Author Archives: Geocaching Victoria

Cachers by Cachers – McAdies (Ballarat)

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Ben and Karen McAdie are cachers based in Ballarat. They are often seen with their children Eddie and Maeve (who both have geocaching accounts). As I am relatively new to wider Victoria I had been trying to see as much of Victoria as possible and attending events was how I was trying to go about it. So I met them at an event in Ballarat in October 2014. We got to chatting over their then very new baby Maeve (very cute: see photo). I have caught up with them at several events since then and we are both members of the Ballarat Geocachers Facebook group.

I sent them a few questions and here is what they had to say.

How did you get into geocaching?
We saw an article in Australian Geographic about Geocaching in 2006. We happened to be living in Horsham at the time and when we looked at the website there were no geocaches anywhere close. Six months later we moved to Ballarat and found the magazine while unpacking. We checked the website again and there was about 50 in town. We marked a couple in the map book and found them using the hints. The next day we bought a GPSr and haven’t stopped since.

What do you enjoy most about geocaching? Do you have a “style” of hide?
 We like getting out and seeing places that we didn’t know existed. It is fun to know something about a place that other people don’t know all because someone placed a geocache to show us the spot.

Not sure if we have a style of hide, but we do enjoy placing EarthCaches. We don’t tend to make our hides hard to find either. We believe it’s more about the journey to the cache rather than the actual find.

I see from your profile you are quite fond of Earthcaches. Are they your favorite? and why?
Yes Earthcaches are our favorite cache type. There is just something about seeing the Earth up close, and thinking about what might have occurred to create it that is fascinating.

Just imagine what the area looked like when a volcano was erupting right where you are standing only a few thousand years before for example!

We have seen some amazing places from extinct volcanoes to petrified forests in Western Victoria and pancake rocks, lava pillows and glaciers in New Zealand to name just a few.

Can you tell me about a cache you enjoyed finding?
Very early on in our caching we went to Tasmania. On our trip around the island we found a cache called “Harridge Falls (GCPNY8)” where we had to park on a bend in a winding mountain road and walk through rainforest, following marker tape to a waterfall. It was amazing to think that this place existed just a few hundred meters from the road but was unmarked on tourist maps. It was a very cool and special find.

Where are you both from? How did you meet? How has having Eddie and Maeve made caching different for you?
Ben is originally from Ararat and Karen is from Yackandandah. We met in Albury while at University and have been married for 10 years. Caching certainly changed once Eddie was born. No more spontaneous caching trips, no more “big” days, park and grabs took a minimum of 20 minutes to get going again (if you are lucky). It was a big adjustment.

Now we seek out playgrounds and carry swaps to eke out the caching a bit more. Maeve is 6 months old now and we have done a lot more walking to find caches lately. She can get carried and Eddie runs off some energy. It is fun to see Eddies face when he finds the cache himself or sees a swap he wants to trade.

McAdie Boys

McAdie Boys

McAdie Girls

McAdie Girls

Cachers by Cachers – sedgwickDave

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Profile submitted by ahomburg:

I first met sedgwickDave at the Easter at Home event During Easter 2011. My third or fourth event and the first time speaking to anyone from the caching world. Dave was a softly spoken guy and we hit it off straight away, mainly I think because we lived very close to each other.

While not a prolific hider, his caches are of a good quality and definitely follow the Morsix rules. The first of his caches I did in 2011 was slide and seek, a traditional first hide. He followed that up with a trio of caches in 2013 on Lilydale lake which I was lucky enough to get FTF on all three. I was challenged by his next hide, the Victorian LGA Polygon challenge as it took me to all corners of the state on a big road trip in January. An awesome time was had. His latest hide, Archimedes starts off with quite a good puzzle followed by  ….. you will have to find it for yourself.

Dave is an extremely focused and enthusiastic individual who puts his mind to something and goes full throttle. A fine example was when he started to play the other location based games Munzee and Ingress. He leveled up in both of these games very quickly. Lucky for us all, he came back to caching as his main passion and has many more Ideas for new caches to come.

Dave’s puzzle solving abilities are up there with the best, and without his help and hints, many a puzzle would have gone unsolved and unfound for me.

sedgwickDave at find #3000

sedgwickDave at find #3000

 Dave near GZ at Glide with the Eagles in July 2013 where we teamed up for find #3000

Dave and I still cache regularly today and our cache runs are always memorable. One of the best memories was our 3000th find which with some careful planning, we managed to find at the same cache on the same day.

Forget ISIS …

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 … sugar is the new killer! … or was it something else? There are so many things which can kill us or are dangerous that we normally don’t worry about the ones which actually matter. The stuff we do every day.

Falling Tree2

Geocaching in general is a fairly safe game. Unfortunately fatalities do happen. Around Victoria T5 caching has always been a part of the game. So far there hasn’t been a recorded death however if we trust the numbers from other organisations, we might be heading down the wrong track:

  • Canoeing Victoria saw a massive decrease of drownings with the mandatory introduction of PFDs. Since more cheap kayaks are pushing onto the market this trend seems to reverse
  • Climbing is a sport which becomes more and more popular and unfortunately also the accident rate is climbing along

There might be a wild bunch out there who makes things look sooo easy, that it’s tempting to follow in their footsteps. How hard can it be to do one of these remote paddles or tree-caches?Wrong buddy! That’s a very dangerous idea. Although there haven’t been severe injuries or fatalities, I do know of at least one close call for each a tree cache, a long distance hiking cache and an open water paddle cache. All of these near misses can be accounted to lack of skills and overconfidence. In every case the cachers should be very lucky to be alive.

Unfortunately nature isn’t simple and also the safety systems aren’t simple either. Caches like 100km/h at Impact or Dihydrogen Monoxide are appealing but the first one should only be attempted by people with years of experience on ropes and if you want to paddle to H2O, you have to know sea-kayaking inside out.

But why? Why does it always look so easy? Because everything goes to plan … most of the times. Danger arises when things go pear-shaped and trust me they do. Eventually you will find yourself in a messed-up situation. Training, experience, a calm head and the right equipment will get you out of it. If you’re lacking one of them you’re screwed. You will injure yourself or others or die altogether.

Bottom-line: Things aren’t as easy as they might look from the outside. Don’t get yourself into trouble for no apparent reason. Join a climbing or paddling club. Go out with someone who is experienced. Learn. Gradually increase the difficulty. Expect set-backs. Always have a back-up plan. Use your brain.

Play it safe!

P.S.: … and don’t use ropes from the hardware store. People died doing that.

Active April Event

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Active April is a State Government initiative to promote healthy and active lifestyles and get people to join in the fun of increased physical activity. As part of this initiative, the local council is running an “Active Casey” week to showcase various different outdoor activities that people in the community might like to try.

With this in mind the City of Casey, Geocaching Melbourne and the good people at Wilson Botanic Park in Berwick sat down and came up with the idea of an event. Have a look at the cache-page for more details: GC5MFZG Active April

Website updates

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Obviously this website is rather new and we are still working hard at creating content.  We have added quite a few FAQ‘s and are currently in the process of producing How to… guides.  If you want us to over a particular topic please contact us with the Feedback form above or via email to info@geocaching.melbourne

More pages will be added as we go along, particularly if they are requested.  We will also be sure to keep you the loop with developments of the Massive Melbourne Event.