When deegees organised The First Ever Traditional Annual NW Tas BBQ event cache, Snuva was one of the first to RSVP. I had been looking forward to it since early April, but then when Scott found out he would have to work on the holiday Monday I almost called the trip off. However Lottie reminded me that it would be her first camping trip, so we made it a girls’ trip and off we went!
We left Hobart rather late on the the Saturday, around lunch time. I almost gave the trip up again as Lottie just couldn’t settle. First she was on the bed in the back, however she fidgetted and struggled so much that before we’d even passed the Chigwell turn off she had completely tangled herself up in her lead. So I pulled the cacheMobile over, untangled the beast, picked her up off the bed (as she was afraid to jump down), and put her into the passenger seat. She still didn’t settle down, but at least when I pulled over to untangle her I didn’t have to get out and get into the back of the van! By Spring Hill I was considering turning back as she was sooo annoying, however I told her to suck it up and we made it to Longford.
As we’d left Hobart so late, I had decided we’d only attempt one cache on the way to the camping grounds, so I picked The Mighty Macquarie as that cache. And it was perfect. The walk was not so long you feel you’ve taken too much time out of the trip and not so short your legs haven’t been stretched. And boy did Lottie stretch her legs! She did the distance between the cacheMobile and GZ x 7 at least, which meant that she was quiet, calm, and just gazed out of the window for the rest of the trip. The hide was easy, the water was much higher than I thought it would be in these days of drought, and little did we know that the weather was actually the best we would have all weekend!
After leaving Longford we continued NW to Devonport, where we stoppted for petrol and supplies. We made it to the campground, Pioneer Park in South Rianna, at around 6.30 pm, well after dark at this latitude in winter. I found a spot to camp but wondered where the other cachers were. I did not know if anyone whose vehicle I would recognise would be there, so we wandered around looking, I suspect, at least silly if not vaguely suspicious (which is normal for a cacher anyway!). Eventually I saw someone walking with a child from a hut to a camper and asked her if she knew of a geocaching group: yes, I had found Mrs deegees!
We went back to the van for a few supplies and were soon happy and warm in the Pioneer Hut. As well as Mr & Mrs deegees (David & Jan, with their grand-geo-kids Daemian and Isabelle) also of the group were robtas and jantas and geoskid (Tracey, Mark, Liam, Jack & Honey). Everyone was sitting down to dinner, however I just nibbled on some dip and bikkies. However Mrs deegees won over Lottie by giving her leftover BACON. Lottie had been a bit unsure of herself, but after the bacon she decided she LIKES camping! She was also making friends with Honey, a honey coloured poodle who is part of the geoskid team. A bat completed the group, flying around to the glee of the boys!
After dinner, a few beverages were consumed. I scammed a bit of red wine off others for a while, then made my way to the cacheMobile for my bottle of Dog Ridge. On the way past I thought I saw a van and human what looked like Swampy, so kept walking past yelling ‘Swampy’ and looking, I suspect, at least silly if not vaguely suspicious (which is normal for a cacher anyway!) but got not response. Not long after I returned to the hut Swampy DID appear! Lottie barked her greeting, and we all stayed up chatting (and maybe a little drinking).
Now I had been past Pioneer Park ages ago when Scott & I were just passing through, however we’d been in a rush to get back to Hobart to had not found robtas’s cache OLD TIMERS, a couple minute walk from where we were. Everyone else had already found it, so of course at midnight Mr deegee, Mr geoskid and myself went out so I could make the find – Mr deegee illuminating the way and Mr geoskid acting as GPSr. A very memorable find (I hope we didn’t wake too many people up!).
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