Event News

Our event was scheduled to be published in three days, being one year out from meeting in Dayboro. However, it has been caught up in the moratorium on cache publications in Australia. While we certainly hope that an event a year away will go ahead, we understand the reviewer’s decision not to make exceptions at this stage.

This current COVID-19 situation also means our lead-up events (GC8KVE1 in Western Australia and GC8HVHZ in South Australia) are cancelled. We will reschedule our trip to visit these regions when travel becomes safe again.

We also wish our friends in Millicent and Kempsey all the best with the rescheduling of their Mega Events. We know how much work goes in behind the scenes to get these events up and running (and we are still a year out!), so it must have been devastating to have to have a major delay.

CITO Season 1

Onto some happier news for the planet!  We are well into the first CITO season for 2020, which runs through all of March, April and May (Season 2 will be from September through November)!  This is a formal opportunity to help your local environment, whether it is collecting rubbish in a local wetlands, or planting trees in a koala reservation.  The range of activities that fit the bill are endless.

If you manage to attend a CITO this Season, you will be awarded a souvenir.  But given many of us are shut-ins for the next few weeks at least, maybe think about what you can do around the house?  Can you build a garden bed to grow some of your own vegetables? Put up an insect house, and prepare the garden to plant some flowers or bushes to attract native bees and birds?

We did a quick survey around the CacheQLD team to see what the weirdest piece of litter we have found was.  From computer monitors in the middle of a river, a large number of car tyres, shopping trolleys, an oven and even an old style Singer sewing machine – the foot pedal kind!

What is the most interesting piece of rubbish you have found in a CITO?   Send us an email to admin@cacheqld.com with the details.  We will randomly award an unactivated trackable to an answer.

Solve Some GEO-Art!

Have you been exiled for the good of the realm? Itching to do some geocaching, but staying socially responsible?  Well how about solving some puzzles!

GEO-Art – groups of puzzle caches placed on the map to form a picture – is a great way to boost your puzzle solving mojo.  Most have puzzles ranging from nice and easy, through to puzzles that will stretch your brain! There is a range of GEO-Art in Queensland, some with more than 100 caches in them.  Check out the map for one near you, or start the art around Dayboro in preparation for your visit.

Here are a couple of Brisbane based GEO-Arts to keep you more than busy over the next couple of months: Audio and Pick and Hammer. The Cotton art is located in Emerald. All three are by the work of Georode and offer very different puzzling experiences.

Solving GEO-Art is always more fun in a group, and maintaining some social interaction while self-isolated is important.  So, get a group of friends online to bounce ideas off each other and create an online document to track your progress (Google Sheets is our tool of choice).  You will be surprised how different ways of thinking can combine to solve them all.  Then plan a day out together to sign some logs.  When we are allowed outside to play again, that is!

Pathtag Competition

We have had some good entries to our pathtag design competition, which was due to close this week. However, given the delay to publishing our event and everyone being stuck at home, we have decided to extend the deadline to the end of this month.

Time to research the local area, or think of some good Cal puns, and come up with a great idea. Remember, you do not need to have a final pathtag design to enter. A rough sketch describing an idea is perfect.

So, get Cal-culating how you will win, with your magi-Cal design that will blow our minds.  Please don’t use Cal-ligraphy as that is not good to read.  I don’t mean to be criti-Cal but it’s just not logi-Cal to use a radi-Cal font.  Pop a note in your Cal-ender to get busy, as we are waiting for more design of a high Cal-ibre.

Okay, so my sentence is pretty lame, check out this resource for some Cal words!

CITO’s with Fletcher and Blake

Hi Fletcher and Blake, today we’re talking about CITO.  What sort of things do you do when you go to a CITO event?
Blake: we pick up rubbish to help the environment. I think people throw rubbish everywhere because they’re too lazy to put it in the bin.
Fletcher: another time we planted trees for the koalas to eat and pulled out lots of weeds so they could grow.
Blake: we also went out in the boat and picked up rubbish on the riverbank so it doesn’t go in the river.

Do you ever do CITO when you’re not at an event?
Fletcher: yes, we take our grabbers when we go caching with Dad and we pick up rubbish along the tracks.
Blake: we keep the bottles and cans we find and recycle them for pocket money!

What is the thing you like most about doing CITO?
Fletcher: I enjoy picking up rubbish. It’s fun because you don’t know what you’ll find, and we get to meet other kids doing it too.
Blake: I like helping the environment, that’s important. We learn about cleaning the environment at school, if rubbish doesn’t get picked up it goes out to the sea and hurts the turtles if they eat it

What sort of things do you mostly find when doing CITO?
Fletcher: we find plastic bottles, plastic bags and lots of straws.
Blake:  we find loads of bottle lids, tennis balls, cups and plastic bags

Have you ever found anything interesting?
Fletcher: one time doing a rubbish pick up we found a handbag and it had all the persons things in there like ID cards and headphones. We reported it to the police because that’s important so that person can get their stuff back.
Blake: another time mum saw what looked like a ball and went to pick it up with a grabber but it was a toad and she screamed! We laughed lots!

Thanks Blake and Fletcher! We hope that people take on your example and practice the CITO principle regularly.

Adult Bit: CITO’s are a great way to give back to the community and surprisingly most kids find it pretty fun. Please remember that some of the areas selected for clean up may not be the most kid friendly, so we strongly recommend the use of grabbers, gloves and of course an adult. Sun protection is also a must!

Another fantastic photo from Tim Williams of Capture the Dog Photography. This spectacular photo was shot was taken at sunrise overlooking Mooloolaba. You could do certainly do some social distancing there!

With plenty of caches along the waterfront you could take your pick so see a similar view.

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

Last month we hid our trackable code in the Highlights post.  Several of you managed to find it hidden in the map of Beachport (some of our own team struggled to find it).  We ran the entry numbers through a random selector and the result was … 5! 

Congratulations to kingfisherau!! They walk away with the awesome prize of a Mini MAG Handheld Rechargeable Light. We will have your name on this at registration desk next April!

Don’t forget to enter into our CITO contest as mentioned above, and we announce that winner in May’s Highlight post.

What’s Next

On April 15^th we will be publishing our 4^th Event Newsletter so check back then to see what secrets we let out of the bag.