So with the kids away for the night at Gogo and Papa’s house Ash and myself made plans to get up early and go for a hike. This was despite Ash having a stinking cold and the thought of staying in bed becoming more and more appealing..! Still undecided I got the gear ready, charged various electronic devices, checked for batteries and filled all of the many water containers.
However, against the odds, we were up at 5:15am and were out the door by 5:30.
I had decided to take Ash to Jumbuck Hill which is about 15 minutes drive from Bassendean up the Great Northern Highway. I’d been up there a couple of times before but there are a couple of caches which I hadn’t managed to find previously plus a couple of new ones.
We parked at the end of Copley Road, got geared up and started the upward climb. Pretty soon in we started seeing heaps of Kangaroos. The sun wasn’t quite up yet but it was still very light.
After checking the GPSr I could see that the final way-point for one of the caches (Suburban Sprawl by Austrackers) was near by. It did mean a slight downward detour but if we found it then it would be worth it. So we traipsed down the hillside and encountered a large group of Grass Tree, always a likely spot for WA caches.
15 minutes later and we still had found nothing……!
We decided not to hang around and continue back up the hill towards to summit and one of the other mystery caches I’d been working on.
The trail is very steep in places and we were soon both huffing and puffing like a couple of old ladies..! We soon reached the location of the way-point I had previously calculated for Finding Fungi, again by Austrackers. I’ve attempted this cache on a number of trips up the hill. The first I had the wrong co-ordinates, the second I was looking for the actual geocache rather than the way-point. On the last occasion I was again in the wrong stop and was beaten back by the vicious ants!
After about 20 minutes of searching and removing biting ants from my legs I decided to drop the owners and email to ask if:
a). I had the right coordinates and
b). what I was ACTUALLY looking for.
We decided to continue up the hill to a new traditional geocache, Gone Walkabout once more by Austrackers (who seem to have the monopoly on caches in the area, not that I’m complaining!) FINALLY an easy find….! We disturbed a large mob of kangaroos on the way in and were stalked by an even bigger group of feral goats while we were signing the log.
As we were replacing the cache my mobile rang…..
It was Gary from Austrackers!! Luckily I was able to confirm that I had the correct coordinates and he told me what I was supposed to be looking for!
So we decided to for go the trip down to the river and instead head back to find the way-point for Finding Fungus.
It was also at this point that my GPSr decided to run out of batteries which was just awesome!!!
We eventually found our way back to the location for WP1 and began searching again.
STILL NOTHING…..arrrghhh!!
So with the sun rising rapidly and the flies getting worse we decided to call it a day and head back from some fresh coffee, fresh bread and fresh eggs.
