Ok so we are a little behind with our updates but that’s because there is so much happening behind the scenes. Want to know what? Read on to find out more!

Hopefully a few of you have seen our event which is this coming Saturday the 30th of June, GC7NZGK, A gathering in Brunswick.. Our newest sponsor, Bunnings, is letting us run a traditional Bunnings BBQ at the Bunnings store in Brunswick to help raise funds for the upcoming MEGA event, The Parkville Event 2018. The actual geocaching event will run from 11am to 1pm, but we will be there from about 9am through until 4pm cooking and selling sausages. We would love everybody to come down to the Bunnings store in Brunswick and have a sausage to help support this MEGA event. If you can donate some time on the day by volunteering to help with the cooking and selling of some sausages please email info@geocachingvictoria.com.au ASAP!

Speaking of events did you know that the traditional Saturday Night event at the MEGA has now been published? See: GC7QBMC, The Parkville Saturday Night BBQ . Over the years we have developed a fine tradition of putting on a darn good feed on the Saturday night of our MEGA event and this year will be no exception. Held on the lawns outside of the Urban Camp, this BBQ will centre around some great BBQ food, plenty of conversation, fun and games as well as the presentation of some awards and geocoins. The recognition of some milestone that people have achieved is always nice to share with everybody, and of course the announcement of the new inductees to the now highly regarded Australian Geocacher Hall of Fame will take place. Make sure you log your will attend for catering purposes.

Now onto something everybody loves – GeoArt! Did you spot the 50 new puzzle #geocaches in the shape of Victoria which have just been published in and around the Parkville area? The puzzles have been created by a bunch of different cache owners across the state and throughout Australia and range from (relatively) easy to very very hard! There are still First to Finds (FTFs) up for grabs so get solving!

Speaking of FTF’s the sale of the FTF Tickets is going well. Don’t forget to buy your tickets as this raffle supports the amazing work done at Ronald McDonald House in Parkville. So if you are a FTF hound, or you just want to support a really great charity, then you can go in the draw to earn the right to call yourself the FTFer of The Parkville Event, 2018. You can purchase your tickets in this wonderful raffle by following this link!

Last blog post we mentioned a bonus coin for those staying onsite at Urban Camp. Spots have been filling 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 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, McDonalds, 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.

Onto the Lead Up Events! Our friends Diego and Dora in Newfoundland in Canada held an event on May 27th(GC7JW1Q). There was a decent turnout of 12 geocaching teams and even a little kangaroo made an appearance!

Committee member carkisser held an event in Mildura on the June 9th as part of the long weekend (GC7P50Y).  There were 5 geocaching teams present who chatted and enjoyed learning tips and tricks off other people.  

Committee member BernieH held an event in Vanuatu  on June 27th (GC7FHZD). There was a small turnout of only 3 geocaching teams but by all accounts the conversation was good and the ice cream was yummy!

There are a few lead up events in the next few weeks:

June 30th – Adelaide, Australia GC7N9BR

July 3rd – Madrid, Spain GC7QBKH

July 8th – Reykjavik, Iceland GC7NYND

July 14th – Ballarat, Australia GC7QBN4

July 21st – Murray Bridge, Australia GC7RE65

You can check out even more upcoming lead up events by following this link.

And finally we move on to the geocache(s) of the fortnight and this time we are returning to the ever increasing range of geocaches that have been put out as part of this MEGA.  So far we have seen traditional caches, multi caches, letterbox hybrid caches, geoart and some challenge caches appearing. Now it’s time to highlight some new Wherigo caches. And the best thing about these Wherigo’s are that they are “play anywhere” cartridges. This means that you don’t need to be onsite to enjoy them. You can spend time at home working through the cartridges and then pick up the cache when you are down at the MEGA. How cool is that!  The new Wherigo caches are…

GC7FWZ4, Parkville Wherigo 1: Haunted House

GC7G5M6, Parkville Wherigo 2: Forbidden Island

Once again Geocaching Victroria and the Parkville Event organizing committee would like to thank everyone who is contributing towards this event.  The amount of effort that is being put in by all sections of the geocaching community, not just in Victoria, but all around Australia and all around the world is amazing.  Thankyou one and all and we hope to see you all in Parkville in November.  Until the next BLOG post, happy caching!

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 1^st 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

• All the Parkville 2018 Caches
• Parkville 2018 Multi Caches
• Parkville 2018 Letterbox Caches
• Parkville 2018 Traditional Caches
• Parkville 2018 Challenge Caches

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 30^th 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 16^th and 17^th 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 30^th, 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 19^th of May in Wyndham Vale, Victoria and then on Sunday the 20^th 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 9^th 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!

Hopefully a few of you have seen our new event, GC7NZGK, A gathering in Brunswick, which will be held on Saturday the 30th of June. Our newest sponsor, Bunnings, is letting us run a traditional Bunnings BBQ at the Bunnings store in Brunswick to help raise funds for the upcoming MEGA event, The Parkville Event 2018. Of course we weren’t allowed to mention much of that on the actual event listing, but we can mention it as much as we like here!

The actual geocaching event will run from 11am to 1pm, but we will be there from about 9am through until 4pm cooking and selling sausages. Of course we would love everybody to come down to the Bunnings store in Brunswick and have a sausage to help support this MEGA event, but we are particularly interested in people who might be willing to donate some of their time to help cook the sausages, or maybe take the orders. If you have prior experience in being involved in larger charity BBQs through things like scouts or rotary or the like, or if you’ve been involved in a Bunnings BBQ before and you have some spare time on Saturday the 30th of June, we would dearly love to get in contact with you. You can either email us at info@geocachingvictoria.com.au, or reply to this post.  More hands make light work, so if you can help out, we’d love to hear from you.

And so another fortnight roles around and it is now less than 200 days until The Parkville Event, 2018.  More precisely, it is now 188 days until the big event and so it is time for another BLOG post to update everyone on all the stuff going on behind the scene in the lead up to this MEGA event and to let you all know what you can expect at this exciting location.

The first thing that we would like to mention is that the sale of the FTF tickets is going wonderfully, with over 80 tickets sold in the FTF raffle so far, and we assume many more to come, this is proving to be a great way to raise funds for our chosen charity, The Ronald McDonald House in Parkville.  So if you are a FTF hound, or you just want to support a really great charity, then you can go in the draw to earn the right to call yourself the FTFer of The Parkville Event, 2018.  All proceeds from the raffle go to Ronald McDonald House in Parkville. You can purchase your tickets in this wonderful raffle by following this link!

In some other exciting news, the “Will Attends” just keep rolling in.  But one “Will Attend” log has stood out to us a little more than some of the others this week.  We are very excited that for the third year in a row a Lackey from Geocaching HQ will be attending the MEGA event here in Victoria.  Nykkole logged a “Will Attend” a few days ago and we very much look forward to having her join us and to show her what a fantastic MEGA event we put on in the great state of Victoria.

Also, don’t forget that there is still one place and one place only where you can get your official The Parkville Event t-shirts.  That’s right, Geostuff, the home of all things to do with location based gaming is the only place that you can get these wonderful t-shirts.  These t-shirts come in men’s, women’s and kid’s sizes and have our little mascot Fern in his favourite zoo keeper outfit.  Custom embroidery options are also available for you to include your personal team name and tracking code on each t-shirt and starting from less than $36 this represents amazing value for money.  You can check out the range by following this link and remember; all orders are pre-orders for either delivery or pick up at the store when stock arrives or for pick up at The Parkville Event, 2018 on the weekend of the event.

Of course Geostuff is one of our major sponsors and we would like to thank them as well as our other major sponsors, Cachly and geocaching.com who through providing the finances has allowed us to continue the wonderful tradition of providing an annual MEGA event that is absolutely free to attend.  No cost attendance for not just our MEGA events, but for every event that we run, is something Geocaching Victoria has strived to do ever since our inception way back in 2014.  We are only ever able to do this through raising funds by the sale of merchandise and of course our generous sponsors.

And while we are on the topic of sponsors, we have yet another exciting new sponsor who has jumped on board.   The Parkville Event 2018 and Geocaching Victoria are pleased to announce our new sponsor, The Clear Waters Geocaching event set for Easter 2019 in Queanbeyan, is our new Sponsor.  The Clear Waters event can be found by following this link, GC7MVHE and is now published and open for Will Attends.  Located just 1 km from the nation’s capital of Canberra, it’s expected to be a caching event not to be missed with thousands of local cache hides, tourism highlights, 4WD regions, and 5 days at the event site starting Thursday 20th April, 2019.  The website will be available in the near future for registrations, camping and powered site bookings, official Geocoin sales and meal details.  As well as details on pathtag sets, the daily itinerary, and all the activities based around the greater Canberra region.  All the Canberra geocaching teams are looking forward to your attendance and welcoming you to Queanbeyan and Canberra.  More updates will be here on the event FB page by following this link.  How very exciting and of course Geocaching Victoria wish the OZ MEGA committee and all the geoaching teams associated with this event the very best of luck with what certainly promises to be a very exciting event next Easter.

But back now to Parkville where our MEGA event is being held at the amazing Urban Camp.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Urban Camp, it is a wonderful place that has a goal of “bringing together the country and the city in a unique camping experience”.  Urban camp is designed for sporting and community groups who want to visit Melbourne and explore Melbourne’s cultural, educational and recreational attractions.  With a large hall area that will be used as the main focus for the event plus a number of conference rooms that will be being used for the many information sessions that we have planned, as well as free parking only 200 meters away and of course easy access to the public transport network and bike paths, Urban Camp has presented an ideal space for this Geocaching MEGA event.  Plus, we are able to offer accommodation for anyone who wants to stay right at GZ and be amongst the excitement from dawn to dusk all weekend for a price that’s comparable to a back-packers hostel, but of course without the funny smells.  Accommodation starts at just $130 for the weekend (that’s just $65 a night) and includes early registration so you don’t have to wait in line on Saturday morning, free pick up from the airport if you are flying in from overseas or interstate as well as a host of other exciting bonuses.  You can book your accommodation by following this link.  Also, if you would like to learn more about the Urban Camp venue, you can follow this link to their website where there is lots of information and photos.

But this MEGA event isn’t going to be just confined to the Urban Camp building anymore either.  It has been confirmed that one of our newest sponsors, the Melbourne City Council have approved Geocaching Victoria to use the entire of Lawn 7 at Royal Park for the weekend of the MEGA event.  As can be seen in the map to the left, shaded in grey, Lawn 7 extends from all around the Urban Camp venue across the expanse of park south of the State Netball and Hockey centre all the way to the tram line and down to Elliot Avenue.  It is a huge gesture for the MCC to allow us to use this space and really opens up the possibilities that we can explore with regards to the Victorian Geocaching Tournament that is making a welcome return, the LAB caches that will be available and of course hosting our traditional Saturday night event that is always VERY exciting.  All this will mean that Urban Camp and the parkland directly surrounding it will be the focus of the MEGA event for the entire weekend, so if you’re looking for a place to stay that is going to be easy to get back to following all the fun of the day, then Urban Camp is the place to be.

Just a quick mention too that the standard geocoin, limited edition geocoin and pathtags are still available at our webstore.  The standard geocoin represents excellent value for money at only $16, the pathtags are available in either a trading set for $15 where you get 5 of the same pathtag and then you can trade with others during the event to obtain a full set, or you can purchase the full set for $25.  The pathtags were designed by Gloria from ozglory.  Also, the Limited Edition shaped geocoin is available in limited numbers too.  You can purchase any (or all) of these by following this link to our webstore.

And now onto our lead up events that are still causing a nice stir all around the world.  There have now been 25 lead up events held with plenty more still planned.  Not only have these events been held all around Victoria but so far also in Western Australia, Tasmania, NSW and the Northern Territory.  We have also had lead up events in New Zealand, USA, UK, Italy, Norway, Germany, Czech Republic, Sweden, France and Singapore, so we are really trying to show the rest of the world how fantastic our MEGA events are here in Australia.

Since our last BLOG post, there have been 5 new lead up events run.  The first, GC7HKFK, in Berlin Germany on Saturday the 28^th of April was held by our travelling committee member, Earthbound Chief where unfortunately only 4 teams turned up, but it would seem that Earthbound Chief made some nice new German friends who were all very excited about the prizes and giveaways provided by Geocaching Victoria.  The weather was again fantastic, which it has been for most of our lead up events this year and an Australian flag made an appearance.

GC7HKFK – The Berlin Lead Up event.

The next event was a little closer to home, but still quite a distance away in Darwin, Northern Territory.  GC7JHT5 was held by our good friends, corunnaroad on the Nightcliff foreshore on the morning of Saturday the 28^th of April.  Given this was the 87^th event ever held in the Northern Territory and about the 36^th ever held in Darwin, we think the turnout of 4 teams (the same as what we got in Berlin, Germany) is fantastic!

Then, all the way back to Europe in Sweden, our good friend Ingabo (who has already logged a Will Attend for Parkville and has their accommodation and flights booked) hosted an event, GC7JA3M, for us on the morning of the 5^th of May.  As always the weather held off and a number of teams enjoyed a boomerang throwing competition and according to all the logs on the listing, throwing boomerangs is much harder than it was demonstrated in the you tube videos!  Look out for Ingabo at The Parkville Event 2018 MEGA, he has just topped 73,800 finds and has plenty more planned before he arrives in Australia later this year!

GC7JA3M – The Swedish Lead Up Event

Still in Europe, on the same day, in the city of love, Paris, France and our intrepid committee member Earthbound Chief held another small event, GC7HKF2 in what was described as a beautiful Parisian morning.  Only 3 teams turned up, but Earthbound Chief provided valuable lessons to the local geocaching community on getting the Australian accent right so they will all be ready when they make their way to Melbourne for The Parkville Event.

GC7HKF2 – The Paris Lead Up Event

Finally, on Friday the 11^th of May in the busy city of Singapore, Earthbound Chief once again held a lead up event for us, GC7HKGE in the heart of this massive city.  Expectantly our intrepid traveller set up at GZ, but unfortunately the turnout was as dismal as an event once held on the Nullarbor Plain in the middle of the Australia desert back in 2016 with only the event holder actually turning up.  We would of course still like to thank Earthbound Chief for all his effort in not only this event but all the events he has held across the world for us during his travels.

In the coming couple of weeks we still have plenty more lead up events planned.  Much closer to home in the Melbourne suburb of Wyndham Vale we have GC7NDHK which will be held on the morning of Saturday the 19^th of May by our committee member, ahomburg.  Then on Sunday the 20^th of May our friend and massive supporter, ozglory is holding an event, GC7N1EX, in their hometown of Kempsey in NSW. And finally, back overseas again and this time into another new country, our friends Diego and Dora are hosting an event, GC7JW1Q, for us in Newfoundland in Canada on Sunday the 27^th of May.  We look forward to all the logs and pictures from these events too.

And finally we move on to the geocache(s) of the fortnight and this time we are returning to the ever increasing series of geocaches being put out along the bike trails and walking tracks that snake out from the MEGA event location.  So far we have seen traditional caches, multi caches and some challenge caches appearing in this series of geocaches, but on Saturday the 29^th of April we saw the first of the letterbox hybrid caches get published.  4 letter box hybrids that explore different areas of Melbourne but which are all easily accessible from the many bike tracks and walking trails in the area, so no driving required.  One letterbox from sharkiefan, one from day1976 and two from Robmc these all show the various different styles and types that a letterbox hybrid can be and of course go a long way towards providing a varied caching experience for anyone attending the Parkville Event 2018 MEGA in November.  The new letter box caches are…

• GC7FRRC – Parkville Letterbox 1 – 3056
• GC7FWXX – Parkville Letterbox 2 -The Pirates Letterbox
• GC7G5MJ – Parkville Letterbox 4 – Seychelles Letterbox
• GC7FWZN – Parkville Letterbox 5 – Kirkdale Park

This brings the total geocaches within the 12 kilometres of GZ of the MEGA event to 885, which includes 19 earth caches, now 12 letterbox hybrids, 154 multi caches, 554 traditional caches, 10 virtuals and 6 wherigos.  With plenty more new caches still in the pipeline, this number is sure to grow further.

Just before we go though, we would like to remind everyone that Geocaching Victoria has already started looking for people who may want to participate in next years Melbourne Trailwalker Event to raise funds for the Oxfam Charity. This is an event that we have a proud history supporting and we will do so again in 2019. Full details can be found by reading our previous BLOG post one the subject.

Once again Geocaching Victroria and the Parkville Event organizing committee would like to thank everyone who is contributing towards this event.  The amount of effort that is being put in by all sections of the geocaching community, not just in Victoria, but all around Australia and all around the world is amazing.  Thankyou one and all and we hope to see you all in Parkville in November.  Until the next BLOG post, happy caching!

Hello and welcome everyone to this fortnight’s BLOG post for the upcoming The Parkville Event 2018 MEGA event.  There are now 202 days until this massive geocaching event kicks off and as always we have lots of news for you in regards to everything that has been happening behind the scenes in making this event the best that it can possibly be.

The first point of business is to welcome two new committee members to the organizing committee for the Parkville MEGA. 

The first is Steve Cody (scody) who has had a major hand in helping us organize every one of the MEGAs that we have held since the first one back in 2015.  Steve background in organizing large events for the scouts means he brings an enormous amount of talent and energy in organizing all of the back end logistics of these large events and we are very glad that he has decided to join us once again for 2018.  Steve will once again be heading up all the volunteers who generously donate their time for these MEGA events and generally ensuing that the whole event runs as smoothly as possible.  With his big hats, you won’t be able to miss Steve on the day.

The second new committee member is Gemma Siemensa (GemmaSistema) who has been asked to come on board as a committee member with a particular focus towards the traditional Saturday night event.  Gemma has held or has had a hand in organizing many events and CITOs over the years that she has been involved in geocaching and we look forward to working with her on The Parkville Event 2018 and the traditional Saturday night event too.

Steve and Gemma join the rest of the organizing committee, Louise Sullivan (LousieAnn), Bernie Hollaway (BernieH), David Fowler (Earthbound Chief), Karen Ashford (carkisser), Adriaan Homburg (ahomburg) and Day Gowland (day1976) to form the core group that are responsible for the running of this MEGA.

The geocoins and pathtags continue to sell well.  The limited edition coin has been VERY popular, but don’t forget for just $16 you can pick up the very nice standard edition coin.  With the image of our mascot Fern and his mates driving the iconic Melbourne tram on the front and the flip side being the brand new Geocaching Victoria logo this coin represents excellent value for money.  The coin comes in hardened enamel with black nickel sides, each one comes with its own unique tracking code so you can put it out in the wild and experience its adventures, or simply add it to your collection of mementos.  For more information, or to purchase one of these great coins, follow this link.

And don’t forget pathtags.  We’ve had a number of people snapping up the $15 trading set of pathtags lately.  These trading sets mean you get 5 of the same pathtag and then at the MEGA event you can trade with others to make up the full set.  We’ve made it a LOT easier this year to trade as we will be providing badges so other pathtag traders can recognize that you are looking to trade and which pathtags you are trading.  This is of course the whole point of pathtags, to trade them with others.  But of course, if you really want to just skip the whole trading thing, we have an option for that too.  For just $25 you can buy a fully made up, complete set of these pathtags.  To purchase either of these sets, just follow this link.

For the last couple of announcements we have put out the word that we are looking for volunteers to help us with all the back end of this event.  Our volunteers man the admin desks, look after the log book, sell raffle tickets, direct traffic, manage any 1^st aid that might be required, or maybe just take some of the many internationals who are attending out on caching runs.  There is a myriad of jobs that we have for our volunteers and we have been pleasantly surprised with the number of people who have put their hand up to say that they would like to help.  But of course many hands make light work, so if you think you could help out, even for just a few hours on one of the days, it would be greatly appreciated.  As we have said before, we understand that plans sometimes change and we won’t be holding anyone to anything, we really just need a good idea of who might be available to help out.  You can register your interest in volunteering for this event by filling out the registration form by following this link.

In further exciting news we have ANOTHER new sponsor come on board.  The Bunnings store in Brunswick, the nearest Bunnings store to the GZ of the Parkville Event 2018 has come on board as a sponsor and we couldn’t be happier.  Bunnings obviously stocks a lot of different stuff that is used in geocaching, in particularly in the creation of geocaches so we think this is an excellent fit for our event.  They join our many other minor sponsors, pathtags.com, McDonalds, Coca Cola and the Melbourne City Council and they join in with our wonderful MAJOR sponsors, geocaching.com, cachly and geostuff to make everything that we have planned actually happen. This is vitally important because every one of the MEGA events, as well as every normal event that Geocaching Victoria has ever held, is always and will always be completely 100% free to attend.  It is only with the support of these great companies that we are able to do this, so a BIG thank you to all of our sponsors!

And whilst we are on the topic of sponsors, one of our major sponsors, geostuff is still the only place that you can go to get the official t-shirt for The Parkville Event 2018.  Available in men’s women’s and kid’s sizes these great t-shirts have our mascot Fern dressed up in his zoo keeper outfit and will be very popular around the event.  You can check these out alongside a huge range of products relating to all sorts of location based games and also purchase these at geostuff’s on line store, by following this link.  Note: All orders are pre-orders for either delivery or pick up at the store when stock arrives or for pick up at The Parkville Event, 2018 on the weekend of the event.

Wow, the lead up events just keep coming.  On the day of our last BLOG posts (15^th April), there were two Lead Up events.  The first one was in Latrobe, Tasmania (GC7HNQX) which was held for us by the wonderful 2y’stassies.  An amazing 22 teams turned up to this lead up event in a small country town in Tasmania including a few teams from the mainland and plenty of teams coming up from Hobart as well, so an extremely successful event and a big thanks to 2y’stassies!

Also on the same day as our last BLOG post was a lead up event held for us by Ostra74 in Bergen, Norway (GC7KCBF).  Although there are no photos from the event, the weather seems to have been a mild 17 degrees with plenty of sunshine.  According to the 11 attended logs, run through a google translator, there was a boomerang throwing competition as well as a few other competitions too.  Thanks to Ostra74 for holding this event for us.

GC7JVTQ – The Warrnambool Lead Up Event.

The next lead up event was back closer to home in Warrnambool, Victoria on the 21^st of April (GC7JVTQ) where only 6 teams turned up on a lovely Saturday morning in the western district of Victoria.  The weather was great and the company was nice.  A nice chat about everything geocaching ensues as it often does before everyone continued on with their weekend caching.  A big thanks to LouiseAnn for heading down to Warnambool and holding this event for us.

GC7MHYC – The Munich Lead Up Event – Kangaroo Races

The next day on the 22^nd of April, near Munich Germany an Australian themed lead up event (GC7MHYC) was held for us by our good friend Theatralis.  They had kangaroo races (read sack races) where people bounced from one end of the field to another in true kangaroo style.  They had a selection of foods which of course included tim tams and ANZAC biscuits.  The weather again was perfect and it appears that all the participants thoroughly enjoyed themselves.  The BIG news that came out of this one in regards to Australian MEGA events is that the original Steve’s Hat trackable finally resurfaced here in Germany.  Steve’s hat belongs to Steve (Clever Monkey) a local geocacher who has had an enormous amount of involvement in the MEGA events held in Australia.  In 2015 during the lead up to the first Victorian MEGA, Steve accidentally left it behind and Lex (skullracing) nabbed it and turned it into a trackable.  With a goal to go on some grand adventures the hat went across Australia to SA and WA.  It made its way to Vanuatu, Fiji, New Zealand and even Hawaii before being handed to Theatralis before she went back packing around Asia and then back home to Germany. Unfortunately Theatralis is a little behind on her logging, but it is good to see that this iconic trackable is still around and hopefully going to start making its way back to Australia soon. A big thanks to Theatralis for all the effort that she put in to holding this event!

GC7MHYC – The Munich Lead Up Event – A selection of food

And then on ANZAC day on the 25^th of April, in Prague, Czech Republic, our jet-setting Australian geocacher, Earthbound Chief, held another lead up event for us (GC7HKBK).  Except he didn’t.  Circumstances beyond his control meant that he was again unable to attend his own event and unfortunately had to archive his event the day before.  But, how amazing are the Czech people?  One geocacher, StavrosNiarchos took it upon themselves to create a log book and head down to GZ anyway.  Just as well too because 13 other teams turned up and even though again it was in the absence of the official event holder they all appeared to have a wonderful time on location in beautiful weather.  A BIG thanks to local Czech cacher StavrosNiarchos who went above and beyond to help out with this event.  THANKYOU!

GC7HKBK – The Czech Lead Up Event (Prague)

And they just keep coming too.  Yesterday we had two further lead up events, the first in Berlin, Germany and then one in Darwin, Northern Territory.  We will bring you all the information on these two events in our next BLOG post.  Until then we also have 2 events on the 5^th of May, one in Gothenburg, Sweden and then one in Paris, France.  We also have another on the 11^th of May in Singapore too.  You can check out the full list of lead up events by following this link.

Also, just a reminder that there is still beds available at the actual event site.  Not only is Urban camp a wonderful venue to host this MEGA, with a large hall for the registration areas and conference rooms for the information sessions, it also has sleeping for up to 100 people and you can be one of those by purchasing 2 night accommodation at the event location for just $130 (that’s only $65 a night).  The cost is similar to that of a back packer hostels, but without the smells and the unknown weirdos in the bunk next to you.  Plus there is a whole host of bonuses that are only available to those people who are staying with us during the MEGA and you get to be at the MEGA site from the moment you wake and open your door to the moment you finally retire to your bed.  You can purchase your accommodation at the site by following this link.

And now we move on to this BLOG posts geocache(s) of the fortnight.  And this is one for those of you who like to get number of types in a day.  A MEGA event is always a good excuse to see if you can up the number of types of geocaches that you can achieve in a single day.  A MEGA not only enables you to get the elusive MEGA icon (Parkville will be only the 9^th MEGA event ever held in Australia), but it also helps you get the LAB cache icon too as LAB caches are generally only available at MEGA events.  There are usually a few other normal events and CITOs held in conjunction with the MEGA event so these icons are usually easy enough to come across too.  Fortunately, The Parkville Event 2018 is in a very cache dense area where there are still plenty of the old virtuals around as well as a couple of the newer “rewards” virtuals as well so this plus an earthcache at Parkville are quite easy to achieve.  Also, the organizing committee have been hard at work making sure there is a good range of traditionals, multi caches, puzzles, wherigos and letterboxes for people to grab whilst they are in the area. 

So that makes 11 different types of geocaches that are reasonably easy to achieve whilst attending The Parkville Event, 2018.  But from there to get to 12 you need to grab a webcam and the nearest webcam is Rhinogeo’s Spirit of the Skier (GCMJ2J) on the top of Mt Buller, 150 kilometres away.  But what if we told you it’s not?  What if we told you that there have just been 10 new webcams created around Melbourne and that the nearest one to the GZ of the MEGA is less than 3 kilometres away?  Well that would make getting 12 different cache types in a day a LOT easier.  But the fun doesn’t stop there.  You see over on the Geocaching Australia site, where these 10 new webcams are listed, they have even more cache types.  Including History caches, Burke&Wills caches, geocacher caches, trigpoint caches, locationless caches, gadget caches, reverse caches, podcache caches, beacon caches, dedicated night caches and they even still have the moveable cache type aswell So using GCA caches it is possible to achieve more than 20 different cache types in a day!  Therefore, this BLOG post’s geocache(s) of the fortnight are the 10 new webcam caches put out by ahomburg on the GCA site.  You can find the links to them all below and if you’re looking at increasing the number of different cache types you can find in a day over the MEGA weekend, then GCA can make that challenge a lot more interesting.

• GA12173 – Springvale Road, Looking South (Cam29)
• GA12174 – Springvale Road, Looking North (Cam28)
• GA12175 – Princess Highway, Looking West (Cam20)
• GA12176 – Princess Hwy, Looking West (Cam21)
• GA12177 – Queens Road, Looking North (Cam25)
• GA12178 – Beaconsfield Pde, Looking South East (Cam1)
• GA12179 – Flinders Street, Looking East (Cam9)
• GA12180 – Mt Alexander Road, Looking South (Cam17)
• GA12181 – St Georges Road, Looking South (Cam30)
• GA12182 – Princess Street, Looking South (Cam23)

So that wraps up another fortnightly BLOG post.  The excitement for this event is certainly building as it promises to be a MEGA event like no other held in Australia before.  We love the interest that is being shown in this event from all over the world and we look forward to putting on an event that will be talked about not just around Australia but all around the world.  Thank you to all the people who have already volunteered, to the sponsors who are helping make it all happen and to the many people who are already helping out behind the scenes. 

Kind Regards

The Parkville Event 2018 Organizing Committee.