Author Archives: RoamingHowie

Thank You Bunjil

Posted on by
5

For over a decade, Peter and Helen, known as Bunjil in the reviewer community, have been the steady hand guiding cache submissions across our state. Geocachers all over Victoria (and beyond) have benefited from their time, knowledge, patience and dedication. Whether helping a first time cache owner understand the guidelines or working through complex and creative hides, Bunjil has always approached the role with fairness, enthusiasm and a genuine desire to help our community grow.

Left image: A stylized black silhouette of a bird with a colorful circular background featuring red, yellow, and black segments.

Reviewing is often a largely unseen task. It involves countless hours reading listings, checking locations, answering questions, resolving issues and ensuring that every published cache contributes to the game we all enjoy. It is a volunteer role that requires both commitment and care, and Peter and Helen have provided both in abundance.

The first cache ever published by Bunjil was in December 2013. Since then, they have published in the vicinity of 25,000 geocaches, and written somewhere in the order of 50,000 reviewer notes.

Over those twelve years, Victoria’s geocaching landscape has grown and evolved. New players have joined our community, new cache types have emerged, and memorable events have brought our community together. Through all of this, Bunjil has been a constant presence, helping to maintain the quality and integrity of geocaching in Victoria.

Peter and Helen have always been enthusiastic supporters of Geocaching Victoria, and have worked collaboratively with us on countless inititatives. From all of our Mega events and the GPS Adventures Maze, to GeoTours, CITO activities, community celebrations and many other projects. Their guidance, encouragement and willingness to help have helped us deliver many successful initiatives for the community.

On behalf of the Victorian geocaching community, we extend our sincere thanks for more than 12 years of dedicated service. Thank you for the evenings, weekends and spare moments you generously gave. Thank you for your patience, your wisdom, and your unwavering support of the game we love.

While stepping away from the reviewer role on 1 July marks the end of an extraordinary chapter, we hope it marks the beginning of many more adventures from the other side of the publish button.

Thank you, Peter and Helen, Bunjil, for your service and commitment to our community.

A community celebration for Bunjil has been scheduled for 18 July in Waurn Ponds. For further information, and to log your will attend, visit GCBT975.

And The 2025 Nominees Are…

Posted on by
Reply

The community has been searching across the state to identify the best geocaches, Adventure Labs, and logs from 2025. The nominations have now been been carefully tallied, double-checked, and shortlisted and we’re excited to officially reveal this year’s outstanding nominees in the 2025 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards!

The list showcases an incredible mix of creativity and passion, including caches requiring a mix of TOTTs, mind bending puzzles, some great first time hides and Shakespearian tales of geocache adventures. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to nominate, and particularly those who helped grow the game by hiding a cache, Adventure Lab or writing a tale in 2025.

Despite the patchy weather, plenty of geocachers gathered at Jells Park on Saturday for a catch up, sharing stories of recent finds and favourite hides. The BBQ sizzled thanks to ahomburg and JonnyGoldcoast as this years nominees where announced with many of the lucky nominees in the crowd.

For those ready to start planning their next caching adventure, the full list of nominees is now available on the 2025 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards page on our website.

This year’s shortlist includes (click the titles for a full geocache list):

The 2026 eligible hide lists are also live and continue to be updated throughout the year. Keep an eye out for new cache owners, fresh series, and exciting new hides as they’re published. Everything can be found in the Great Geocaching Lists section of our website — and all will be eligible for next year’s awards.

To give everyone plenty of time to explore the nominees, voting will open later in the year, with winners set to be revealed at a special event in October/November (TBA). Stay tuned also for details on how you can win a prize, just for finding the nominated caches!

Don’t leave it until the last minute, grab your GPS, your TOTTs, and start exploring everything this year’s nominees have to offer. And when you find a quiet moment, dive into the nominated logs and enjoy the stories and adventures shared by fellow cachers.

If you are one of the nominees, you can proudly display your achievement using the nominee banner for your cache page, and add a badge to your caching profile using the 2025 COTYA resources here.

If you are interested in being a community sponsor of one of this years awards, reach out to one of the committee or president@geocachingvictoria.com.au for more details.

Special thanks to Kristysadventures for donating the Easter hamper and organising the fundraising raffle. Congratulations to maccamob on their win!

To everyone who has secured a place on the coveted 2025 nominations list, congratulations on this well-deserved recognition. Thank you for the creativity, effort, and enjoyment you brought to the geocaching community.

Wrapping Up Another Great Year of Geocaching in Victoria

Posted on by
1

As the year draws to a close, it’s a great time to pause, reflect, and celebrate another memorable year for Geocaching Victoria and our community.

It has been a huge social year, marked by the 25th year of geocaching. Across Victoria, there were 625 events, including 65 Community Celebration Events and clost to 9,500 attendances. Cache hiding also surged, with 41% more hides in 2025 compared to the previous year.

Here are just some of the highlights from 2025:

  • January – We unveiled plans for The Tassie Event, the first-ever Mega to be held in Tasmania in 2026. Working alongside an enthusiastic Tasmanian team, this is shaping up to be a truly huge event.
  • March – Our first-ever Block Party in Sunbury saw over 500 teams join in the fun.
  • April – Excitement buzzed at Darebin Parklands as we announced the nominees for the 2024 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards.
  • July – It was plants aplenty, with geocachers volunteering alongside Manningham Council to plant thousands of trees for National Tree Day.
  • August – International Geocaching Day was celebrated across the state, including events such as The Great Victorian Cache Crawl.
  • October – The winners of the 2024 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards were revealed at another gala evening, complete with a special guest appearance by Elvis.
  • November – Lights, camera, action! The GIFF event at the Clayton Theatre rolled out, followed by a celebration marking the 10th anniversary of Victoria’s first Mega at Casey Fields.
  • December – Preparations for The Tassie Event have stepped up a gear, with exciting announcements including the GPS Adventures Maze, event merchandise, and more details about the weekend festivities. We’d love your help as a volunteer – Register now to get involved.

Many of these events wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible efforts of volunteers, reviewers, committee members, event subcommittees and the wider community – thank you all. And of course, this is just part of the story, with geocaching information sessions, community event weekends, CITOs, cache releases, BBQs, and countless other activities happening right across Victoria.

2025 By The Numbers

For those that like stats, here is a snapshot of caching in Victoria this year (prior year in brackets):

  • Total 2025 hides: 2,296 (1,657)
  • Event type caches (incl above): 625 (490)
  • Favourites accumulated on new hides: 3,795 (2,939)
  • Total finds on 2025 caches (non event): 46,915 (24,818)
  • Event attendances: 9,433 (5,575)
  • Average new hide D/T: 2.01 / 1.81 (2.05 / 1.86)
  • Most common/Least common difficulty: 1.5 / 5.0 (1.5 / 5.0)
  • Most common/Least common terrain: 1.5 / 4.5 (1.5 / 4.0)
  • No. of D/T combos with nil placements in 2025: 17 (17)
  • Most common/Least common size: Micro / Large [Small / Large]
  • Most common/Least common type: Traditional / Wherigo (Traditional / Wherigo)
  • LGAs with most new hides: Ballarat, Yarra Ranges & Latrobe (Golden Plains, Glenelg & Indigo)
  • LGAs with no new hides : Gannawarra & Yarriambiack (Ararat, Brimbank, Gannawarra, Greater Dandenong, Horsham, West Wimmera & Yarriambiack)
  • LGAs with most events: Ballarat, Hepburn, Melbourne (Ballarat, Hepburn, Greater Geelong)
  • No. of unique cachers with 12 or more finds (average 1 per month): 2,158 (2,386)
  • No. of unique cachers with 366 or more finds (average 1 per day): 156 (152)
  • No. of unique hiders (inc events): 350 (347)

*Data as at 27 December 2025

You can find more statistics on all active caches in Victoria on our website at https://geocachingvictoria.com.au/victorian-geocache-statistics/ 

Looking Ahead

With a new year just around the corner, there’s plenty to look forward to. More events, more adventures, more creative caches, and more opportunities to connect with fellow geocachers.

Whether your goals for the coming year include hiding your first cache, attending more events, tackling a long-standing D/T challenge, or simply getting outside a bit more, we look forward to playing a part in your journey.

From all of us at Geocaching Victoria, thank you for a fantastic year. We can’t wait to see where geocaching takes us next – happy caching, and we’ll see you in the new year.

Geocaching Victoria Welcomes Ross (Suscoe)

Posted on by
Reply

We’re thrilled to welcome Ross to the Geocaching Victoria committee. So that you get to know our committee members, we like to share a glimpse into what drives them. I had the chance to ask Ross a few questions, and here’s what we discovered about him and Team Suscoe!

Lets start with your geocaching name and how you came about it?

Our caching team name is Suscoe and I cache with my wife, Sue. When we were starting we were trying to work out a Geocaching Team name that was made up from parts of both our names. So “Sus” is from Sue’s full first name and I was called Roscoe at times so that is where the “coe“ came from. That was how the team name “Suscoe” was born.

I always wondered how the “Ross” part played into it. It makes for a handy short name for those log books! When did you and Sue start geocaching and how did you find out about it?

We started our Geocaching membership on the 5th of September 2009 after we read about it in a newspaper article. We thought that it sounded interesting, so we got started around Geelong and we thought it was pretty good. That was where we met our great friend Bushfire. He helped us so much in our early days of caching and we spent many trips with him wandering the countryside finding caches. Little did we know that we would still be involved some 16 years later and have found just over 34,000 caches in Australia and overseas.

That’s an impressive haul, in fact it puts you in Victoria’s top 10 ten cache finders – that’s no small feat. With so many finds, what is your preferred way to geocache?

We simply enjoy having a day out geocaching either by ourselves or with friends. We don’t have a particular style of caching, but we like to be prepared and we often plan a list of caches to look for. We enjoy trying to solve puzzles, tracking down a good multi cache, particularly those in cemeteries, and finding traditional, EarthCaches and Adventure Labs. We also like to attend events, when we have the opportunity, to catch up with people that we know, and to meet new cachers. We have also tackled a few power trails and Geoarts. But what we really do like about Geocaching is just getting out to enjoy the countryside or urban areas, following where the cache placements take us and enjoying the locations, the history, solving the hides, accidentally meeting other geocachers at a hide and catching up with members of the wider geocaching community.

It sounds like a good mix of everything, which is a great way to do it. In amongst it all, what do you currently have on your geocaching bucket list?

Now that is an interesting question. It would be fabulous to finally find a cache in every
Australian State and Territory, we still have a couple to visit. We also hope to get to New
Zealand one day to find some caches.

Queensland and Northern Territory… watch this space! So what is the craziest adventure you have had in the name of caching?

We joined a couple of other cachers one morning in search of a letterbox located in a drain under the CBD of Ballarat. There is something special about standing below a grate, hearing the voices of people going about their daily business while we were 4 metres below, signing a cache log.

Ahhh the famous Subterranean – If you know, you know! Other than exploring the drains below cities, what is the most remote or unusual place you have found a geocache?

Well there are a couple of locations that come to mind.

Finding some caches at Ankor Wat near Siem Reap in Cambodia would have to be a highlight because of the amazing history in the age and size of the temple complexes and the remoteness of the location. We also enjoyed finding caches in and around the historical sites of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower or Monet’s Garden Lilly Ponds. There is something so very special about standing near significant buildings and artworks, finding a sneakily placed cache in a location that we had only ever read about.

One of the most amazing caches that we have found is RV 5.08: Brugge GC4XMCM. It is located in the City Square in Brugge. The associated field puzzle had us looking at the buildings around the square in order to solve the cache access process. It had thousands of favourite points back in 2016 and at the current time it has 7792 favourite points. Simply stunning.

Wow, they are some impressive locations. So with all that adventure under your belts, what made you join Geocaching Victoria and what are you most looking forward to?

I decided to join Geocaching Victoria to be able to give back to the geocaching community through this organisation. Geocaching has brought us so much pleasure over the years in exploring the outdoors and meeting terrific people. I am looking forward to being part of this team that provides opportunities for others to become involved in geocaching and to support the diverse community that enjoys geocaching in Victoria and further afield.

Thank you Ross for taking some time to tell us about yourself, and most importantly, for joining the Geocaching Victoria committee. We are very much looking forward to your energy and insights as we head into 2026. Please join me in welcoming Ross to the team!

Geocaching Victoria AGM Recap

Posted on by
Reply

Geocaching Victoria recently marked 11 years of adventure at its Annual General Meeting (AGM), celebrating a year full of community, events, and growth. We thanked some retiring committee members, while welcoming a fresh face to help steer us into 2026.

This year’s success is thanks to our hardworking committee volunteers. A special shoutout to ahomburg, BernieH, chooknchunk, Crack’n’LeeLee, Grub62, LetThemEatCache, Mister Doctor and RoamingHowie. Thanks also for the fantastic support from our Block Party subcommittee, community volunteers, and Tassie Mega subcommittee. From celebrating our 10-year anniversary in Yarraville to hosting the biggest Block Party in the southern hemisphere in Sunbury with over 500 teams, it’s been an epic 12 months of community and fun.

We kicked off The Tassie Event with a live stream and events in multiple states, annoucned the nominees of this year’s Victorian Cache of the Year Awards at its original home in Darebin Parklands and planted thousands of trees for National Tree Day with Manningham Council. It was a gala celebration with special guest Elvis in Hampton to announce the winners of the Victorian Cache of the Year Awards, a cinema style GIFF celebration in Clayton, and wrapping up with a 10 year Mega anniverary bash at Casey Fields. All making for unforgettable memories, alongside numerous community education sessions across regional Victoria and plenty more.

Retiring Committee Members

BernieH

After 11 remarkable years of service, including 10 as Geocaching Victoria’s first treasurer, BernieH is stepping down to focus more on geocaching adventures and travel. Bernie played a crucial role in setting up the organisation’s early financial and governance foundations. His wise counsel and sharp wit have been a pleasure to have on the committee. We wish Bernie and his wife Annie all the best into the future. Fortunately, Bernie will stay involved behind the scenes, continuing to manage our geocaching lists.

Grub62

Belinda has been a major contributor, from her early days on the Whittlesea Mega Committee, to her vital fundraising and community engagement roles with Geocaching Victoria. She has championed our relationship with Bunnings, and is always early and stays late to ensure our events run smoothly. Her contribution and commitment have been an absolute privilege to have on our team. We wish Belinda, and her husband Don, all the best as they take some well-earned time out. Belinda will continue helping with the coordination of the GPS Adventure Maze for The Tassie Event.

New Committee Member

We are thrilled to welcome Ross from team Suscoe to the committee as we move into 2026. Based in the Geelong region with his wife Sue, and with over 34,000 finds since 2009, Ross brings a wealth of geocaching and life experience. We’ll introduce him in more detail soon, however for now, please join us in giving Ross a warm welcome. We are excited about his contributions in the year ahead.

Your 2026 Committee

Your 2026 Geocaching Committee is as follows:

  • President: RoamingHowie
  • Treasurer: LetThemEatCache
  • Secretary: ahomburg
  • General Committee: chooknchunk, Crack’n’LeeLee, Mister Doctor, Suscoe

A big thank you to all of our committee members who generously volunteer their time to help grow and connect our wonderful community. We look forward to another year of fun and adventure. Feel free to reach out if you want to get involved or share your ideas.

Happy caching!