Twins South

We dropped in at Twins South today on our way back from the beach – thus completing the two “twins” geocaches in this area at the twin service centres on the F3 freeway near Wyong, and to give us our 80th cache find. Twins South (GC131DC) is a geocache by the bower birds is so-named after the service station / truckstop along the busy F3 freeway on the NSW Central Coast – there’s a big Caltex service station on both sides of the freeway, known by the locals as the “Twin” service centres.

This was to be our one and only cache attempt for the day after a relaxing morning at the beach. We parked our geo-mobile near the McDonald’s and headed across the vast expanse of the truck parking area, down into the bushland adjacent to the noisy truckstop, where the cache was indicated to be resting.

Being guided by our GPSr, after only a few minutes of prodding around in the scrub we had a fix on the cache, which was placed in a rather obvious spot and covered up in a way that makes it stand out to your average geocacher who has attained a moderate degree of geosense.

Wolfie hanging around the F3 southbound Truckstop

The cache was in great condition, and contained a “Here I Come!!!” coin by the geocoinclub.com – which we took with us and will soon be placing into another cache. We left behind a small coloured “Jack” (some funny-shaped little brightly coloured object that really serves no purpose).

Thanks for another great hide bower birds, I guess that completes both twins for TeamWolfie!

Mardi Grass

Mardi Grass (GC1299C) is a puzzle geocache by local cacher Shifter Brains - so called because of it’s proximity to Wyong’s Mardi Dam. 

This was TeamWolfie’s first attempt at a puzzle cache and it was quite fun. We were provided a grid of numbers, and a special code which we quickly worked out related to positions on the grid to the right numbers for the South and East coordinates to Ground Zero.

The puzzle part in this case was pretty easy, but the cache finding proved somewhat of a challenge. We parked at the original coordinates provided in the cache description, which was an excellent parking bay off the road, and only a short walk to the Ground Zero uncovered by the puzzle – presuming we were correct on our puzzle assumptions.

On approach to what we hoped was GZ we re-read the description that the cache would be near the fence, in amongst the rocks – and indeed, we were approaching an area that fit the description exactly.

What followed was a very frustrating search. This was a medium-cache, and a recent previous finder had noted at how large the cache was for it’s hiding place – so we poked and prodded in every hole and lifted rocks to no avail. After a good 20 minutes searching it was nearly time to throw it in and come back another day – but not to be deterred we tried one more spot, and as so frequently happens, there it was!

Wolfie drops the Allendel geocoin into the treasure box

And yes, it was surprising such a relatively large container was able to fit into what seemed like a fairly small hidey hole between the rocks! And it was quite full – containing a couple of travel bugs and a geocoin.

We dropped off the the beautiful Ellandel’s Australia geocoin (we had taken from The Lost Pharoah), and picked up the Clockwork Orange travel bug. Thanks again Shifter Brains – you guys certainly have provided us with a lot of quality finds lately!

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.