Sadly, this could be the case for Secret Vision (GC1871T) by d.d.dudes.

After reading the cache description and checking out the pictures and logs, it seemed this was going to be a really cool and fascinating place to visit. I parked at the Waypoint described, and headed off up the discrete track, and came across the little plaque, as described by the cacher.

This is looking interesting

We headed a little further up the track to where it opened up to a rocky outcrop, and noticed some beautiful and fascinating carvings on ground – the most prominent being a very large kangaroo.

A VERY large Kangaroo carving.

Some of the carvings were well worn and camouflaged, so they’re hard to photograph. It was a very peaceful, almost mystical place. Something rustled in the bush nearby, I turned to spot a large Goanna race up a tree. I must’ve startled him.

With the aid of the hint, I retrieved the cache very quickly and opened it to start signing the log book. Upon doing so I was very surprised to turn around and find two State Forest rangers had appeared from behind – and they wanted to know what I was doing!

I had the cache right there, log book opened which I was in the process signing — so I just told them I was geocaching, and asked if they’d heard of it before.  They explained they knew what geocaching is – but were concerned about it going on at a sacred aboriginal women’s site.

He said he saw my car parked out by the road and wanted to know what I was up to.  They told me there had been some vandalism and disrespectful activities going on, a person called “JACOB” had used an angle grinder to put his name in the rock, and he was very upset that somebody had once “outlined” the carvings with a chalk-type rock to make them stand out so that they could be photographed.

I showed him the log and explained it brought in a few people – but not large numbers, and geocachers are overall a very responsible bunch of people, which he understood – but he explained that to place a geocache at this location is “tacky and disrespectful” to the aboriginal tribe and their ancestors – and is “about as tacky as Nicole Kidman trying to play a didgeridoo.” 

Being a women’s site, they also do not like men being here. Period.

He wanted to know the website and the cache name, which I gave him. I offered to contact the cache owner – which I will, and the ranger said he will also follow it up.  He wants the cache owner to move it – say, a couple of hundred metres away somewhere down the other track. He said “there’s no problem with putting the cache in the state forest, but the problem is with it being at a sacred site.”

Wolfie, on sacred ground.

I returned the cache to its location. I’m not sure if it will still be there now.

This was my 60th find, my last for 2008, and sadly it might also be the last time this cache is found because this is a great spot which should be shared and accessible by responsible people.

It was a lengthy but relatively flat walk out to this very isolated location. Along the way there was a sense of eeriness - being so isolated, quiet, the air heavy and muggy, and the sound of the bird life in this area was deafening at times.

On arrival at the lookout area we took in the scenery and made an effort to get a little closer to Ground Zero – which we found near a rocky area a little to the west of the lookout. The clue mentioning something about a cave had us climbing down the rocky outcrop in search of caves and openings.

We’d searched for about 10 minutes amongst the thick dry undergrowth, the day is hot – and I am always weary of snakes in these environments. 

My vigilance paid off. Just as I was climbing around the rocks to check out possible hiding places for this cache I encountered what I believe to be a juvenile brown snake – only about 30cm in length. According to Wikipedia, “The Eastern Brown Snake is the second most venomous land snake in the world“, so I wasn’t really keen to stick around in case it’s parents were about.

TeamWolfie made an executive decision to leave the area immediately – abandoning the hunt for this cache!

The geocache further up the track and deeper in the forest is the unusually named Oh My God, they killed Kenny! – Valley of Annelids (GC1D032), by GeoMonkeys. This weekend we were already in the right area to approach this cache from the south side – being an easier approach.

As a South Park fan myself, I am familiar with the saying “Oh My God, they killed Kenny!”, and as we approached this cache from the easier route from the south, we came up a road called Kilkenny Road which lead us to the Great North Walk and Ourimbah Track – so it all makes sense now.

As far as “Valley of the Annelids” part of the name goes… according to Wikipedia -

“The annelids, collectively called Annelida (from Latin anellus ”little ring”), are a large phylum of animals comprising the segmented worms, with about 15,000 modern species including the well-known earthworms and leeches.”

Leeches? Yes, these are creatures we are growing accustomed to after several encounters with them during our geocaching expeditions. So small, so strong, so hungry, and so fast. 

As we walked from the end of Kilkenny Road down the path we wondered – where are all these so-called leeches… not a leech in site. The path started out relatively flat, and dry, and leech free. It was a trick. Very soon we were descending into the depths of the Valley of the Annelids, and found ourselves surrounded by leeches inching around on the ground whereever we stepped, looking for every opportunity to cling themselves onto our footware.

Despite swamping our shoes with Aeroguard, these strong and hungry little suckers still managed to cling onto our shoes and boots. So disgusting. So much time spent flicking them off. Argh! So frustrating.

The leech population seemed to increase exponentially as we ventured deeper into the valley. It was like something from a horror movie – and one could easily imagine more Kenny being devoured by the little blood suckers. We couldn’t even stop for a rest, or stop to contemplate the location of the cache, or even think about looking at our GPS – for stopping, even only for a brief moment, would surely mean more leeches would hitch a ride on our tasty feet and legs.

We were exhausted. It seemed difficult to get a fix. I think we went too far – probably past the cache. After a while we gave up – with GZ showing as being about 100m off the track, nothing was making any sense down here in this diabolical valley.

It beat us. We gave up and begun the long sweaty journey back up the hill. Perhaps we’ll be back again sometime – next time, better prepared for the onslaught of parasites. The attempt to find this geocache is NOT for the feint hearted, or for those with a phobia of blood suckers!

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!

After searching everywhere – in the car, in the backpack, in our pockets, we just had to accept the fact that we might have left it somewhere at one of the cache locations – so TeamWolfie returned to do some sniffing around, in the unlikely chance the Mio would still be there.

At this stage we’d pretty much accepted the Mio was lost, and never to be seen again – and already started planning it’s replacement. But not to be deterred we returned to Creek Shrub to try to retrace our exact steps as much as possible…  what were the chances?  Considering it was such a busy Sunday lunchtime, in a popular location full of muggles, we considered the chances of the Mio still being there pretty slim.

Remaining optimistic we approached the Creek Shrub cache site – the last place where we believe we may have left it – and sure enough, there it was, resting peacefully in the wet grass!  How lucky.  Thankfully, this particular cache is a little “removed” from heavy pedestrian traffic which tends to stick to the main pathways, and there had been no rain overnight.

The Mio was a little damp from the dew, but besides that (and a “couple” of ants) it seemed to be in excellent shape. Oh, and the battery was flat – of course.

We returned to the car, eager to plug the Mio in and see if it would power up after it’s night out under the stars – sure enough, it powered up fine. Good as new. Then another ant crawled out of the SD memory card slot.

“Funny,” we thought, “be funny if a heap of ants set up a nest in there…” said TeamWolfie member Guy.

Within a minute another two ants ran out the memory card slot.  It was starting to look like a few ants had indeed set up home in there.

As we headed back to home-based, another ant made it’s escape from the Mio’s memory card slot. This is now getting ridiculous, we thought.  So Guy gives the unit a gentle upside-down tap on the palm of his hand, and out falls about 10 ants, and some tiny white eggs.

It seems the ants had, indeed, set up a nest inside the Mio! The remaining trip home in the car was spent tap tap tapping the Mio and trying to get the ants out.  They just kept coming and coming and coming. I mean, how many more could there be?  It was only there for 24 hours!

We get home – tap tap tap some more over the kitchen sink – ants, and eggs, keep coming out of the Mio. There was definitely something in that GPS device they really loved.  Surely that’s all there is…. right?

Wrong.

So we leave the Mio in a (dry) sink while we watch a DVD…   come back and check – to find no fewer than about 100 ants crawling around in the sink.  My God!   How many ants can you fit into these things?

Tap tap tap – another 10 ants fall out.  Tap tap… MORE ants fall out.  I mean… this is seriously bad – these pesky little ants really had set up a serious full scale nest inside the Mio.

For the next 5 HOURS we intermittently tapped the Mio and sure enough, more and more ants would fall out of it. Fewer and fewer, and eventually we’re now at the point where we think we have most of them.

Mio - still working, but Ant-Ridden

The Mio is now in quarantine (a zip-lock plastic bag). We dare not leave it overnight – who knows what else is waiting to crawl out of it?

I’m going to list this find in our “Bad Experiences” category too – not because of anything about the cache – it’s a great cache, in a great location – but for the fact we left one of our GPS devices behind at the site – and we didn’t even realise it until the next day. I’ll write some more about that in another post soon.

Creek Shrub is located in the same string of waterfront parks as Diving’s Prohibited – although this cache is a little larger, given the better opportunities in this location to hide a slightly larger cache.

We were thrown off a little by our GPS at first. The clues for this cache mentioned a tree stump, and ironically our GPS guided us directly to such a stump.

Wolfie barking up the wrong stump

We were convinced this HAD to be the stump – after all, the GPS units were pinpointing it. But as is the case with GPS – you can’t always trust it, and sure enough GZ soon moved a little closer to the real stump we were looking for, and after a brief forage, we located the cache.

This was a great little find, we signed the book, left a Pokemon Hypno card, and we took a Travel Bug.  We also left our Mio in-car GPS navigator on the ground when we left… but that’s another story.

It started when we thought we’d seek out the Ancient Artifacts cache in Rumbalara Reserve.  It was all going pretty smoothly – sure it was a long walk down a steep pathway and lots of stairs into a somewhat wet and boggy lush valley.

We found what we considered to be the “artifacts”, but no cache. It was frustrating. We’d just had two successful finds – surely this one would not beat us. Well, after about 45 mins of searching, and turning over stones and rocks – we came up with nothing.

It was a long walk back to the car. Along the way Guy noticed two leaches literally squirming their way through the fabric of his runners – making a quick path to his feet for a feed of blood. We were able to get them out of his shoes in time, but were amazed at their tenacity and strength.

I was wearing sturdy boots, so I figured I was safe – and surely I would notice if I had any leaches drinking my succulent blood.  So… we left, went and got some lunch, came back home – and I kicked off my boots. After about 10 minutes of sitting around in the lounge room I noticed something running down my leg – it was blood!

They got me!  I went to the bathroom to discover both my legs were bleeeding. It was a real mess. We located a leach in the dirty washing – it had crawled out of my sock.  My socks were also blood stained.

So let this be a warning for others seeking to find Gosford’s Ancient Artefacts cache!