Geocaching Australia

We now have several hundred frogs wandering aimlessly around, like the ghostly gnomes from last year, never resting, with no end in sight for their restless meanderings.

caughtatwork wrote:An issue with my computer being stolen from home while I was overseas means I need to wait for a replacement before I can recover the sites and do the updates. This also applies to the rewards system. My sincere apologies for the delay in getting your prizes out.

For what it's worth (not that it helps), you have my sympathy. I hope it is all resolved quickly, but I understand a little of the frustration that I am sure you are experiencing.

In the meantime, know that there have been many happy cachers and frogs in the last couple of months. I didn't release any frogs, but I got even more enjoyment than I expected finding and then rehiding the little croakers. So, thanks to all the frog-releasers, and to caughtatwork for all the organising.

caughtatwork wrote:An issue with my computer being stolen

Yes, very sorry to see that.
Lets hope that the replacement is an upgrade which turns your sorrow to happiness.

Hehe, the most fun I had was moving 9kg (in other words, 13 unique) frogs to Sydney and swapping them with Blossom(not out)



It was a tough task, but it was fun sneaking into the bushes to pick up a small bag replacing it with 9kg worth of frogs

lemmykc wrote:Hehe, .......It was a tough task, but it was fun sneaking into the bushes to pick up a small bag replacing it with 9kg worth of frogs

Yes, the 9kg package I had to lug home via foot and public transport was quite a surprise to me

blossom* wrote:

lemmykc wrote:Hehe, .......It was a tough task, but it was fun sneaking into the bushes to pick up a small bag replacing it with 9kg worth of frogs

Yes, the 9kg package I had to lug home via foot and public transport was quite a surprise to me

You think that's bad, I had to carry them all to Lithgow and back to Sydney the next day! But I had a ball finding the little (and not so little) Froggies scattered all over Bicentennial Park in the pouring rain, only took 2 hours to gather them all.

rogerw3 wrote: You think that's bad, I had to carry them all to Lithgow and back to Sydney the next day! But I had a ball finding the little (and not so little) Froggies scattered all over Bicentennial Park in the pouring rain, only took 2 hours to gather them all.

You're actually supposed to be 3/4 of the way to Pluto right now . . .

Thanks for the fun everyone!

Good job by all the hiders, movers, repairers and organizers. Many people who weren't cachers showed a lot of interest in this game and hopefully I'll convert some of them.

and FTW!!

I had alot of fun with the frogs. Thanks to GCA for hosting the event along with cachinggames.com. I didn't think the gnomes would be outdone but they were. What craziness will happen next summer? Can't wait.

blossom* wrote:

lemmykc wrote:Hehe, .......It was a tough task, but it was fun sneaking into the bushes to pick up a small bag replacing it with 9kg worth of frogs

Yes, the 9kg package I had to lug home via foot and public transport was quite a surprise to me

I think Morton was 8.5 kg of that.

gmj3191 wrote:

blossom* wrote:

lemmykc wrote:Hehe, .......It was a tough task, but it was fun sneaking into the bushes to pick up a small bag replacing it with 9kg worth of frogs

Yes, the 9kg package I had to lug home via foot and public transport was quite a surprise to me

I think Morton was 8.5 kg of that.

Oh yes Morton was a Lumpfrog for sure. Quite a few familiar frogs in that photo

caughtatwork wrote: Total Distance:
Bao-Bao by Zhaomin from the UK moved a total of 34,406.11km*
GONNA GOZZA by covert from Victoria moved a total of 32,733.70km

* As Zhaomin won both the longest distance and total distance but you only get one prize overall, Zhaomin will be awarded a prize, as will both the runners up being pjmpjm and covert.

Random Prize:
º for moving a single LeapFrog some 33,000km in only two moves.

WIN

It was fun to explain everybody in Europe why I moved a frog to Zurich, left it there for 2 weeks and moved it back to Melbourne. They all thought I was nuts

It was better than I expected, with the gnomes having set the bar high last summer, I couldn't see how frogs could compare. However with so many frogs (and so many you could put in your pocket, unlike gnomes) there was a good chance to encounter many, many frogs.

I didn't do the travel I did in the same period of the last two races so didn't pull off the big moves that I enjoy. Did one exchange through Melbourne and I was pleased to follow the Melbourne frogs' progress around Sydney. The Canberra cachers did a good job of cross-fertilising their frogs with the Sydney/Blue Mtns collective and we should see some strange cross-breeds in future.

The only thing missing this year was a couple of gung-ho frog movers in the NW of Sydney. Losing H-F was a very sad blow and without TLM doing much and pjmpjm now ensconced in Leura rather than leading the gypsy life there wasn't the opportunity for the exchanges like we had last year. On the plus side a few more people got involved such as Baktrak, PPE and the Snoopy1976/nightfairy gang. blossom* as usual kept everyone on their toes, so much so that if I didn't go for the new frogs straight away I expected a log from West Ryde within hours.

The other sorry parts of the race were the frog deserts north of Sydney with a few blips north and south of Brisbane and absolutely nothing in the north. I travel to QLD a lot and I have found even GC seems rather neglected in some areas with a lot of poor condition caches (now mostly archived) so frogs would have no chance! I wonder what can be done up that way by means of encouragement?

We put one cache in the first race 2009-10 (now in the possession of a cacher in Victoria and archived as they never moved it), two gnomes in the 2010-11 race (one lost and archived, the other picked up at an event and now sits on a shelf in the kitchen) and one frog in this race. It's sitting down the south coast of NSW having become becalmed with a few others a couple of weeks before the end - another semi-desert - due to the incapacity of Tuena.

As for next time, well I guess that's a discussion for elsewhere.

The rewards have started going out, so check your email for an, er, email from the site letting you know how to claim your reward pathtag.

Slow PC, slow printer, slow everything, so patience is appreciated.

The 100, 500 and 1,000 rewards that have been waiting a month have also gone out.

Yurt wrote:It was better than I expected, with the gnomes having set the bar high last summer, I couldn't see how frogs could compare. However with so many frogs (and so many you could put in your pocket, unlike gnomes) there was a good chance to encounter many, many frogs. . . . As for next time, well I guess that's a discussion for elsewhere.

Great post and observations! Actually, I was amazed that I was able to find so many frogs over two months, given my re-location to the Blue Mountains, and have to thank rogerw3 and blossom* for their daily efforts. And of course Yurt and a few others worked hard in the northwest.

As previously suggested here and elsewhere, we seem to have achieved a huge turn-out of published froggies, but weren't always able to muster the numbers to move them around. The two-move rule means we need to maintain a kind of 'critical mass' of geocachers in specific areas, to keep the frogs moving along.

That said, we observed a few previously 'GC only' geocachers come over to the dark side, and most seemed to really enjoy the moveable amphibians. That helped the moving quite a lot.

Will be interested to hear what others suggest for next year . . .