We promised to provide an update early in the year on the next Victorian Mega, and we know you are all keen to hear more.
We have been working behind the scenes on initial plans for the next Victorian Mega. However, with November 2024 fast approaching, and some important matters still to resolve, the committee has decided that an early 2025 event (March-ish) would be a more practical date. This allows appropriate time for the committee to finalise dates and location, whilst providing attendees with more time to plan. It also gives us the opportunity to potentially turn the event into a Block Party!
We will soon be looking for volunteers to join the Mega Committee, however we are thrilled to welcome Connie from ConnieandRick on board to lead the next Victorian event. Connie has shown a keen interest in giving back to the community and we are excited to have her support on this next adventure. Without the help of people from the community, we would be unable to host the next big event – Thank You Connie!
We look forward to sharing with you more details about the location and specific dates for the 2025 event in coming months.
Rest assured, we still have plenty of other events on the agenda for 2024, including Geocaching Victoria’s 10th Birthday celebrations later in the year. In the meantime we hope you are also taking the opportunity to enjoy some of the many other big interstate events happening this year.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to any of the committee members.
It’s been a big 2023 and as the year comes to a close, we’d like to give a big shout out to all of the geocachers in our wonderful community. Whether you have published a new cache for others to find, hosted or attended an event, helped someone solve a puzzle or find a tricky hide, or shared a great log for the CO to read, you have all contributed to making 2023 a great caching year.
We’d especially like to thank everyone who has volunteered their time throughout the year or supported us through the purchase of merchandise, donations, or recycling your cans and bottles. Every little bit helps.
Here are just some of the things that happened in 2023:
February – The Ballarat GeoTour celebrated its 2nd year (how quickly time flies).
April – Our first Easter Mega was held in Rutherglen with a long weekend extravaganza.
May – We celebrated all our volunteers and announced the amazing list of nominees for the 2022 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards.
June – Makers Magic was happening all over the state including a huge celebration in Mitcham showcasing gadgets, games, presentations and cache painting to name just a few of the activities.
June – Victoria celebrated 21 years of geocaching events, returning to the site of the very first event in the Lerderderg State Park to celebrate.
July – The Cachemas in July festival took off, bringing together 100 smileys from 75 different CO’s as well as a big family Cachemas lunch at Kensington Town Hall.
August – The community celebrated International Geocaching Day with another Great Victorian Cache Crawl starting in Ararat and finishing in Upper Ferntree Gully – 10 stops (including a midnight event).
October – Geocaching Victoria turned 9. Double digits next year!
November – Popcorn, choc tops, and a huge theatre set the scene for our Geocaching International Film Festival event with special guests, Peoples Choice Award winners, chooknchunk.
November – Glitz and Glamour was in order as we crowned the winners of our 2022 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards while enjoying dinner and trivia.
All of that in amongst a number of community “Introduction to geocaching” sessions, hosting some geocaching activities for schools, and working with other community organisations.
There is plenty in the works for 2024. We’ll be starting with a First Aid initiative in February (stay tuned) as well as saying farewell to the Ballarat GeoTour. There is lots more to come.
As we wrap up the year, here are some of our state’s geocaching statistics for you. They may even prompt you to start filling some of the less common gaps:
Total 2023 hides: 1,615 (inc 320 event type caches)
Favourites accumulated on 2023 hides: 4,451
Total finds on 2023 caches (non event): 34,627
Event attendances: 6,974
Average D/T: 1.98 / 1.89
Most common/Least common difficulty: 1.5 (538) / 4.5 (6)
Most common/Least common terrain: 1.5 (639) / 4.5 (9)
No. of D/T combos with nil placements in 2023: 17
Most common/Least common size: Small (586) / Large (32)
Most common/Least common type: Traditional (865) / Wherigo (8)
LGAs with most new hides: Northern Grampians, Greater Geelong & Wangaratta
LGAs with no new hides : Warrnambool, Buloke & Loddon
No. of unique cachers with 12 or more finds (average 1 per month): 2,380
No. of unique cachers with 365 or more finds (average 1 per day): 166
No. of unique hiders: 326
Note: These stats are based on “Placed Date” and were generated on 30/12/2023 therefore will exclude some late logs and event attendances for the final days of 2023. Some statistics are limited due to the availability of data and time constraints.
Will you be the next cacher to hide a large cache? Perhaps you’d like to fill in your D/T grid? Looking to find a few more caches than you did this year? Or maybe you’d like to be the first hider to place a D4.0/T4.5 cache in over 12 months.
Whatever your geocaching goals for 2024, we hope you have a wonderful new year, and get off to a great start this January.
From all the team at Geocaching Victoria, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It was a star-studded affair on Saturday night as geocachers from all over the state gathered to celebrate the 2022 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards and Trivia Night. Out went the usual caching attire and in came bow ties, pom poms, and even an orchestral ensemble (of sorts)!
The stage had been set, with approximately 1,500 non event caches hidden across Victoria in 2022. The community had found, explored and pondered which of those were worthy of being nominated as a treasure master for 2022. The nominations were tallied and cross checked in order to produce a shortlist across twelve cache, adventure lab and log categories (list available here). A list that spread far and wide, including the newest of cachers and experienced royalty. Congratulations to everyone who hid a cache, lab or wrote a log in 2022, and especially those that were identified as extra special by the community.
It was then time to go out and explore and marvel in the calibre of geocaches on offer. Which hide amazed you with a great location? Which log had you in stitches over the antics one goes to in order to gain a smiley? Was it a devilish hide and GPS sorcery that took your fancy, or a cache construction to rival Victoria’s Big Build?
With the votes in, and the crowd gathered, it was time to announce and honour the winners. Drum roll please…
…and the winners for the 2022 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards are:
We wish to acknowledge all of the amazing sponsors for this years awards who very generously donated prizes:
BernieH
bunadoorian
Grub62
ILookedThere
OzHockeyChick
posums
Anonymous
Generous Cacher
Mystery Cacher
Your friendly neighbourhood cacher
Profile Badge and Cache Page Banner
You can share your nomination/win in the 2022 Victorian Cache of the Year Awards with fellow cachers by doing the following:
Add a badge to your profile, proudly sharing with the community that you were a nominee/winner
Add a banner to your cache page to let finders know your cache was part of the 2022 awards.
Visit this link to find the badge and banner for you.
Trivia
Since both Robbie Williams and Christina Aguilera double booked being the entertainment for our event on Saturday night (rude!), we opted for a spot of trivia! It was time to test who pays attention at some of the finer geocaching details, and who knows their Eggs and Bacon Bay from their $10 notes.
With 13 teams vying for the first prize, generously donated by Grub62, Our friendly neighbourhood cacher, and Bunnings Mernda, we made our way through the minefields of caching avatars, Australian & general knowledge, geocaching facts and finally pop culture trivia.
Congratulations to our runners up “I don’t know” (well you obviously did!) and our winners “SPOFLs” who brought their own cheer squad (themselves).
Thats a Wrap!
Special thanks to CeeJayDenno and Hampton RSL for providing the venue and great food on the night, and to Hooded Hooligans who provided the sound system.
Congratulations to everyone that was nominated for an award. A huge thank you to everyone who nominated, voted and sponsored awards.
If you are looking to get started on the amazing caches for 2023, why not check out our Great Caching Lists page which is constantly evolving. There are lists to help you identify all of the first time hiders in 2023 (go out and give their caches some love), all of the traditional and non traditional hides of the year so far, as well as others like pole caches, SideTracked and many more. Don’t forget to add your favourite caches to your own list, so that you are ready to nominate for next years awards.
The smell of popcorn wafted through the theatre as 100 geocachers descended on the Knox Community Arts Centre on Saturday. The candy bar was alive with conversation as the cachers stocked up on choc tops, popcorn, lollies and slushies in preparation for the movie madness that was about to begin.
Film enthusiasts pondered what cinematic wonders were ahead in the 2023 Geocaching International Film Festival (GIFF), while others grappled with the critical decisions of boysenberry or mint.
The excitement was building (spilling over in the image below) as everyone took their seats in the plush theatre. The lights slowly dimmed, and the reel began.
18 amazing short films made the finals. Some serious, some hilarious, some unusual, but all based on the activity we all love – Geocaching. A significant amount of work having gone into each and every one of them. Congratulations to all of the finalists.
There was however one film the crowd were eager to see, “Geocare – Home for the Aged Geocacher”. The movie marvel from Victoria’s very own chooknchunk. With the director and producer in the room, and many of the cast and crew in the audience, expectations were high.
As the title flashed up on the screen a silence fell over the crowd. It lasted for all of a microsecond as the cheers began, followed by 3 minutes of laughter as the antics of the residents of Geocare played out. As the curtain closed there was a resounding round of applause. I think the crowd loved it – so much so there was an encore at the end. Congratulations!
The audience voted on their favourite movie (no prizes for guessing the most popular). The top 5 crowd favourites are listed below. When the Peoples Choice winner is announced by Geocaching HQ, those that voted for the winner during the event will go into a random draw to win a Geocaching Victoria prize pack.
If you haven’t voted in the Peoples Choice Award yet, scan the QR code or click it to follow the link to the voting form.
Thank you to the Geocaching Victoria committee and the band of volunteers who helped pull this event together. A very special thank you to Kristysadventures and muggle Lauren for all of their efforts to ensure the GIFF event was a huge success.
There were lots of snaps taken of the event, with a selection shown below.
It’s been a long time since Pat Cash was encouraging us to “cash a can” at your local aluminum recycling centre. Over time, all other mainland states except Victoria progressively moved to a container deposit scheme (10 cents for recycled cans and bottles). That is of course until this week. Introducing CDS VIC, otherwise know as the Container Deposit Scheme Victoria.
Victorians use more than 3 billion drink containers a year and many of these are not currently recycled. The deposit scheme not only provides better recycling outcomes, but it aims to reduce litter by up to half! That means the communities CITO efforts can reach even further than before with less potential rubbish to start with.
Partnering with CDS VIC
Geocaching Victoria is collaborating with CDS VIC as a donation partner. This means you can choose to donate your 10c refunds to Geocaching Victoria when depositing your cans and bottles at drop off centres all over the state. It may not sound like much, but every little bit helps to fund events, activities, and more.
How can I support Geocaching Victoria?
The simplest and easiest way is to scan the barcode below when returning cans and bottles at recycling depots and reverse vending machines. You don’t need to setup an account and any deposit refund will automatically be donated to Geocaching Victoria – with thanks!
Right click on the barcode image below to save it to your phone, add it to your notes, or even as a phone contact for easy access.
Alternatively, if you have set up an account with your local CDS VIC provider, you can choose Geocaching Victoria as your donation payout option in the app. This allows you to scan your own barcode in the app and donations will be paid based on the payout option selected.
The state is divided into three zones, and each has their own app. Use the map above to identify your local operator and click on the relevant link below for more details and to download the app.
Donations are anonymous and can be one off contributions or ongoing. All donations are greatly appreciated.
Recycling at Events and CITOs
We will be collecting cans and bottles for recycling at Geocaching Victoria events going forward – look out for the tub to deposit any empty containers. If you have some cans and bottles floating around at home, feel free to drop them off at our events, we will happily recycle them for you. Please don’t crush cans and bottles as they are not able to be returned.
Hopefully the deposit scheme will reduce the number of containers found when collecting rubbish at CITOs. For those that are still found lying around, one option COs might like to consider is donating the deposits collected to Geocaching Victoria. If this is something you might like to consider, feel free to contact one of our committee members for further help. Where a CITO is partnered with another organisation, they may also have a recycling initiative you may be able to support.
We will add some additional resources to our website soon to assist with donating, or collecting at events and CITOs.
This is a great program for improving our environment with the added benefit of helping many local not for profit organisations to fundraise. And you can still collect the ring pulls without impacting refunds!
NOTE: At the time of publication, there was a delay in the eastern region processing donation partner registrations. As a result Geocaching Victoria might not be available for selection in this zone in the first week of the program.
