Not Found: GC1CGQM “What is that Thing?”

What is that Thing? is one in a series of cleverly-positioned geocaches by “bainsworld” inspired by the film The Matrix (1999).  This movie was filmed in various locations in Sydney, and the bainsworld cache locations takes you back to those locations.

What is that Thing? is from a well recognised scene in the movie, located underneath an stone arched railway overpass which just happens to be a 3 minute walk from my work. I had some time this morning, so I couldn’t really resist the temptation to wander down there for a brief look and to see if I could locate this nearby micro cache.

One needs to practice the art of stealth here! Although it’s not a very high pedestrian activity area, there is a moderate and steady volume of slow-moving, stop-start vehicular traffic passing by, and a police centre nearby with a number of Federal Police cars parked on the street in the immediate area. It is also near the railway tunnel entrance to the city circle underground, and hence is a security hotspot.

Today I was armed only with my iPhone to get a fix on the coordinates. Unfortunately – it didn’t like the built up area and I couldn’t get a proper satellite fix. Despite this, however, I was still able to use the GeoCaching application on the iPhone to look up the cache and get a pinpoint on the Google satellite view which lead me to an area where the cache should be. 

I eventually located a small, sharpened pencil – only 4cm in length, resting quietly on a stone ledge – as if to indicate nearby geocaching activity, but sadly I did not find the actual geocache itself.

This one will need to wait another day.

Crikey it’s a Croc

Crikey indeed! This “Croc” (crocodile) is just behind where TeamWolfie does their regular grocery shopping, so a visit to this cache was high on our shopping list this morning. Appropriately, in the spirit of the late Steve Irwin, this cache is named: Crikey its a Croc.

This cache is located beside a creek that runs through a nice residential area – sadly, muggles abound here, especially on a sunny Sunday morning.  We used the iPhone to pinpoint this location – and we were still blissfully unaware that our Mio car navigator had been left at Creek Shrub where it had been sitting in the grass all night!

Crikey it's a Croc! (Google Streetview)

We had a quick hunt but gave up after 10 minutes or so, feeling a bit self-conscious that people were watching us. Perhaps we’ll be back another time?

Not the Prime Ministers Hill

After a run of seven successive cache-finds this morning, TeamWolfie made their way to the last planned location for the day, appropriately named for the location: Not the Prime Ministers Hill.

Ironically, we were oblivious to the fact we’d left our Mio navigator just laying on the ground at the last cache location – we just both assumed it was in the backpack. Furthermore – on arriving here, we decided just to use the iPhone for this one because it seemed more convenient.

Another beautiful and scenic location with amazing views. After a 30 minute search we gave up. We had all the clues, the iPhone’s GZ seemed to be zeroing around an obvious location that matched the description and clues – but this cache was not to be ours today.

Nonetheless we had already had a very successful caching day – netting a total of SEVEN out of EIGHT attempted finds, so I guess we had to be happy.

We headed off, and decided to get a few caching supplies on the way home.