Scott often wants to relax at home while I go off caching with Lottie (she always wants to come!), so I was really excited when I asked Scott if he’d like to accompany me to New Norfolk for some caching and he said ‘yes’! I had two reasons for wanting to go to New Norfolk (aside from just the general ‘I’d like to be out caching’ reason). Firstly, I had an unfound cache there in a park with high muggle activity; as the weather wasn’t great finding the cache might actually be doable. Secondly, hi_pressure had sent me some coins he wanted released 40 kms from each other, so New Norfolk was a good spot to drop one of them. We had lunch and eventually were on the road.
The first cache we hit was Stop N’ Go, the cache in the high-muggle activity park. We’d driven past the area before on our way to/from caches nearer the river. I was intrigued, so really happy to have a reason to stop. The park has some sort of road safety theme, which sounds boring, but is miniaturised roads with working stop lights, roundabouts, pedestrian crossings, training crossings, etc. I think I would have loved this as a kid! Other than a party on the other side of the carpark from GZ, we had the place basically to ourselves so the cache was quickly found and signed, etc. Lottie wasn’t as impressed as she had to stay in the cacheWagon, however better there than at home! (If only we could convince her.)
Next we were off to a new one by scotty&lochie, Old Bridge. As we pulled into the end of Bridge Street and I read the sign saying ‘Declared Dog Exercise Area’, Lottie became really excited and kept saying ‘I’m a declared dog – exercise me!’. So Scott grabbed her lead and headed off and I went for the cache, leaving one of hi_pressure’s coins to be retrieved by the next finder. I thought this would be as much caching as I would be allowed to get away with, but I sort of tentatively mentioned that the next closest caches were either a nice bushwalk or a drive-by. Scott said we would do the bushwalk next – hooray!
I had really wanted to do the next cache with Scott as it was probably named after him: Handsome Cave. This one is one of Sog N Paulus’s hidden secrets in the bush caches, and I was looking forward to it. We parked before the road became uncivilised (the cacheWagon has NO clearance) and hoofed it from there. We were a bit worried about our choice of track at times when it branched (make the wrong choice and you’re on private land – and a lot of the people who live out this way live out this way as they want to be private – very private). We went with the ‘choose the uphill track’ option at each fork, which worked perfectly. Lottie had to be lifted over a tree or two by Scott, but most of them she could just walk under.
Handsome Cave is an interesting sandstone cave, with lots of ‘honeycombing’ on the underside that birds are nesting in. This area is littered with caves, but apparently this is the only one not on private property. It is said the bushranger, Martin Cash, used one of the caves as a hideout in the mid 1800’s. We saw the birds coming to and fro to feed their young ones, and I even got a (not terribly good) photo or two. It was a nice walk. It seemed longer going to the cave as at times we were uncertain of which choice to take at a fork (and as the out journey was uphill), however the return walk took no time at all. It was a rather overcast day, without being too hot or two cold, so it was perfect for this sort of walk. All in all a very enjoyable caching / bushwalking experience!