Cache in on the Dentist

Thursday morning of what was going to be a very hectic day. Firstly travel 155km to Port Augusta (as from now on, referred to as PA), do some shopping, dental appointments, some more shopping (necessary), maybe some geocaching in free moments and then home again. H9 and I left home at 8.30am and headed in the general direction of PA only to turn around and return home to collect the camera after a phone call from the Wife. This should have warned me but I think my alarm bell batteries were dead. Once again we set forth. Fourty kilometers from PA and the phone rang again. “What the hell does she want now?” “Hello dear”, “Whaaat?” “Helloooo… you’re breaking up” “What about the dentist?” “He’s cancelled all his appointments for the day due to him having food poisoning!” “Oh for crying out loud, couldn’t they tell us sooner.” “Well, we’ll do the shopping and a bit of geocaching and see you later this afternoon.” “Bye”

What a lucky break, we had the whole day to ourselves now without any commitments other than the shopping (nothing left to eat in the house other than a couple of muesli bars and couple of crusty pieces of bread), so it was agreed to visit the first cache of Blue Baxter Photo on the way into PA. A good thing we did as the container was FULL of water, so we laid it all out in the sun and reminded ourselves that we had to revisit on the way home to repack it.

By now the fuel warning light (another warning) on the dash was blinking at me to say we only had 90kms left in the fuel tank at current usage. Should be enough as we only have 17kms to get to the next cache and then back into PA. Half way there it read that we only had 50kms left to travel. Bit heavy footed me thinks. We pulled up onto the side of the road at Desert Garden and checked where we needed to go, then started walking. We had walked about 250m when the bloomin GPS froze and I had to reboot it. This then showed that the cache was still about 1km away and we turned around and walked back to the car. We drove a bit further until we were directly parallel to it which then showed it was only 150m away. It was a bit of a slog through the native bushes and sand but I then spotted where I thought it would be. H9 walked past it a couple of times while I zeroed in on the GZ and then we found it quite easily. If you climb the Myall tree a bit you can get some spectacular views of the Flinders Ranges through the branches. It was about now that we find that the camera we went back for has no memory card and so I can’t take any photos with it anyway. Ergo a photo courtesy of my mobile phone. We did the usual and then headed back to the car. As we approached the car we noticed 2 cars and caravans parked behind us and several people milling around looking at things in their hands. Not sure if they were GPS’s or brochures, but we got into the car and left. Once again the fuel alert light warning of low fuel level.

I thought we might have another go at Towering Views as I knew where it was and it was just a matter of reaching it. Once we got there I put H9 onto my shoulders and told her to reach up. She wasn’t quite tall enough and I suggested stepping into my hands. She wouldn’t go for that as she was scared enough now and so we aborted the operation. I WILL GET YOU MY LOVELY. I DON”T KNOW HOW, BUT I WILL.( too far to carry a ladder from home and I sure as heck ain’t gonna buy one just for this).

From here we decided to go and get our shopping done (including, now, buying a memory card for the camera and a new container for Blue Baxter), fill up with fuel, have lunch and then we could continue caching if we had time. As it turned out we had plenty of time. Amazing what us blokes can achieve when we put our minds to it and don’t diddle around scrutinizing things for what they might do or contain or if it’s the best value for money.

The next cache we decided to attack was the one furthest from PA going by the name of Spencers Head. After travelling down a very loose dirt road and 4 wheel drifting around a couple of corners (this thrilled H9 and she wanted to do it again), we pulled off onto the track that should lead up to this cache. Had to walk from here as I didn’t think that the Berlina wagon would make it through the sand hills. See we do need a 4WD (see More than the Freycinet Trail). We approached GZ from the track side and then had to attack from opposite side as GZ had us scrambling our way through the bush otherwise. Quite easy to find when you do it this way. Another successful find and we were soon on our way again.

On several visits to PA in the past we have looked at and planned our approach to Dead Boats Don’t Float, never really getting up the nerve to try it. Well this time H9 and I decided to just up and do it. After two false starts (GPS playing around again), we parked under a big gum tree and just went for it. As we were walking I cast my mind back over some of the comments that were left by other cachers and couldn’t work out what was so hard about this. The tide was out and it wasn’t until we got within about 30 – 40 meters of GZ when it dawned. Man that mud sticks like baby poo too a blanket. Told H9 to stay put and don’t come any further as, if I know her, she would end up with it from head to toe. After lots of treading warily I ended up at GZ. As in someone elses log, co-ords had me in the NE corner. Searched high and low without any luck. Decided to check further afield when I spotted the familiar outline of a cache hanging there. For anybody reading this who hasn’t found it, please be aware that the cache is fairly heavy when full of water. Kayaking dry bag hadn’t helped in any way, shape or form and everything was saturated. As I had nothing to fix it with, I tried to sign the log as best as I could (sharp pencil and wet paper don’t go together real well), then replaced cache. This has been one of the more challenging caches I have found but something needs to be done to the container to make it water tight. SERIOUSLY. As I started to retrace my steps, I found H9 had tried to follow me and was bogged with her heeled shoes and was complaining bitterly about the amount of mud on them. Well I told you to stay over there, but would you listen to me. NooOooo. Once back on firm, dry ground we cleaned our shoes up with sticks and clean sand.

From here it was only a short drive down the road and around the corner to arrive near Porter Guster. H9 wanted to navigate to this one, but still has to grasp the idea to zoom in on co-ords in GPS to get close to GZ. She believed she was standing on GZ when in fact we were about 10 meters away. Do you think I could convince her that she wasn’t at the GZ. Not on your life. Managed to wrestle GPS from her hands and show her where the actual GZ was. We then proceeded to inspect all the northerly poles for the cache (after all the hint says North Pole). Must have looked like a couple of ding dongs, to the few muggles that were around, with our intense inspections of signs and boat ramp poles. Had a good excuse made up though if asked what we were doing. We were the pole inspectors checking to make sure the poles weren’t rusting too quickly and didn’t need painting. Good one. Yeah. It then hit me (must be an old age thing being slow), that I knew where the cache was and low and behold it was in my hands 5 seconds later. This area here has certainly improved a lot since I lived in PA. I did remember to put the springy thing of the log facing out as it does tend to not want to come at all because of the magnet.

The last cache for us today was All Piped Up and Ready to Flow! We approached this one, firstly from the dirt road side and I decided it was closer to the pipeline, so secondly from the bitumen side nearer the pipeline. Either way it’s in the middle and had both H9 and I stumped for a little bit, but there’s only one place it could be. Wasn’t long and I collected the cache. As the container was reasonably empty H9 decided that this is where she would like her Chelsea Polly Pocket TB, and C6’s Charlie the CASE IH tractor TB to start their travelling adventures and they were placed in the cache. Unfortunately we don’t have any photo’s of them, so if someone could be kind enough to put at least one photo of each on their site, it would be most appreciated. (just one of those things that happen). I replaced the cache and we headed for home.

We nearly drove past Blue Baxter Photo when H9 reminded me we had to fix it up. So a quick stop to replace the contents, which by now were dry, into a new sistema container. Fix the GZ up a little so the container wouldn’t be submerged in a puddle when it rained, a couple of photos and we were out of there. Thank you to the dentist for another glorious days caching which, otherwise, would have been spent at work twiddling my thumbs looking for things to occupy my mind.