Category Archives: Caching Tips

Beginner Series #5 – The Joy of a First to Find (FTF)

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It doesn’t take a new geocacher long to hearing within the community that we have our own language and our own acronyms. It can sometimes take a little bit of time to decipher the words…

TFTC (Thanks for the Cache)…

TOTT (Tools of the Trade)…

or maybe even SWAG (Stuff We All Get aka swaps)…

but there is one that is worthy of a bit more discussion… FTF (First To Find) as there can be lots of fun in chasing them.

Recently Jo Cox caught up with 999Hunter to talk through this concept that he knows of only too well. Below we share the interview in his own words.

Hunter can you first share with us when you started Geocaching and what got you into this crazy hobby we love?

Thank you, Ms President, for this opportunity.

Back in Jan 2016, we were looking for an outdoor hobby. Something that would keep my older boys happy, while my daughter could go to the playground. Geocaching fit the bill perfectly. The family sometimes still comes with me, the girls have their own accounts, and during our last family NSW holiday Son2 wanted to go night tree climbing and did most of Burden of Sisyphus himself.

For those that are new to the game, can you explain what a first to find is?

The name First to Find, kind of explains itself. It’s the first (person) to find a newly published cache. I’ve heard that in the old days the First to Find or FTF went to the person who actually first found the geocache container. Now it’s a bit more civilised and anyone who helped search a cache newly published and was there when the log was opened can claim “Joint FTF”. Out of etiquette, it’s often good to ask this question when there are 2 or more geocachers looking.

It is polite to log the FTF quickly when you can, but like caching in general, everyone does it their own way. I try to log a “Write Note” when I’ve returned the cache to let people know I’ve already been there which gives me time to write a nice log when at home. This is important as often there are many people that will race to find a new cache and some travel great distance to claim a FTF.

Why does the publication of a FTF get the geo-community excited?

A new geocache means the game is still expanding and there is a new geocache to find. We all have our favourite hiders and love it when they put a new one out, or it could be a new hider who soon becomes one of our favourites, or it might take us to a place we didn’t know about. For the “FTF Hounds” it means the race is on!!!

Personally, I’m not a social geocacher, which means most of the geocachers I’ve met in person have been when looking for a FTF, and some have become great friends.

Sometimes it even turns into a FTF party with lots of geocachers arriving and all searching together, enjoying the chat as much as the hunt.

For me, it’s not just thrill of the race, or the feeling when holding the logbook wondering if another name is already in it, it’s also seeing the geocache in its pristine state, just the way the Cache Owner first hid it.

And for those that love the numbers, what statistics are important for chasing FTFs?

Geocaching has a lot of numbers for the people that love statistics. Even if geocaching.com doesn’t count a FTF as a statistic, ProjectGC does. If you log a FTF with the tags {FTF} or [FTF] then ProjectGC can track your FTFs finds correctly. Then all the same statistics can be monitored – LGAs (Local Government Areas), Calendar and DT Grid, etc.

The stat that I am most proud of is my monthly FTF streak (that is at least 1 FTF each month) for 39 months, before the Covid lockdowns broke that streak. Nothing compared with Suscoe’s 90 months with a FTF however.

So can you explain a little about your own FTF Hound reputation?

I have a reputation? (heymissjo nods her head and smiles)

I’ve heard people calling me “The Hound” and I like it.

I guess, Hunter-Hound are similar, but it also comes from claiming that I’m not a FTF Hound for so long. For some reason people stopped believing me after 100 FTFs. On occasion I still claim I’m not a Hound and with over 4000 finds now, only 9% are FTFs.

However, there are other Hounds that deserve the title more than me.

The Welder when the mood strikes him seems to be everywhere. N0w0rries is always a threat. Anything near Cranbourne and Biggles1024 is the competition. Mornington Peninsula is becoming crowded with BFG, Brain and Deepsky24 trying to push me out. Not forgetting AHomburg, Day1976, PinkPiggy7 and SteMicMitSar and they are just some of the big the Hounds I compete with.

That is not counting Hounds in the North, or the Geelong crew who sometimes sneak a FTF on the east side of Melbourne and whose stats are just amazing. Sims_Family, Suscoe, AusFox, The Tritonz and Bushfire take 5 of the Top 10 Victorian FTF Hounds, and they can just stay over in Geelong thank you.

But for Victorians FTF Hounds, CovertHypnosis (C@H) has the most reported FTFs according to ProjectGC with 738 FTFs and all before 2012

What has been your most memorable FTF Hunt?

Now that is a very hard question. My first FTF obviously. TeamThommo was my local hound and would get everything, but she was on holidays, and it was a hard PinkPiggy puzzle that took a few days to solve.

Hounding at Mt Baw Baw above the fog, the wonderful beach locations, a sneaky FTF while on holidays in other states. My first D5 FTF – Eat Fruit: Apples solved 9 months after publication and when the CO heard I was going to my first real event baked an Apple Pie as a FTF Prise and everyone enjoyed a slice. It took another 12 months for the second to find. A Dirtbag FTF is always a memorable adventure, including a Night Tree climb during a gale, an old mine shaft and finding the amazing “Greg’s Rock” container. Exploring the Jewellers Shop Mine with the family where the parking coordinates were out, so we bush bashed the whole way there to explore the great mine. But the one that always springs to mind the most is a FTF in Bunyip. It started at 3am and by 4am I was stuck waist deep in the Billabong watching a shooting star. At 5am I found the wonderful final and got home by 6am after driving home naked. A change of clothes now permanently resides in the car.

Love your stories, thanks Hunter. If a new geocacher wants to start to chase FTFs what do they need to know?

A wannabe FTF Hound really only needs to know 4 things.

1. You need to know how to create an email notification on geocaching.com to alert you for newly published geocaches. An 80km radius is the maximum allowed distance.

2. You will fail to get more FTFs then you will find. So be prepared to find that dreaded name in the logbook, with no online log. Yes, I’m looking at you Day.

3. Learn who the local Hounds are, and if possible, their routine. To quote Sun Tzu “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight”. As an example, after running 3km from a train stop for a FTF, I discovered that that hound n0w0rries lived 3 blocks away. I ignore all FTFs in that area now, unless I know he is not around.

4. And the most important thing to know, Stay out of my territory!!!

Haha – love it thanks Hunter! Good luck with your future finds, not sure #4 will work…. but then I know the Welder pretty well too. Thanks for taking the time to sharing some of your tips to the newer members in our community.

Beginner Series #3 – I’m Puzzled, Where do I Start?

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There comes a time when a new geocacher starts to get a little more comfortable and practiced at the art of finding a traditional cache. Slowly you start to increase the level of difficulty on your hides from a 1.5 to a 2, maybe even a 2.5 and the same with the terrain ratings. You have started to recognise that hides are more than sistema containers, bisons and the familar mint tins.

But it is with this new found confidence that a new cacher starts to wonder what other cache types are out there and you ponder the blue question mark. There may even be a bold but rookie mistake of trying to find a mystery cache at the given coordinates, only to discover that there is nothing hidden there or that the coordinates are in some random, unusual place, like the centre of a round about or football oval.

Upon some reflection and even some research, there is a light bulb moment and the realisation that the coordinates are infact virtual and do not lead to the actual hide. There is some work to do before the real coordinates can be gleamed. These delightful caches are often referred to as mystery or puzzle caches, but to a new geocacher can seem to be a little confusing to know where to start.

So to help all the new geocachers within our community on where to start with one of these mystery/ puzzle caches, I caught up with the Puzzle Queen herself – OzHockeyChick aka Kirsten for some advice.

Thanks for chatting to me OzHockeyChick, can you please share with us when you started Geocaching and what got you into this crazy hobby we love?

I started geocaching early 2015, when the lovely xsurfergirlx introduced me to what was going to become my new addiction. It was the puzzle aspect that really piqued my interest. I’ve always loved puzzles, all kinds, from jigsaws to word search to kakuro, and everything in between.

Thankfully, the details of those little blue circles with white question marks (along with the orange ones) were briefly explained to me – enough to get me started on my journey past trads.

Puzzles can sometimes be daunting to a new geocacher, what advice do you give for those new to the game?

For those who haven’t had the benefit of an explanation of the various types, I would start here: https://www.geocaching.com/about/cache_types.aspx

I joined a few Facebook groups, and visited the only geocaching shop in Victoria at the time (GeoStuff – now in SA). It was there I found Cully Long’s “How to Puzzle Cache” book. I read it cover to cover, and enjoyed working my way through it, learning lots of tips and tricks.

I then began solving some mysteries in my local area. I quickly discovered the D rating and what that meant. So I chose one CO and began solving all his puzzles, beginning with the lower Ds and working my way up to the D5s. I found that sticking to one CO at a time, allowed me to get inside his/her head, and begin thinking along the same track. This has proven to be quite helpful in many puzzles since.

But how do you know where to start?

Unless the puzzle is glaringly obvious (crossword etc), I usually do a sequence of keystrokes….

Ctrl+A Ctrl+U Ctrl+F <!–

To break that down…

Ctrl+A selects the entire cache page. This lets you see if there’s any hidden (white) text.

Ctrl+U is the shortcut to see the source (html) code. It is here where a CO can hide more text using the “commenting” syntax of <!–some hidden text ->

So using Ctrl+F (shortcut for Find) and looking for the instances of <!– is a quick way of finding any hidden text here. Currently Groundspeak uses 9 such comments, eg Copyright, Google Tag Manager etc, so if the search comes back with 1 of 9, there’s nothing to see here. However, if it shows 1 of 10 or more, head on down to the 8th instance, and see what’s there.

Where do you learn puzzle solving techniques?

The book mentioned above was my first main source. The Geocaching Toolbox and dCode are other useful places to visit. There are also various multi-solvers available, but I rarely use them. I like to know how the cipher/code actually works, and dCode explains each one in detail. I find this a better way to learn about cryptography, rather than just throwing the ciphered text into a multi-solver and have it do all the heavy lifting for you. Each to their own. Of course, the more puzzles you solve, the more you learn, and are able to recognise or identify different methods.

I also engage the help of Google – a lot! It’s not uncommon for me to have 50 tabs open at any one time, following various leads.

Another wonderful source of information is our fantastic community. I try to get to as many events as I can. I often have cachers approach me to ask for a nudge on one of my puzzles, and of course, I’m happy to help. I’d rather give hints and have my puzzle caches found, than have them discarded to the “too hard” pile and not get found.

Do you have a favourite type of puzzle?

I do like multi-layered puzzles. Once you have solved one part, it leads you to another. A bit like unwrapping a pass-the-parcel.

Anything involving maths, geometry, physics, I find quite challenging and rather satisfying to solve.

I also like the printed puzzles (sudoku, crosswords, kakuro etc), and have a number of bound booklets of these sorts of puzzles, which are great to take away off-grid camping.

Thanks so much OzHockeyChick for giving our beginners a great place to start. I am sure you have given some food for thought for those starting out. You have plenty of your own puzzles hidden which might be great to learn and build upon a geocachers puzzle solving repertoire.

For additional tips and tricks, we suggest you also look at this page for ideas.

Beginner Series #2 – The Art of Log Writing

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The excitement of finding your first few geocaches, is often followed by the wonderment and awe of the hide. It is common for us to start with entry level hides (mint tins, sistema containers, perhaps even bisons), but as you start to explore further afield you discover that the variety of the containers are vast and so many caches have great camo, cleverly hidden in plain sight.

Often though, the excitement is not captured in the written logs of a new geocacher, and it can be common to not appreciate the value of the digital log. As we get more involved in the game, we try for harder more complex caches and undoubtably come faced with a cache that we just can’t find. It’s often at this stage, we trawl through the logs of past finds skimming for clues and realise that there is more to a log than…..

Found it… Got it…Good one!

TFTC! (How cool am I that I know the acronym!)

I remember this moment as a beginner and started to notice that there was much more to writing a short note and that I could actually be more creative with my entries. I started to have a deeper appreciation for logs and discovered that I could actually get to know my local geocachers. But aside from that, as I became a Cache Owner myself, I started to love and enjoy the logs from the finders of my own caches. Years on, I still love a really good log!

To explore this concept further, I recently spoke with Brain aka Angus to hear his thoughts on creative log writing, as he too is known for inspiring geocachers through the art of log writing.

Hi Brain, please share with us when you started Geocaching and what got you into this crazy hobby we love?
Once upon a time it was mid-January in 2015 and a smaller version of me read a newspaper article explaining a fun little game involving hidden containers around the world and it sounded pretty good! I was on holiday on the far south coast of New South Wales at the time and found my first few that day with my family – we all really enjoyed it and I’ve since found that I am physically unable to stop which is a little concerning but mainly fun!


There has definitely been commentary amongst our community for the great logs you have written, tell us where do you get your inspiration?
You’re too kind! A lot can happen in the process of solving and finding a geocache, and many of my logs are just transcribing the events of the world around me (perhaps with a few embellishments here and there – lets not let the truth get in the way of a good story!).

A few sentences explaining the context of the hunt can build the foundations of a substantial log pretty quickly, and from there the experience of finding the cache tends to form the rest (the more intricate the cache, the more inspiration there is to be found). Often times I find that the easiest ones to write are when something’s gone wrong, or when I can’t find a cache – but why not share the adventure and sometimes the pain!


Why is log writing an important aspect of the game?
Geocaching wouldn’t be the game that it is without the dedication of its cache owners and logs help to give something back to them! If a CO has gone to the effort of putting a great cache out, it’s usually because they want other people to enjoy it, so receiving a detailed log can really make their day. Plus, it helps to indicate to other cachers which ones are worth their time.


For newbies to geocaching what advice can you share on ‘how to write a great log?”

Start small! It’s easy to think that “great log = long log” but that isn’t always the case – focus on getting the main points down:

  • What do you want the CO to know?
  • What do you want other cachers to know?
  • What do you want to remember about the cache and experience if you read your log in a few years’ time?
  • Is there anything else interesting worth mentioning?
  • But just remember never give way the location or placement of the hide in your logs, as it can ruin it for the next set of finders….and you might end up with a grumpy CO!

From here you can expand the details from there if you want to. You don’t have to write an A+ essay, just something that you (and hopefully others) would enjoy reading. Writing logs comes more naturally over time, so keep up the effort as you find more caches!

Thanks Brain, that is great advice – can you share with us one of your favourite logs (that you have written?)
I more commonly find that I like certain bits of logs that I’ve written – a sentence or two that sticks in my head for a while after I’ve written the log. My (current) favourite (it usually changes) is from my log on GC2JD7V: Balnarring The Headache Maker which reads:

“I pretty much entered a state of shock as is all too common in my puzzling escapades where I am simultaneously overjoyed that the puzzle is solved and bewildered by the fact that I have managed to keep myself breathing for so long despite being this stupid.”

And a quick note to include my favourite logs that I haven’t written… I frequently find myself going back through the archives of those written by the hamfish. Regularly poignant, often humourous and beautifully crafted every time – highly recommend a read.

Haha thanks Brain for your insights, you certain have given some great tips to think about! But it is important to call out, is that we all do play the game differently, some love the hunt, others lovely the social events, whilst others love the creative expression of logs. We are not all going to embrace and embellished stories of our caching adventures, nor will we all share in the woes of the DNF nemisis – but it’s nice to share some of the etiquette associated with what you should or should not add to a log.

I encourage us all that if we receive a log from a new geocacher, to remember that we were were all newbies at some stage and it takes time to learn the etiquette relating to log writing – you can always reach out to them and welcome them to our community and perhaps give them some tips.

Keen to hear your thoughts, who in the community inspires you through their logs? Share some of your favourite logs below!

Caching with our Geo-Dogs

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Hands up all you dog lovers out there!!

Who doesn’t love geocaching with our furry friends often affectionately referred to as Geo-Dogs or Geo-Pups. I know that since my Geo-Pup joined our family Ally became an integral part of our family, she often accompanies Ross and I on geocaching day trips or weekends away!

But caching with our Geo-Dogs does come with responsibility and I thought that I would share a couple of thoughts on some “Geo-Dog Etiqutte”

Geo-Dog Etiquette and Reminders

  1. When attending geocaching events with our dogs, they must always remain on a short lead. As much as we love our furry friends, not everyone is comfortable with dogs (large or small) and some in our community also have allergies to dogs. By keeping our dogs on a lead, it helps to encourage an environment where everyone is safe and comfortable to attend events. Leads should be short and not retractable so as to keep our Geo-Dogs close by our side.

  1. When it comes to dog training, we have a community with a whole lot of different expectations, so some general principles should apply.
    • Don’t let your dogs jump on others or on picnic furniture
    • Ask permission of the dog owner before you pat or hug a Geo-Dog (no matter how cute they are)
    • If meeting another Geo-Dog, ask permission of owner that your dogs can meet. Some smaller dogs or puppies may still be learning to be around bigger, well trained dogs.
    • Be prepared that dogs will poop and you will need to clean up after them

  1. Assistance Dogs (Service Dogs, Guide Dogs or Hearing Dogs) should wear their coats to signifiy to others that they play a special role in your life and that they are working. It is really important that we don’t pat an assistance dog, as they are trained to provide love and support to their owner. But they are working hard in their role and we should respect that.

  1. We can’t actually take our Dogs to all cache locations so it is important that we do our research before we take our furry friends caching! Some things to consider:
    • National Parks – Dogs are not allowed in most National Parks in Victoria. As a general rule, driving through a national park on a public road with pets in the vehicle are permitted, provided they remain in the car. But this is not always the case, so be sure to check and plan your journey ahead of time.
    • State Forests – Most State Forests are open to dogs, but there are a few exceptions. So be sure to do your research and confirm each location.

  1. If you are lucky enough to be caching with your Geo-Dog, be sure to give him or her a special mention in your log, because who doesn’t love a good shout out when you have done a good job helping to sniff out a geocache! Maybe even share a photo of your geo pups adventure in finding the cache.

An Evening Chat with ABC’s David Astle and GVI’s President Jo Cox (aka heymissjo)

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David Astle is a well loved author, radio presenter, crossword maker and a self proclaimed word nerd. You may have seen him on SBS’s Letters and Numbers, or perhaps completed one of his crosswords as the author of both the Age and Herald Sun puzzles.

On a recent hike in Yackandandah, David stumbled across a group of cachers fossicking around in the bush. This both excited and interigued him and after chatting to the group, he decided it was time to learn more about this crazy game we know as geocaching.

Last night, Geocaching Victoria’s President Jo Cox, was a guest on his ABC ‘Evenings with David Astle’ radio program. This was a great opportuinity to promote our great game and share on mainstream media. We hope you enjoy the interview.