfisher (GCH3DN) – can you give the CacheQLD team a holler, we may just join you as that cache also happens to be one of Queensland’s oldest geocaches and perhaps now the most challenging to get too!

So what’s the point in gathering these unloved caches?  Well, in Brisbane there is the “15 Years of No Love” Challenge (GC5D7PK), which asks you to find caches that have not been found for at least 183 days (6 months) for a total of at least 5475 days (15 years). If you enjoy finding these lonely caches and showing them some love you might want to work towards the NSW cache ‘Challenge: Fifty Forgotten Years’ (GC57Z2N), where you must gather up a whopping 18260 days of unloved!!

Lonely caches are out there and they are singing the words of The Beatles 🎶 “Love Me Do” 🎶 enticing you to visit.

Love, Love Me Do
You know I’ll love you
I’ll always be true
So please, love me do
Whoa, love me do

Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you!

Geo-Art: 65 Roses

One symbol always attached to Valentine’s Day and love is the rose.  What could be better than one rose? Try 65 (well cache smiles, but you get the drift)!  A rose shaped geoart is what you will discover waiting for you at Kilcoy, which is only a 50 minute drive from Brisbane. Placed by JACS Team in April of 2018, this art is made of up three different cache types, and has Difficulty ratings from 1-5 and Terrain ratings from 1-3.5.  The design uses 13 traditional caches that make the stem of the Rose with 34 mystery caches and 8 letterboxes that make up the flower.

Whilst you’re collecting your 65 Roses make sure to spend some time in Kilcoy. It is a lovely rural town, with a great bakery, plus it’s home to the Yowie! Yep, you read that right, the infamous Yowie! The town has had so many Yowie sightings it now has its own Yowie park, complete with a wooden statue so you know exactly what to keep your eyes peeled for.  With 130 teams finding at least one of the roses, there has yet to be a reported sighting by a geocacher, so come for a visit and you might just be the first!  Click here to go to a bookmark of these caches: 65 Roses.

“Boxing Day and the 28th of Dec were our days to complete and finalise this beautiful series.  A day of inspiring music and drinks at Woodford in between sweetened this geoart.  Thanks for all the effort and great variety of puzzles and cache locations / types.  We are very familiar with all the roads around the township now as drove most of them twice and the farmers started greeting us when they saw our little blue car.  This cache deserved a big Fav Point for its location as we enjoyed Pies and coffee (from the nearby bakery) at this place on both days.”
Georode
28 December, 2018

Traditional: Lovers Lane (GC3TDHP)

Published in August 2012, this D2 T2 traditional cache is at a truly loved up address, Lovers Lane in Ironbark.  Ironbark is located just to the west of Ipswich on the way to Somerset Dam.  This location claims to be the only official ‘Lovers Lane’ in Queensland.  Once there you can read about the history and take your photo between the giant heart and arrow. Some 234 geocachers have dropped into Lovers Lane and there are some pretty cute pics of loved up caching couples in the gallery. Aww!

“On our way home to Brisbane after a great weekend in Toowoomba we decided to pick up some caches on the way home.  I have driven past this cache before and wanted to wait to find it with my husband.  Fantastic sport for a cache.  Loved it.  Thanks for placing this cache here for us to enjoy and for taking us here.”
Que Sera
5 May, 2019

Hello, thanks for helping with Kid’s Caching Corner this month
Hi, that’s okay.

This month we are talking about favourite caches. What is one of your favourite caches?
Chasing Tinkerbell. (Chase after Tinkerbell – GC3BTQD)

How long ago did you do that?
Well, it was about 2 years ago.

Who did you do the cache with?
I did it with my mum and my nana.

It’s a night cache, did you go out and do it at night?
Yes, we did it about 7:30 after we had dinner.  We brought our torches and had lots of fun.  I found the most.

The most? What did you have to find?
You had to find Tinker dust.

Tinker dust, and how did you find the fairy dust?
We shined a torch in the tree lining and there was fairy dust on the trees.

So, you didn’t know where you were going, you just followed the dust around?
We just followed the tinker dust.

What was the path like?
Some of it was gravel and some of it was path.

Was there any walking through the bush?
There wasn’t much walking through the bush, mostly just gravel path and a little bit through the bush at the end.

Without going into too much detail, as we want to leave a surprise, what was the final cache like? Was it in theme?
It was amazing and definitely in theme.

Would you recommend that families come and do this one?
I definitely recommend for all families to do it.

Sounds like a really good one, and you just needed to bring torches.
Yep

Well, that’s cool.  Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us on one of your favourite caches.
You’re welcome.

“That was a LOT of fun.  I dragged two geokids with me and they were pretty anxious at first.  However, they soon got the hang of it, and made it a little competition to see who would see the fairy dust first.  We found GZ fairly easily and the geokids were delighted to see a huge cache fully stocked and well themed.  Dipped in a TB.  Prime you’ve created a masterpiece thanks for all your efforts to make a kid friendly night time geocaching experience.  FP worthy, and definitely one of the more memorable caches.”
oz_bean_counter
23 November 2019

Adult Bit: Chase after Tinkerbell is a night multi-cache located in the Brisbane Northside suburb of Fitzgibbon. It has a difficulty rating of 2 and a terrain rating of 2.  It was published in September 2012 by ‘TinkerPrime’.  Tinkerbell has been chased after around 200 times and has close to 100 favourite points left in admiration of the challenge. You can take dogs through this bushland if kept on a leash, and it has a stroller accessible attribute. Please be aware that as it’s bushland, you might come across toads and orb spiders on the trail, and of course, take some protection for mosquitos.

Monthly Queensland Photo Highlight
by Capture the Dog Photography

Most geocachers would agree that one of the best things about geocaching is the amazing locations you stumble across that you would never find without a cache being there.  Tim Williams is a Sunshine Coast local, geocaching as WallabyWanderers, he is also an avid photographer, and the man behind Capture the Dog Photography. This month Tim shares this stunning photo of Stoney Creek which is located between Woodford and Kilcoy and has a natural swimming hole, just waiting to be explored.

Doesn’t this photo make you want to kick your shoes off and dip your feet in the cool stream.  If you would like to explore this location for yourself, perhaps on the way to do the 65 Roses, the nearest geocache is Stoney Creek GC10991. If you would like to check out Tim’s other photos you can find him at the following places:

Email: capturethedog@gmail.com
Website: Capture the Dog Photography
Facebook: Capture the Dog Photography

What’s Next

On the 15th February we will be publishing our 2nd Event Newsletter, and letting you know where we are with planning for the Dayboro Easter 2021 event. Don’t forget we are still running a pathtag design contest so check out the Contest tab above to read more and get your submission in!