The Buck Stops Here

A couple more kilometres further up the road from FeO is our next attempted find – a geocache by COD called The Buck Stops Here (GCPM2Q). We’d hoped this would be a quick-and-easy find, and by some accounts in the logs it seemed quick-and-easy for some.

Being mindful of it being in a residential area, the roadway is getting busier, and being parked in a no-parking zone we didn’t want to spend too long here. To make matters worse, during our seeking a taxi pulled up to drop off someone at the house directly at the cache location.

Sadly, we left without a find this time. Given this cache is a 3.5 difficulty-rating, we can take some consolation this was not meant to be an “easy” find! We’ll probably return soon to give the area another going-over.

Oh My God, they killed Kenny! – Valley of Annelids

Last weekend we found the Ourimbah Trackhead geocache – located on the Great North Walk by making our way southward from Ourimbah Creek Road. On that occasion we sited a Red Fox, so we were very keen to revisit the area and have a go at the other geocache further up the track – best accessible from the southern end.

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!

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!