Katandra Reserve Caches

After an abysmal morning of geocaching, we hit the road again (with spare tyre fitted) to seek out the two remaining geocaches in Katandra Reserve. Not far from home base, this is yet another great local place that we didn’t know existed until today – thanks to our new hobby of geocaching.

This mountain-top reserve looks like a great spot for picnics, bush walks, there’s a lookout with sweeping views out to the ocean, and of course – plenty of opportunities for geocaching here.

Breathtaking views from St John lookout

The first cache we sought was placed by GeoMonkeys, just a couple of hundred metres from St John lookout – known as Paige’s Picnic #1 (GCJM7Z). This was a great medium size cache that we found quite easily. A bit of a change from this morning’s run of bad luck – the afternoon was looking much better already.

It was packed with a few treasures, although we just signed the log and left a calling card for TeamWolfie’s 18th find.

We were then down the track to sniff out the second cache in this area – Red Gum Rock (GCPQD6), placed by Cache On Demand. Although a small geocache, it was still a nice change from the micros that have plagued us lately with our string of DNFs. It was a little trickier than Paige’s Picnic, but still a nice straightforward find – although the presence of yet more leaches squirming around in the undergrowth really spooked us so we wanted out of there quick.

Red Gum Wolfie looking for Leaches

All up, a nice productive afternoon geocaching, and discovering yet more interesting places that are quite close to home. We’ll be back here to do some more serious bushwalking soon and maybe find a spot for a TeamWolfie cache.

Three out of Four (DNFs) ain’t good!

Perhaps it was a sign of things to come for the rest of the day, which would go down as one of our not-so-good geocaching days for a number of reasons.

It started about 6:30am, Sunday morning – when we headed down to find the Micro cache at Parsons’ Garage (GCTA4K). We figured at that time the area should be relatively muggle-free. Should be, and we did in fact have about 10 minutes or so to ourselves to scour the area for the micro, with no luck. Returned to car – re-read the clues, the hint, the logs. Returned to GZ to keep poking around. Muggle alert – it was our first full on muggle experience where a lot of awkward questions were asked, and awkwardly avoided – to the point we scuffled back to the car and took off. Hmph. No find.

Next stop Gosford Park (GCTA4J) – another micro located on an artillery gun in a memorial park in Gosford. We’d had luck with a similar gun before, so we thought this may be in the same league, and hopefully our first cache find for the day – but the number of DNFs in the log for this cache gave us an indication this might not be as straightforward as we’d hope it to be. Our fears were realised after 20 mins of prodding in and around every orifice finding nothing except spider webs. Hmph – another DNF. That’s 2 out of 2 (not found) so far… time to move onto the next one.

Boora Boora (GCRCXV) is in a nice location by the water near Kincumber. We had no idea this was such a nice area, and the history lesson on the cache description was great. I’d always wondered why that hill was called Dunlop Hill – now I know a bit of history about the area and the Dunlop family. It’s amazing how educational Geocaching can be.  And also how frustrating when you just can’t get your hands on the cache that you know is someone nearby. It looked like they had recently been clearing the area of vegetation which made us wonder whether the cache had been disturbed. We narrowed GZ down to the area around 2 prominent trees, and foraged around and around for the small size cache – no luck AGAIN. Argh. Three caches down today, and zero finds. Oh, the humanity!  And the day was only set to get worse…

Next was Kincumber Recreation Reserve – the site of the upcoming All Rogues Day, which TeamWolfie won’t be able to attend due to my unusual working hours. Such a great area un there, with a few caches to be found – our first stop, a medium size cache called Crawfords Lookout (GC18VN1). It was a short walk from where we parked the car, and fortunately after a brief look – we found the cache. Yay. About time we found one today!  Yippee. We found a safe path down to retrieve the cache and signed the book.  Noticed a leach heading for our tasty legs while we were playing around with the cache, managed to avoid that one – wondered if any other had latched onto us, it seemed okay at the time… great to find a cache at last.

Back to the car to plan our next seeks. We come up with a plan of attack and start walking away when Wolfie Guy calls Wolfie Ben back to the car to check out a hissing noise coming from one of the tyres. Oh no… a puncture! 

There was still plenty of air in the tyre – so we agreed it was best just to abandon plans for the rest of the day and make our way back to TeamWolfie headquarters for a tyre change, and avoid anymore unnecessary driving until we can get the tyre fixed. Okay – can the day get any worse?  Well… yes, of course it can.

About 2 hours later… sitting here at the computer typing this, right now, I feel an itch near my right ankle. Argh! I HAVE collected a leach along the way. Blood all down my leg and on the floor under the computer. I think we’ll give up on today and move onto something else. Might be time to go downstairs and put the spare on… maybe I’ll drop it on my foot!