And so another fortnight rolls around and we are now 174 days until the next MEGA event in Australia and what will be the fourth MEGA event in Victoria. As always there are plenty of things happening behind the scenes to ensure that The Parkville Event 2018 will deliver an experience like no other.
Of course we are pleased to see the Will Attends continue to rise, almost daily now. But we are finding more and more that there are many out there who think they have logged their Will Attend, but have not. The reason why this is important is because the free event bag, the free event guide and all the other goodies that we give away at our MEGA events are only given away to people who have logged a Will Attend. We do not have a seperate registration process. The number of these freebies that we produce and have on site for the weekend is always dependent on the number of Will Attends that the event has received. In the end, if you haven’t logged your Will Attend then you are of course more than welcome to still come along and enjoy the fun, excitement, games and the atmosphere that you always get at a MEGA event, but you may miss out on the freebies. Of course we don’t want people logging Will Attends if they don’t intend on coming, but if you do intend on coming it might pay to double check that you have 100% logged your Will Attend, and while you’re at it, it may pay to check that your friends have too.
And whilst we are talking about people who are attending this fantastic event, how about considering taking your involvement with this event just that one step further and volunteering to help out behind the scenes for a couple of hours? Every year we rely on volunteers to man the registration desks, direct traffic, run information sessions, and provide 1st aid as well as all manner of other jobs too. The more people we get volunteering the fewer onuses is put on the volunteers who do put their hand up and that way everyone gets to enjoy the MEGA experience. We are still not looking for anything concrete at the moment, just expressions of interest. You can register your interest by following this link and filling out the volunteer registration form.
The next BIG announcement is the production of a new GEOCOIN! That’s right; a new geocoin entitled The Parkville Village coin is being produced in very small quantities. This coin, on its front, has the image of our little mascot Fern snuggled in to his bed at the Urban Camp accommodation, on the back is the Geocaching Victoria logo. The coin comes in hardened enamel with its own distinct tracking code. So how do you get your hands on this immensely cute geocoin? Well the simple answer is, you can’t unless you have purchased accommodation at The Urban Camp on the weekend of the Parkville Event 2018 MEGA. That’s right, everybody who has booked a bed over the last few months to stay at Urban Camp on the MEGA weekend will be presented, for free, with one of these super cute and super rare geocoins to commerate their stay at Parkville for the weekend. So if you’ve been thinking about getting a bed at Urban Camp for the weekend of the MEGA, then it’s time to hurry up. There are only a limited number of beds available and for a price similar to a backpackers hostel (but without the weird smells) you can not only get a bed on location of this fabulous MEGA event for the whole weekend, but you also get
- Free pick up from the airport if you are coming in from overseas or interstate
- Early registration on the Friday so you can avoid the long queues on the Saturday morning
- Having the MEGA event at your doorstep for the entire weekend
- PLUS now you get a super cool and super cute, and let’s not forget VERY limited edition, GEOCOIN which you can show off to all your geocaching friends.
How awesome is that! Prices for a bed start at just $130 for the weekend (that’s just $65 a night) they can be booked by following this link.
It came to our attention through the week that many people don’t know that the schedule for many of the planned activities has already been published. We did this a number of months ago purely so that people can start planning their weekend early. The schedule is filled with information sessions, games and many other activities. Of course, some of these may change slightly in the next few months as we fine tune things, but you can see the planned schedule at any time by following this link.
The next exciting bit of news that we have for you is that we have begun compiling Bookmark lists to help you better plan your weekend in Parkville in November. There are a number of bookmark lists that have been created which lists all of the Parkville geocaches that have been put out so far, as well as all of the multis, the challenges, the letterboxes and the trads. You can follow any of the links below to see more details
We will endeavour to keep these bookmark lists up to date over the next few months and add new bookmarks lists when possible.
Also, did you know that we have a FAQ page regarding this event? We get asked lots of questions every year about our MEGA events. This year we developed a FAQ page to answer the most asked questions for you. You can follow this link to that page and if your question isn’t answered there, you can click on the link at the bottom of the page and email us and we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.
So last weekend we released the exciting news that one of our sponsors, Bunnings, is allowing us to put on a traditional Bunnings sausage sizzle outside their store in Brunswick to raise fund for this MEGA event. Anyone who has ever run a large sized charity BBQ knows that they can be a LOT of work. So we are putting the word out that if you have experience with these larger charity BBQs and have some spare time on Satuday the 30th of June, then we would sincerely like to hear from you if you are willing to help out. We have put on a geocaching event (GC7NZGK) at the location so you can still get a smilie for your efforts too. You can get in contact with us by replying to this BLOG post, or by emailing us at info@geocachingvictoria.com.au
It is at this point that we would like to thank all of our sponsors who have at some stage and in some way lent us a hand to help put this event on. Bunnings, The City of Melbourne, Mc Donalds, pathtags.com, Coca Cola, The Clear Water Event in Queanbeyan and of course our MAJOR sponsors, Geostuff, Cachly and geocaching.com. As always we would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions that these sponsors make towards helping us put this event on and to keep it absolutely FREE for all those who attend.
And of course, don’t forget that the official The Parkville Event 2019 t-shirts are available at one place only. That’s right, Geostuff, the go to store for all location based gaming products is the only place where you can get the official t-shirts for this year’s event. Available in men’s, women’s and kid’s sizes, featuring our mascot Fern in his zoo keeper outfit and coming with options for customization to include your team name and personal tracking code, these are a fantastic buy. To find out more details, follow this link to the online geostuff store.
You may have missed it, but a few days ago it was announced that Geocaching Victoria has secured the venue for the 2019 MEGA event already. GCHQ has been notified and we are again very excited about our 2019 event. However, for the moment, we are obviously concentrating on our 2018 event in Parkville and are keeping the exact location of the 2019 event a secret. This does mean though that we can run a competition and the prize is the first of the as yet unannounced unobtanium Geocoins from the Parkville Event 2018. That’s right; you already have a chance to win an unobtanium coin from the Parkville Event 2018 just by trying to guess the location of our 2019 MEGA! The event will be held on the weekend of the 16th and 17th of November, 2019. It will be held in a smaller country town, somewhere in the state of Victoria. To enter the competition, choose the exact spot that you think will be GZ for our 2019 MEGA event. Follow this link to our online form, which you can fill in fro free. Only one guess per person and those who are in the know are ineligible to enter. Entries will close on June the 30th, 2018; winners will be announced at The Parkville Event 2018.
And now on to the Lead Up events, and haven’t we captured the worlds imagination by holding lead up events for our MEGA event all over the globe. In the last couple of weeks we have had a couple more lead up events run on Saturday the 19th of May in Wyndham Vale, Victoria and then on Sunday the 20th of May in Kempsey in NSW.
Map of Lead Up events as of 27th May 2018
The event in Wyndham Vale (GC7NDHK) was hosted by committee member, ahomburg and saw 27 teams enjoy a glorious day where people chatted and generally enjoyed some great company. There were seasoned cachers and people brand new to the game and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves.
GC7NDHK – The Wyndham Vale Lead Up event
The event in Kempsey, NSW (GC7N1EX) was held for us by our long time supporter, ozglory and what a day the area put on for this event! Attended by 20 geocaching teams, both old and new, again everybody enjoyed some time in the sun chatting to friends. Many thanks go to ozglory for her continued support of our MEGA events.
GC7N1EX – The Kempsey Lead Up Event
Coming up later today we have an event held for us by our friends Diego and Dora in Newfoundland in Canada (GC7JW1Q) and then on the long weekend in Mildura on the 9th of June, committee member carkisser will be holding a lead up event for us there too (GC7P50Y). So look out for that one as well. In other fantastic news, the leader board detailing who has gained what points for attending these lead up events has finally been updated. Of course our intrepid committee member, Earthbound Chief is on the number one spot with a whopping 20 points, but like number 2 thewildroseoftexas who is on 12 points, they are both ineligible to win the ultimate prize as they have hosted at least one event. However, coming in at number 3 spot with 8 points we have a current winner for the most points gained by attending these events, but with nearly 50 eligible people sitting on 7 points, including a number of Australians, the final result is far from decided at this stage. You can check out this list of upcoming lead up events by following this link and you can check out the current leaderboard of points gained from attending and who the current winner is by following this link.
And finally we are on to the geocache of the fortnight. With that many geocaches in the area already and new ones being published all the time, it get increasingly difficult to choose one. However this week we are lucky enough to have had a couple of new night caches appear as part of the ever increasing Parkville series of caches. One in particular, GC7G06D – Parkville Multi 9 – A night around the park has been set for us by ahomburg who is an old hand at building high quality night caches and with the first three finders already giving it a FAV point each, it seems destined to become another “must do” geocache for people visiting Parkville in November.
The organizing committee would again like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is already working hard behind the scenes to make this event as amazing as possible. The Parkville Event 2018 promises to become quite an iconic MEGA event in the history of geocaching in Australia in no small part because of your help. Until the next BLOG post, happy caching!
Geocaching Victoria would like to announce that Geostuff, who were one of the major sponsors for the Parkville MEGA event, are now no longer a sponsor of the event. We would like to make it clear that this is not a result of any issues between Geocaching Victoria and the new owners of Geostuff. Geocaching Victoria and Geostuff both look forward to having a happy relationship through promoting the hobby of geocaching in the years to come. However, as the new owners of the Geostuff business have only just taken over control they have decided that they needed to get a better feel for the business before committing to such a large financial decision. Geocaching Victoria 100% supports them in this decision.
