Caches 1 – PDA 0 (and the first 12 of 12)

Saturday 12 September: This is definitely one of those days where the headline doesn’t tell the entire story.

It is accurate though, so far as it goes: only one cache was found, and my PDA (handheld diary/mini computer) is almost certainly a goner. However, there were also waterfalls, wildflowers, glorious spring sunshine, dozens of great photo opportunities, and good company.

The day began with a bit of a disappointment. Poor old SG-3 (the caching name of my Hobart brother) was rather poorly and so he was unable to come on the caching trip out the back of Lachlan that we had planned to do with Snuva (a Hobart caching friend of ours). Snuva and I were very sympathetic to his plight, but fortunately he insisted that we go caching without him so we didn’t have to feel guilty about the fact that we were going to anyway! In deference to his condition, and his desire to do the Lachlan caches, we saved those for another time, and Snuva and I made alternative plans.

Thus it was that we headed up to Old Farm Road to find a cache that I’d completely failed to find on another occasion. As we discovered—eventually—this was because I had approached the location from an unusual direction, ending up in the wrong spot. This time we decided to cross the creek I’d thought we weren’t supposed to cross … but in the process my PDA leapt from my belt into the fast flowing stream.

I don’t know what it was thinking: I mean it was a nice enough spring day and the water was crystal clear, but it was scarcely warm enough for shirt sleeves, far less a dip in a mountain stream. Indeed, the water was freezing cold, as I discovered as I tried fishing around where I thought it had fallen. In the end I gave up, and so we went off and found the cache.

When we came back that way I had one last look, loathe to leave without it. This time I spotted an odd black rock. The PDA had washed a metre or two downstream in the flow, and so, half an hour after it had gone for a swim, it was back in my possession. It is now at home, where the optimist in me is seeing if it just might dry out and miraculously work. (Lost in the stream, there was no hope; back in my hands though with saturated electronics, there is the faintest of hopes!)

Snuva and I then headed up to the chalet on Mt Wellington, to go for a walk in search of another cache. We headed down Hunters Track and the Old Hobartians Track (the nomenclature board has removed my apostrophes again!), in glorious spring sunshine. We were planning on saving some of the photo opportunities for what we knew would be a more arduous journey back up, but we just couldn’t help ourselves on the way down. Snuva had a new camera to try out, and the light was creating some wonderful effects.

I’d never been down these tracks before and there were waterfalls in full spate after the overnight rain (has anyone noticed that I like waterfalls?!), and so this necessitated some experiments with time exposures, which is always a bit more difficult on sunny days. The first of the spring wildflowers were starting to bloom, little skinks (lizards) were sunning themselves, and the sunlight was setting the leaves and mosses aglow.

I’d heard of a web-based personal/social history activity (it’s an internet meme-thingy) called “12 of 12” where the idea is that you take 12 photos representing your day on the 12th of the month (the 12s make sense, the “of” doesn’t!). I’ve known about it for a while, but today was the first time I’ve ever tried it out. As you can tell I had no trouble finding plenty of things to photograph (in fact, I took over 100 photos). My selection for “12 of 12” can be found here. This collection tells the story of the day in pictures, and since there were some extra photos that I really liked there’s a page with a few more shots here as well (these two collections are linked to each other, so, having picked one, you don’t have to come back here to get to the other one).

As is suggested in the “12 of 12” collection, Snuva and I made it down the hill to where we hoped to find the information for a second cache.

We searched. We searched some more. We tried the phone-a-friend option. We searched again. We came up empty-handed. We thought about leaving. Our can’t-let-it-go compulsions kicked in. We searched in some other places and the same ones again (for the third or fourth time!). We took a deep breath … and told ourselves to move on! 🙂

We about-faced and headed back up the hill. The path wasn’t exactly perpendicular to the closely-spaced contour lines, but it wasn’t far from it, so it was definitely a take-it-easy-and-take-a-few-more-photos type return journey. By the time we got back up to the car it was late afternoon, and since the light was still gorgeous, we headed to the top of the mountain, where the lowering sun cast its warm light on the dolerite boulders (the light may have been warm, but it was cool and breezy up on top, and there was still some left-over snow around).

I then had a very pleasant evening back at Snuva’s place, with some of the other Tasmanian geocachers. The food was good, and they tolerated my company even though I had the wrong model of GPSr!

It was a great day; I really enjoy wonderful places with great company (thanks again, Snuva).

I hope the PDA recovers, but if not, it’s had a good life (it’s over 5 years old) … and I will have an excuse to think about a new toy!