Once, Twice, Three times a Winner

When I read my Groundspeak newsletter over Easter, it announced that there were four new caches  around Venus Bay, on the West Coast of Eyre Peninsula. I had already been to Tumby Bay and back, so another trip this Easter would be out of the question. As a teenager, Venus Bay was in my old stomping grounds. When I checked the logs on Friday night, I noticed that only one of them had been found. This spurred me into action as I still hadn’t been a FTF (First To Find). My finds are continually climbing in number, but I don’t have a FTF to my name. Around here, FTF’s are hard to come across. Bubbles8 or Tweety2 (whoever you are) have dibs on most of them, and good luck to them. The one that I did get close to, I was beaten to by a couple hours (see Second Place Isn’t the Same as Winning), by Diesel69. Unfortunately, today was also the wifes 40th birthday party. Nevertheless, she sent me packing on the proviso that I was home by 3pm if not earlier. Wow this was going to be a quick trip; over 400kms + 3 geocaches in under 7 hours. A quick phone call to BrotherD, and he was ready and waiting for me when I arrived in Wudinna an hour later. 

It was then a very quick trip to Venus Bay. As Find and Sign Colley Courts had already been found, I wasn’t going to bother about taking the short detour, but BrotherD was keen and the day was still early.  I was a bit worried about missing the FTF’s on the other 3 as they have been published for several weeks now with several people watching them. I located GZ, and after several attempts, we recovered the cache. While I did the usual stuff BrotherD wondered off and collected bottles and cans from around the place. “Have to keep it tidy” is his catch-cry. I told him it was CITO (Cache in, Trash Out) – see, he’s learning all the time! We left the Bushies Spark TB here.

 

Then it was back into the rusty trusty old Ute for a speedy drive into Venus Bay. I’m sure the oil pressure in the engine was just starting to get to operating pressure when we pulled into a driveway and turned it off. This cache was just up the road from my grandmothers house, so I was pretty familiar with the territory. I unhooked the GPS and set off into the sand dunes. It wasn’t far before I located GZ for Find and Sign Sand Drift, the second cache of the day. BrotherD must have walked past this one at least three times before he let out an exasperated groan upon finding the cache. The camouflage on these containers was amazing. I held my breath as I opened the log book, just in case someone else had beaten me to it. But there it was – AN EMPTY LOG BOOK! This was my very first FTF. To commemorate the occasion I left my newly activated FTF geocoin in this cache. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get muggled.

It was only a short trek to the next co-ordinates, Find and Sign William Armour, and BrotherD was sure he knew where this one was going to lead to. As this was where we used to play as kids and then teenagers, I had some idea as well. Although I had never actually seen this grave I had always known it was here (just never had any inclination to seek it out until now). This one proved to be a bit tougher for BrotherD as he wasn’t impressed with the amount of grassy overgrowth. Being a bit of an expert with cemeteries, I soon found the cache and logged it. This was another FTF (wow, two in a day) and I was secretly hoping that I could make it a hat trick, but wasn’t getting too excited just yet. I left another GC that I had activated the night before that is of Ghosts of Caching Past. Figured this was a good place to leave it as I want it to visit cemeteries, memorials and monuments. We then headed back to the ute and to the kiosk for an early lunch.

On the way to the last cache for this most hasty journey, we speculated as to where it would be located. I thought that it was at Mt Camel beach and BrotherD thought it was at Talia caves. Neither of us were right, but at least I had the boast of being closer. As we parked the ute on the side of the road, we both wondered where this was going to lead us. As I located GZ to Find and Sign Patrick Reidy, BrotherD located the cache. Another FTF and my hat-trick was in the bag. Mind you, in the 20 odd years of fishing and swimming this area, neither of us had any idea that there was a grave site here. It was a surprise to both of us and we certainly learnt something else about the history of this area. It just goes to show, that you can always learn something new even if you think you’ve seen it all.  By this time it was late morning and I figured we had to be off.

Another speedy trip back to Wudinna, drop off the BrotherD and then back to home base. Got home in plenty time to help set up for the party and take the in-laws out to tea at the pub before making our way to the party and a few well earned drinks. What a day.