No-one Forced me to do This…Again! (Part 4)

Last Sunday evening a post was made on the logs for #6 in the ‘Noone is Forcing you to do this’ series, suggesting a group assault on this one. I jumped at the chance – not least because I would finally get to meet some of my local neighbourhood cachers, but also as I knew full well I needed assistance to get this cache.

And so it was, that a small group of local geocachers met at the base of the hill on Saturday afternoon. After greeting each other and working out who’s who in the zoo, we discussed the potential ways to ascend – those of us who had been up before shared our ‘prior knowledge’ of access points. We ended up selecting the shortest path to GZ, and off we headed. Just as we started to enter the bush, a neighbour called out that we were on private property – indicating an imaginary line up the hill some….so we stepped a few metres to the right putting us off his property, and continued our assent. The walk up was short and sweet steep, but was far less dense and much easier terrain than I had climbed on my previous attempt (See Part One for more on that one).

In no time at all the group had gathered around GZ, where we discussed the possible hides….I watched in awe as the younger lads scaled the rock faces, and began to check out every nook and crany…one even ditched his shoes to make the climbing a little easier! They worked their way around from the top down, while the rest of us figured our way from the bottom up…meeting at a point in the middle, where thanks to erosion, one could slip between 2 levels of the cave.

As one of the more seasoned geocachers headed up the ‘crawl space’ to join the boys on the top level, I heard the call “Huckle Buckle Beanstalk!”, and looked up to see a small container in his hand. The guys up top signed the log (3rd to find) before tossing it down below for the rest of us to add our names to, then rehid the cleverly disguised container.

With the ‘job’ done, the group made our way to the top of the hill, where we stopped for some afternoon tea and a chat.  Some of the group then moved on to find #5 in the series, but I decided to leave it for now, as I didn’t fancy the access from the top of the hill. While they were gone, Some of the more experienced geocachers in the group told me some great stories about geocaching in NSW during the ‘early days’ when there were only a few geocaching groups in the state, and it was few and far between geocaches, but they seemed much more thought out, and taking you to places you wouldn’t dream of geocaching now, like around Kirribilli House (the PM’s Sydney home); under the pylons of the Harbour Bridge; or inside the state library….in fact, it sounded like a lot of the ‘original’ caches were a real adventure, with multi’s taking you all over the place, so some took several expeditions to achieve.  While they spoke I gleaned as many tips and tricks of the trade as I could…and I asked them about the origin of ‘Huckle-Buckle Beanstalk’, which has been brought back here by a fellow cacher, who learnt the term while caching in the US…apparently it’s a way this certain caching group indicated a cache find, without spoiling the location for the remainder of the group 🙂 …do you have something similar in your caching group, or do you just shout ‘Got it!’ And hold it aloft for the world to see like me? 😉

After about 40min the group rejoined us after a successful find.  We gathered at the waypoint coordinates for a group pic:

Friendly Neighbourhood Cachers

After a few hours altogether, we then made our way back down the hill, this time via a reasonably clear trail on the opposite side of the hill, involving only a few small rocks to step down/around…

The Terrain isn’t so bad when you find the track!

….as we reached the bottom of the hill, we came to an intersection in the path, marked by a sign (laying on the ground) indicating this was ‘Mrs Mac’s track’, whoever Mrs Mac is (I can only assume a teacher at the school we were neighbouring). This is where our group parted ways, with some continuing to the base of the hill via Mrs Macs Track, the rest of us taking the path through the school grounds, back to our vehicles.

Cache name: The No one is Forcing You To Do This Series #6 (GC4Z1XQ)

Location: West Gosford/Narara, Central Coast, NSW

Find number: 126

Date found: 29th March 2014

Found with: Pesky GeoMonkey, ShifterBrains, BarefootJeff, MrNoo17 (and his geo-dad), and SeaEagles1997.  (if you’re reading this, thanks again guys!)