And we are done! A bit of stress in the lead-up with the brief COVID lockdown, but we were released just in time to still hold the event!

We had amazing feedback for our gadget trail. Over 240 people started these Adventure Labs, and they were given an average rating of 4.9+! A huge thanks to committee members EatSleepCacheRepeat, JACS Team, and Gcoven for the work they put into constructing these.

The trivia on the Saturday night was well attended and lots of fun! Thanks again to our amazing hosts Net88 and Captain Terror!

Sunday night saw plenty of colourful shirts and big smiles at the Tropi-cal themed party! Even Cal got dressed up for the night’s festivities that ran well into the morning.

Prize Winners

Below is a quick round up of our prize winners from the weekend! These were announced at our closing ceremony.

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Pineapple award: KittyKatch – although I think finding a bottle of whiskey is a prize in itself!
Runner up: burgo78 (We tracked down a first aid kit for Burgo considering all his entries involved injuries!)

Bingo: TeamDFL ($100 caching supplies voucher)

Kids scavenger hunt: Damien – We hope you enjoyed that huge chocolate!

Photo competition – with thanks to our judge Ian George (The Coffee’s)
Winner: SaintsMadHouse ($100 Caching Supplies voucher, plus 1 year premium membership)
Runner up: Patrol14 (ammo can with geocaching TOTT inside)

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Letterbox Code word: IolantheK (Geocaching TOTT)

CITO story: kingfisherau (USB torch)

Tropical Night Best Dressed: JustATrifle (Ammo Can with goodies and a $100 Kathmandu voucher)

Newsletter Code words: AtTheLakeHouse ($50 Caching Supplies voucher)

Thanks again to Adam & Matt from our local geocaching store, Caching Supplies!

Merchandise

Thank you everyone who organised pick up of your merch if you couldn’t make it! For the orders that we have left behind, we will start contacting you next week to organize late collection or delivery.

A HUGE thank you to Kelly (bubba_89) from Black Cat Creations for working to get orders together even as they were coming through, even over the weekend! Amazing! Kelly has a huge range of merchandise that she can customize to suit whatever you need!

Puzzle Seminar

Ardom (Allan) ran this year’s puzzle seminar which was very well attended. There have been a few requests for his slides so click here to download a copy!

Post-Event Survey

Thank you everyone who attended the event! We would love if you could follow this link to complete a quick post-event survey. We use this information for future sponsorship applications!

Keep an eye on the Geocaching page for the official event photo that will be posted as soon as Ian (Mr Coffee’s) get’s home and uploads!

See you at the next one!

As predicted the weather was slightly in pleasant yesterday with lots of showers. We said farewell to a number of our campers as they escaped the rain and saw more relocate around the grounds to find some firmer ground.

The gadgets continued to be a popular choice with many taking advantage of the covered verandah to complete these. The seminars on Drones and Puzzles were well received

The evening it was a much quieter affair for the Tropi-Cal party night with a good chance to sit down, eat dinner and catch up with friends. Congratulations to Just a Trifle whose commitment to the tropical theme was outstanding and most deserving of the best dressed prize.

A quick reminder about getting your entry in for the photography competition post it on our Facebook page with the hashtag country life.

Weather

What’s On

It’s a very quiet day on the schedule as we wrap up the event. It’s going to be another wet day I site and we understand that for some of you it may be ‘home time’ well before the closing.

8-9 am Pathtag Swap

The final chance to catch up with other targets and trade your signature items. Due to the weather this will be held inside the main hall.

6pm Official Closing

We will be announcing the competition winners and saying our final farewell at 6pm in the hall. If you are unable to make it we will also announce these on our Facebook and website over the coming days.

9pm Adventure Labs close

The four Adventure Labs, Dayboro Orientation, Fun Stuff, Gadget Trail 1 and Gadget Trail 2 will be turned off at 9pm. The gadgets will also be removed and packed away at this time. Our tourist locations Adventure Lab will be around for another two weeks.

Whatever your doing today drive safe and happy caching.

Firstly let’s wrap up yesterday! Wasn’t the first official day of the Mega fun! We kicked off with our Opening Ceremony before the well attended Reviewers Seminar. Then it was caching time before coming back in the evening for the very popular and fun Trivia Night.

Weather

Looks like we may finally be out of luck with the rain, so gumboots, raincoats might be the fashion of the day.

What’s On Today

It’s a little bit of a quieter day, with the morning an opportunity to check out Caching Supplies in the Main Hall, enjoy catching up with friends over the day – perhaps making use of the main hall to stay dry!

In the evening we have the last of our two seminars.

4-5pm Droning with The Coffees’

Australians are flying drones in record numbers. If you’re flying as a hobby, you don’t need any special training or certification before taking a drone into the air. But that doesn’t mean you should take your new drone out of the box and start flying it immediately. Instead, learn how to use it safely and effectively to get the best images and video, without sacrificing the safety of yourself and others. Ian has completed a Remote Pilot License for Drone photography (RePL). With his background of workplace training and assessing Ian loves helping and teaching others and is looking forward to passing on knowledge of what he has learnt so far!

5-6pm Puzzle Caching with Ardom

Geocaching novices and pros alike are often daunted by puzzle and mystery caches. Ciphers, enigmatic photos, nonsensical text, or just a blank page — it often isn’t clear what the CO wants or expects you to do, and even less clear how any of it will lead you to a cache. In this seminar, Ardom will cover the basics of puzzle caching!

Tropi-Cal Party Night

Got your tropical party shirt ready? Well it’s time to bring it out and get ready to mingle up in the Main Hall. Our food trucks are on site again and Cal’s Corner Bar will be open. The evening starts around 6pm.

Happy caching!

Today is the official opening day of the Mega.

A big thank you to everyone for taking care of the grounds yesterday in relation to the cars and mud. We encourage everyone to continue parking around the outside of the ring and using the available space near check in.

Please remember if you are on site already, you need to complete the QR check in for the Showground and head down to the front gate to get your Saturday Day pass – today’s is white! We need to keep a record ourselves of who is on-site.

Friday’s Fun

Friday saw many of our guests arrive on site and put their minds to work on the gadgets labs. We took a few inside for the night, rest assured they will be back out for puzzling over tomorrow from around 7am including the Locationless Banner. We also heard of many milestones being reached through the day so congratulations to all those teams.

Saturday’s Weather:

After our good weather yesterday it seems we are heading for some light showers today and a cool evening – pack a jumper for Trivia Night.

Coffee Van, Food Trucks & the Bar

You may have noticed the coffee van arrived yesterday afternoon and this will be open in the morning to perk you up for a great day.

The food trucks will be arriving during the day and we ask that you please keep the parking area around the main hall free as one will be positioned out the front and the other down at the bar end of the main hall.

The bar is stocked ready to go for Saturday and Sunday night – the bar accepts cash only and we ask that you please consider using small notes and coins as we may be unable to change a large note.

COVID RESTRICTIONS: All food and drink items must be consumed sitting down at a table.

What’s On

8am Opening Ceremony and Offical Photo

What would an event be without an official opening? Who knows, and we won’t have to find out here as at 8am we ask that everyone present on-site head to the Main Hall to be officially welcomed to the CacheQLD Dayboro Mega and it being declared opening. This is also where you will receive the verbal clue for the Opening Ceremony in the Fun Stuff Adventure Lab. You’ll need to be there to get it or beg your mates later for the codeword. After the welcome, we are gathering onto the Showground ring to take the official Dayboro Mega photo.

8:30-9:30 am Reviewers Panel

Sadly we have lost a reviewer to illness but we still have at least one reviewer going to be represented here. So if you have a question about the review process this is the perfect opportunity to see if you can get your questioned answered.

5-6 pm Pathtag Swap

The location for the pathtag swap is at the undercover area at the back of the main ring (part of the Orientation Adventure Lab). If you have pathtags to trade this is the place to be. We have a second pathtag trade session on Monday morning if you miss this one.

6pm – Trivia Night

We have the current table seating sorted. This is going to be a large event in itself and we must adhere to some rules. Firstly you must be registered, secondly you must sit at your allocated table in the spot that it is located, please no number switching. As this will be an indoor event, with all the doors open we can muster, we need to be mindful of the space and strongly encourage everyone to wear a mask, unless you are medically exempt. Not only will this keep you and everyone else safe, it will help lower the risk of someone lip reading your answers! BONUS!!

COVID RESTRICTIONS: As mentioned above, all food and drink must be consumed sitting down at your table. Masks can be removed for eating.

Happy Caching!

Welcome to the pre-event day of the CacheQLD Dayboro Mega. As you go about your caching business today, please be mindful that it is a public holiday, there’s bound to be traffic and an increased police presences our roads checking for speed etc. Being a public holiday also means that pubs, clubs, some restaurants and shops will be closed, so please be prepared for this and make sure you have your dinner plans sorted.

You’ll also notice with the increased rain some of the areas inside the Showground are getting pretty muddy. It might be a good idea if your camping to park your car elsewhere and walk to your caravan – this will save the roads and in particular the Showground ring from being churned up by vehicles.

Weather Forecast

What’s On Today

Today we are having a settling in kinda of morning. With just a few thing happening in the morning as we wait for our guest to arrive before kicking off the Mega with our first seminars from 4pm.

7am Check-in Opens

Everyone needs to check in with our gate guardians during the day. Be sure to use your QR scanner to register at the Showground. You will also need to leave your name with Waz and Vik as part of the event tracking. We know it’s painful to do it twice but it’s a requirement in these times to do both. In exchange you will receive your all important Friday Day Pass, this will allow you to go out and come back in with ease.

If you have paid for camping you will also need to pick up your camping area pass, please attach this to your extension lead. This is a once only pass.

7-9am Merchandise Collection

If you ordered merchandise from the shop you can pop up to the Main Hall reception area during this time window to collect your goodies. Should you miss this morning session we have another time in the afternoon. If possible we ask that you wait until at least 8am as due to the lockdown we do not have all the merchandise sorted into their orders and this will take some time.

9am Adventure Labs Go Live!

The Adventure labs will go live at 9am – we originally had planned for our tourist lab to be published earlier for our early arrivals, but with lockdown it was held over. Be sure to check out where those labs are if your heading in to the city area. All labs are set in the Showgrounds so you will be able to find them easy. They can also be done in any order

12pm SA GeoVenture2020 pre-lunch event

Sadly due to the recent lockdown and unknown border restriction our host for this couldn’t make it. However, there is nothing stopping you from taking a drive out to the location and grabbing some lunch on the way or staying on site and making plans for an SA Adventure in October.

4-6 pm Merchandise Collection

If you ordered merchandise from the shop you can pop up to the Main Hall reception area during this time window to collect your goodies. Should you miss this session we have another two collection times tomorrow.

4-5 pm Seminar 1 – Cachetur.no hosted by KittyKatch

Cachetur.no is a trip planning tool for geocachers. As an ambassador for the app, Kath will share her knowledge of how to utilize all the apps best features. Cachetur.no lets you plan geocaching trips of all sizes, near or far, alone or together with others. You can quickly and easily see what caches you have planned and what caches you or any of the trip’s participants own or have found. The script even allows you to see your route directly on the geocaching.com and Project-GC maps and to quickly add new caches to your trip directly from those maps (and cache pages)!

5-6 pm Seminar 2 – Photography hosted by The Coffee’s

Ian from Coffee Table Images was first involved in photography in the late 70s and early 80s although left his passion behind to pursue other endeavors. In 2014, after the removal of a benign brain tumor his neurosurgeon suggested a creative hobby to help with recovery and it was then that he decided to pick up his camera again. Since that time he has had great successes in photography competitions, and is now a judge with the Australian Photographic Judges Association (APJA). In this seminar Ian will cover some photography basics leaving you to walk away with knowledge of many elements of photography.

You can see some of Ian’s work on Facebook under ‘coffeetableimages’.

Happy Caching

Did you hear the news? The MEGA is on!! We are so excited to be pushing forward as planned.

The changes don’t affect us too much, but you will need to bring a mask if you are attending indoor activities such as trivia, tropical night, and seminars (unless you have an exemption)! We also have some gadget caches located in the indoor spaces.

Keep on eye on the trivia GC page (GC958DV) because the seating plan will be updated in the next 24hours!

See you all soon!