One of those particular caches had been giving us some grief, and it wasn’t until our fourth attempt today we were able to get the final egg to reveal the location of the much treasured Cuckoo’s nest – so as soon as this information was at hand we made our way to GZ immediately, arriving there just after 9am this morning.

The location made perfect sense, so we were confident we had the numbers right. Now it was just a case of getting down and dirty and finding it. At one point I was standing almost on top of it saying “GZ is here, but I can’t see where it can possibly be…”, only to find after another 30 minutes of searching that I had been basically right next to it – the whole search taking about 45 minutes.

Cuckoo Cuckoo! Wolfie wants to EAT you.

It was very satisfying to get this one done. We left a white rabbit, took nothing, signed the log. And that Cuckoo – it was all soft and squishy, and feels quite yucky to squeeze… and Wolfie wanted to eat it, but we managed to get the Cuckoo safely back into hiding.

Thanks for the cache Grank, this one was a lot of fun.

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.

One of the main bushland reserves is Rumbalara – a sprawling hilly region on the fringe of the Gosford urban belt, adjacent to home base, and home of several caches, so on my day off from work I decided to do some more exploring in Rumbalara, given it’s basically my own backyard.

First point of call was Shifter’s Anniversary Cache (GCXHJ6), a cache placed by local cacher Shifter Brains to celebrate their 1 year geocaching anniversary. The cache is placed near a lookout offering spectactular views across the region. It was a little tricky to find – the hint mentioning a “small cave at knee height”, but if you go there you’ll soon see there are many many places that fit this description. I was caving alone today, and to be honest I was almost at the point of giving up on this. So I gave it a rest for 10 minutes, admiring the view – then it dawned on me, “what about down there..?”

Sure enough, I found the cache. Sometimes it helps to just ignore the GPS and go with your instincts.

It was a small cache with a few small treasures for swapping. Left one of our Red Gems and took a purple Disco Ball – signed the log too of course!

Wolfie wishes Shifter a Happy Anniversary

Great place for a cache, Shifter Brains so thanks very much.

The next two caches to hunt down in my plan of attack were going to involve a 500m walk up a bush track, an a little bush bashing by the sounds of the description.

The track was new to me, and quite a pleasant walk. It was a surprise to find this sculpture of the Australian explorer Edward John Eyre.  Rumbalara seems to be home to a few sculptures of Australian explorers and pioneers – most having no actual affiliation with the region, but interesting anyway. This sculpture is out here, all by himself and far removed from the other sculptures at the main lookout area which supply the required clues to locate a nearby multi-cache called Go Ask Charles (GCG4VK) which we already did a few days earlier.

Wolfie resting with Edward John Eyre in Rumbalara

Continuing down the track we close in on GZ for the next find placed, originally placed by Wyoming Wombats and later adopted by Shifter Brains known as Rumbalara Rocks (GCFDA9). As the description already warns us, there us going to be a little “off tracking” involved here – it said something about there being a hard way, and an easy way. I think I got there the hard way.

It was a relatively easy yet well hidden and rewarding find. On approach to GZ you soon realise the logical place where it has been hidden. The cache was a great Ammo Box type cache, home to a lot of swappable treasure. I always appreciate finding a substantial size cache in locations like this. After swapping a scuba-diving mole (where do they think of these things??) for a bottle opener and signing the log it was time to move on.

Woof Woof! Found it!

Surveying the terrain I still couldn’t see any obvious “easy way” back to the track, I came back a different way, which I think was another “hard way”… losing my footing on my way down a steep part and sliding down on my backside – but I made it out alive.

Next cache just 200m further down the track – part of a series of caches based on the English version of the Monopoly board game in which cacher cphoenix made a hide for every square on the board game – this one based on the light blue property, The Angel, Islington (GCY3KH).

I had a bit of trouble here – GZ kept moving, dancing around in circles and eluding me. The hint gave me two suspected locations. I had been looking for a while at one of them – just not hard enough. Then I’d go back to the other, and back again, and back again.

Eventually it was spotted and – as often happens – I wondered how on earth I had missed it earlier. It was time to open it up, exchange a red gem for an Aussie flag, sign the log, and grab a picture of Wolfie with the Monopoly card.

Got some Monopoly Money for rent ?

Unfortunately cphoenix has discontinued the upkeep on all his Monopoly caches so the opportunity has probably already passed to to seek them all out, but we still look forward to getting around to the remaining ones out there.

There is just one cache left in this Rumbalara cluster, but it’s a tricky Multi cache called Catch the Cuckoo (GCNAMA) by local cacher Grank. The starting coordinates for thia multi are nearby, but it’s a furphy – the clues to it’s whereabouts are hidden within some of the local caches in a radius from this point. I’ve found three of the “clues” to this multi so far. I was expecting another egg in The Angel Islington, but it wasn’t there… so who knows if TeamWolfie will ever catch the elusive cuckoo!

Go Ask Charles is a Multi Cache by GeoMonkeys, located at the lookout of Rumbalara Reserve in the heart of Gosford. It’s a very interesting and clever Multi-Cache, where we had to solve a clue at one location, which lead us to a nearby 2nd location, where we needed to solve another clue to give us the coordinates for the cache.

Wolfie sniffing out the clues

On our first attempt we solved the two parts of the Multi, but we failed on the actual cache find itself. Today was starting to look like a repeat of our first efforts.

Wolfie Guy and Wolfie Ben scavenged through the scrubs trying to piece together the clues, along with hints people had left in their log entries. The clue was a little tricky because it could have referred to a few very similar features in the immediate area.

Armed with our GPSr and iPhone, GZ seemed to dance around. Perhaps it’s the dense tree canopy, or the fact it was a very cloudy day. We had the approximation, but it had us out a little – however, we were determined not to let this one beat us this time – and our determination was to pay off.

After about 20 minutes of searching and foraging, Wolfie Guy gave out an excitable yelp to indicate he had sniffed out something that looked suspiciously like a cache!  Yippee.

This was, to date, the trickiest cache we had gone after (as far as terrain goes). Although it’s rated a 2.5 for terrain, given the cache’s location I would have personally rated it 3 or maybe even 3.5 because the final part of the the search is a little hard… either that or we just went about it the hard way.

Overall this was a fantastic cache – and somewhat of a challenge, which we enjoy. We left the Koala keyring, originally taken from Little Beach, and took the disco ball. Left our mark in the log too of course… so thanks very much for the challenging cache, GeoMonkeys! We’re looking forward to sniffing out a few more of your hides real soon.

Bring on Brady’s Pioneers – located in a small park close to home which we didn’t even know existed.

That’s the amazing thing about geocaching. You are guided to all these wonderful new places and experiences that would otherwise go by unnoticed.

It was fun locating the headstones and using their clues to get the final coordinates for the cache. TeamWolfie encountered one Muggle, but he and his dog kept his distance whilst maintaining a watchful eye on our activities. And a great little cache it was. This was Guy’s first find, and TeamWolfie’s second find all up. The interesting location, the thrill of Guy getting his first find, go together into making this cache another of our favorites.

Guy's first find - well done, mate!

Brady’s Pioneers was also to be our very first discovery of a geocoin, which we did not remove on this occasion.

Well done, Guy.

A multi-cache is a type of hunt where you a guided to one location to obtain some clues, to then go to a second location – from there either getting more clues or finding the cache. Go Ask Charles is such a multi-cache, and is close to home too. It is in fact, our “closest” cache officially, but not closest to get to given the geography of the area.

Charles was pretty helpful, in providing us the clues to get to the next part of the multi, which we solved quite readily and were now heading in the right direction to the location of the cache.

Sadly, on this day the cache was not to be found. We still have lessons to learn about finding caches.