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After a short drive from our "holiday house" in Rosebud, we turned off the main road onto a little used gravel path with an open gate. Seemed like the right place, but there was this sign, "Private Property". The GPS receiver said the cache was about 300 meters directly in front of us, right past the sign. After several minutes of deliberation which included a brief discussion on the fairly recent Australian government's gun grab ("D'ya think he turned them all in?"), we drove on. As soon as we drove beyond the gate we realized that the sign was for the private property BESIDE the road. We all breathed a little easier and chuckled at ourselves while we drove up to the gate for the reserve. The GPS now said about 150 meters. We all jumped out and hopped over(and through) the fence. The only casualty was Haleh's purse, somehow it self-destructed as she went through the fence.
Haleh, being the lovable mother-figure she is, began leading us down the path, but Hooman and I weren't convinced she knew where she was going. "Hey! C'mon! It's this way!"
After stumbling around for a bit and after Hooman stumbled into this sign I stopped walking. I turned to tell Mattie that this was the place and Mattie started yelling "We found it! WooHoo! Here it is! WooHoo! WooHoo! WooHoo!". At this point I think her vocabulary reverted to something resembling a Raiders fan's in the 4th quarter at a game in the Oakland Coliseum. "Hooowhaa! ARRRGGGGH!", or something like that. I had stopped right beside the cache and hadn't seen it. Mattie was following me watching where I stepped and saw it right beside my feet. Who says GPS has a 10 meter accuracy?
The gang converged on Mattie, who by this time had recovered her mental abilities (and her vocabulary), and began to uncover the cache. Setareh and Mattie started digging through the cache to see what we wanted to take. I'm still unclear as to why there is a map of Texas in a geocache in Victoria, Australia. If anybody has a good explanation, please email me. Haleh, as usual, showed the patience of a saint as all of the kids played in the cache. (Including the kid behind the camera.)
After we took our treasures (a can of tomato soup, a cassette tape from the movie "Top Gun" and one half of a candle. Hooman got a stick. He must have done something really bad, we just can't remember what!) we dropped in the emergency rain poncho, bug net, and stuff sack. Then we sealed and re-hid the cache and went on our way. Geocaching might be sort of nerdy, but it does get you out to some beautiful places that you might not normally see.
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