March 2004

Aahh, March 2004. The Beginning. Chepup, my sister and a geocacher, visited me in Hobart. It’s been almost 10 years since we’ve seen each other! She has this interesting hobby called ‘geocaching’. She has brought something called the Australian Honeymoon Travel Bug along with her – some sort of trinket that gets moved from hiding place to hiding place. The people who started this one were getting married and honeymooning in Oz, so wanted this to precede them and show them the way.
Chepup and I set off one day early in her stay and attempt to find some of these caches. We try one called Wellington’s Cascade, but after an hour’s search it appears to lead you through some private property. Give up.

Chepup showed me the printout of one called Polar Bear Swim, and the photo looked like some statues down at the wharves. Off we go, and the coordinates are nowhere near there. Back into the van, and with the eTrex out the window we find the general area. Confronted with a choice of going onto commercial property or public road, we pick the public. Follow the GPSr, but again looks like we’re going to wind up on private property. Give up.

New plan of attack: we’ll set a new cache for the travel bug. Off to Chickenfeed! With loaded plastic containers and the travel bug, off we go to one of Snuva’s favourite places for a bounce. We find a place the container just fits into, cover with a bit more camoflage, and take readings with the GPSr from a million places. Snuva thinks this is fantastic thing – we’re outside, we’re doing slightly bizarre things without other people knowing who/what, and there are plenty of sticks around to ask the mere human to throw. Chepup & Snuva is born. YES!

Chepup and Snuva set two more caches the same day, again in places Snuva likes to go to for a bounce. But what should we call them we wonder while gazing into these containers. African animals, party poppers – Snuva knows: Wild Party Animals #1 and Wild Party Animals #2 !

Off to the internet cafe to submit these new caches and to sign Snuva up as a geocacher. A few days later we hear from Swampgecko telling Chepup that they cannot be listed as they are vacation caches. Snuva adopts them and before she even has found a cache is started on her way to being a keen cache hider.

While snooping obsessively through gc.com, Snuva realised that a place she’ll be taking Chepup to to see a view of the area is something called a virtual cache. They visit Trigpoint Scenes 1, and her first log is made!

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