Angaston, South Australia: GeoCache on the barrelhead

This will be the final story I do about the Barossa’s Biggest Tree competition. I swear.

Have you ever heard of geocaching? I was only vaguely aware of the concept when the owner of the trophy shop asked me where Dr John and Scottie’s big trees were located.

“One’s out on Collingrove Road and the other’s just off Steingarten Road.”

“Oh,” she said, “He’s not the only one who thinks the one on Collingrove Road is the biggest. It’s a geocache location and there’s a note inside the box that says, “I think this is the largest eucalyptus tree in the Barossa Valley. If you know of a bigger one, let us know.”

What box? What note? What is geocaching?

Let’s start off with a definition:

Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a GPS receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world.

A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and sometimes a pen or pencil. The geocacher signs the log with their established code name and dates it, in order to prove that they found the cache. After signing the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (Tupperware or similar) can also contain items for trading, such as toys or trinkets, usually of more sentimental worth than financial.

The photo at the top of this story is a stock shot I plucked off the internet. We didn’t see a plastic box around the Collingrove tree but then we weren’t looking for one. So who knows? One may have been hidden in plain sight somewhere very near the tree.

I suppose we should return to the tree off Steingarten Road, get its GPS coordinates, then return to the tree on Collingrove Road, find the box, write a note that provides those coordinates to geocachers who find this box in the future so that they can go find the Steingarten tree.

But that would be a lot of work for a hobby I’d never heard of until three days ago.

That being said, I may have to take up geocaching just so I can give myself a secret code name. I’m thinking it should be “Big Hunky.” Jamie thinks it should be “Big Dorky.”