A Brightwater mum says her family has “accidentally” stumbled into a hobby which has seen her three children getting outdoors to join a worldwide treasure hunt.
Geocaching is a type of global treasure hunt that involves searching for small boxes or containers that have been hidden. The location is marked with GPS coordinates which lead to the box, otherwise known as caches.
Brightwater mum of three, Anna Wilson, says her family accidentally found a geocache in their cattle yards following a flood event.
“It must have washed out of its hiding place. We were unsure what it was at first until we spoke to a friend who happened to spend her weekends geocaching with her family and friends. That was the start of geocaching for our family.”
Players register online, then, using a device that can connect to the internet, participants are challenged to use their navigation skills to find the physically hidden caches.
Overseas, the caches might include treasure like a geocoin or low-cost trinket such as foreign currency, keychains, or ornaments. But locally, they tend to contain a logbook where you can record your name and the date you found the physical cache, as well as see when it was last located. The treasure here is the reward of locating the cache successfully.
“It can be challenging and frustrating sometimes when you cannot locate a cache, not all are easy to find. The app is really good though, and gives you lots of details about the difficulty, size, and a clue to help with the hunt,” Anna says.
“We don’t always find the cache we are looking for, but luckily there are normally a few around and we can just move on to the next one. The kids love the excitement of hunting for a cache, and I love it because it gets the kids out exercising and exploring places we might not normally visit.”
With 1,607 hidden geocaches in our area, there are a few to be hunted and found.
“It’s a great free outdoor activity for any age. We find it an excellent way to break up a long journey and stretch the legs - most towns have some to hunt for and the kids just love the adventure of it.”
