Mosquito Island

Don’t let the name of this geocache put you off visiting. We did not encounter a single mosquito, but we did encounter other challenges – but TeamWolfie was brave enough to make the splash and our bravery was to be rewarded with this, our 65th cache find.

Mosquito Island (GC19D59) by basscadetz is a mysterious and peaceful place. Located at the end of a peninsula at Tacoma South where the mouth of the Wyong River runs into Tuggerah Lake. The cache hider guaranteed a “water feature” at the end of the track, and a “water feature” we got. Although we were woefully unprepared for any water activity, we kicked off our shoes and decided to GO FOR IT !

Mosquito Island - no mosquitos, but there is a geocache.

If you’ve ever waded through a muddy estuary before, you probably already know the sensation of having your feet sink up to 30cm deep into the thick, slimy, sludgy mud – if barefoot, hoping there’s nothing too unfriendly in amongst it all! If you can’t handle this sensation, we strongly suggest gum boots – the type that come up to your knees (or higher)…

We braved it barefoot and had no dramas. The water was warm and inviting – with the appeal of a small child’s wading pool, and who knows what natural or man-made evils lurk beneath the surface?

The island is pretty cool. If I was a bird, like a pelican or a swan, I’d love to have a nest here. For bird watchers there is an abundance of pelicans and black swans swimming in Tuggerah Lake nearby, feeding from the outflow of the Wyong river.

We found the small cache after a brief sniff around, signed the log, and mentally prepared ourselves for the trip back across the murky and muddy waterway.

Contemplating the return to the mainland

Trying to re-trace our steps, I’m sure we sank even deeper into the sludge on the return trip than we did on the way over – perhaps because we’d already stirred it up.

Mosquito Island was certainly a different and memorable place, although I’m surprised this cache only had a terrain difficulty of 2. I would have expected a bonus terrain point for trudging through bog to get to the cache!

F3 Futility – Pie in the Sky

TeamWolfie was hungry – and there’s no better place to feed two hungry geocaching wolves than a famous eatery on the old Pacific Highway that serves a delicious range of pies, and they are atop a mountain with a great view, and to top off a perfect lunch – a micro cache awaits us in their car park.

F3 Futility – Pie in the Sky (GC19236) is the first of stubby holder’s caches we have encountered – and if this is the indication of the quality and thought stubby holder puts into all his/her caches, then we are really looking forward to finding a few more of them.

Being Sunday lunchtime this place was packed. Always very popular with bikers and tourists alike, but we managed to find a parking spot on the grass fairly close to ground zero.

But first things first – let’s eat. Surprisingly, getting a seat was a relatively easy process, and we woofed down 2 pies each and washed them down with a couple of bottles of the popular Bundaberg Ginger Beer before heading back to the car to plan our hunt. Thankfully even though this is a very popular place, the cache location is away from most of the activities, although we still had to be discrete and mindful not to be spotted by muggles in our search.

GZ lead us to the fence in a fairly sparse area with limited options for a cache hide, and if it weren’t for the fact I had seen this type of cache design on an American geocaching video podcast recently, there is every possibility I would never have discovered this cache.

This was a very clever and well designed custom-made cache.  We made sure muggles could not see us take the cache, and took it over to the car where we signed the log and examined its design in amazement.

The tricky part was taking it back – with groups of people coming and going, we had to choose our timing just right. Thankfully it was small enough to conceal while carrying, so it was just a case of waiting for the right time to return it to its home, which we did soon enough.

Smile for the muggles, Wolfie!

Not so lucky were we when we were taking a our trademark Wolfie picture of our dog (above). While I was taking this shot I didn’t realise a car load of muggles turned up and one of the older men in the car was pointing and laughing at me, obviously bemused by the fact that a grown man was taking a photograph of a stuffed dog.

Well, I guess the dog distracts attention away from the cache itself – and that’s the important thing in these cases. He’s our dog – and we love him.

Thanks again stubby holder for a fantastic cache.

The Lost Pharaoh – Ancient Artifacts II

I first heard about the mysterious Gosford Hieroglyphics a couple of years ago through a YouTube video I stumbled across - 

Naturally this was a place I really wanted to see. Although I had a rough idea of their location from my own research on the internet, it was great to see that there is a geocache at the glyphs – so it was the ideal motivation for us to get out there this morning and see them for the first time.

After a little research on Google Maps we discovered the easiest access route to GZ, and set out, armed with our GPS receivers. It was a pleasant walk – relatively flat, a little muddy, and we were soon closing in on GZ which was the entrance path. Technically – this is a Multi-cache, although it’s listed as a traditional.

Our task was to find a specific Cartouche, and use the missing glyphs to cross reference to some numbers that would give us the final coordinates for the cache.

With a little sniffing around we found the glyphs. Fascinating is an understatement. Who left these ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the sides of this narrow canyon in the hills overlooking Brisbane Water near Kariong? And Why, and what important message do they tell us?

A large Aneubis carved in the rock

Gosford Hieroglyphics

Wolfie Walking like an Egyptian

Glyphs up the wall

We didn’t count or photograph them all, but there are probably HUNDREDS of hieroglyphs here. Thankfully, though, it was relatively easy to find the cartouche and identify the two glyphs that provided the key to the location of the cache, not too far away.

The cache was a nice medium-size cache, packed tightly full of treasures.

We thought this would be a good spot to drop off the beautiful Suncatcher Geocoin we’d taken from Dead Horse Creek last weekend, and in exchange with Ellandel’s Australia 2007 geocoin to help it along on it’s travels.

The Beautiful Suncatcher Geocoin we left here

Definitely the best cache location we have seen so far. Highly recommended.