Geocaching Australia

I've had numerous cuts and scratches that go hand in hand with traversing the Aussie Bush, but the two most interesting "injuries" I've had were;

Heat exhaustion at "R&R" and
Throwing up on the way back from "She's Apples" due to pushing myself too hard.

Lessons learnt;

Take plenty of water and
Don't try and run 1.5 kms to a cache after misreading the clues and having to bush bash back up to the track only to find GZ is in a gully with dodgy reception (& co-ords) and you only have 20 mins of daylight left and you have a dinner appointment in 35 mins.

ToolkiT wrote: I'm still surprized no cacher has ever been (close to be) bitten by a snake or another creepy crawly creature.

I wouldnt be surpised if near misses are quite common. I was within seconds of being bitten by a snake of some sort (Brown or Tiger not sure) while geocaching last Feb. I went looking for two caches very closed to each other. One was traditional, easily found,and the other was a multi (I realised that after I got there). Unfortunately I didn't have the actual coords for the final point for the multi and just wandered around a bit hoping to get lucky. Got to the edge of a pond and thought it wouldn't be through there. Then I spotted the snake in the water ahead about 1m from my left leg. I beat a hasty retreat. I later found that the cache was through there and had I known that the first time I would not have hesitated and would not have seen the snake...

Mind Socket wrote:The worst I could think of was grazing the skin off my knuckles whilst canyoning, but then I remembered that wasn't in Claustral, so nothing to report here.

- R

But I guess technically we were on our way to the Zulu cache, so that one counts!

Ouch! (With special guest apperance by Webguy before he knew he was a muggle!)

EcoDave

If you want to count in close encounters of the slithery kind, then I have had a few of those.

My first was when placing the appropriately named "Snakes and Ladders".
Not one, but two snakes fell from a rock ledge above me and into a tangled mess at my feet. They were a large Red Bellied Black and an Eastern Brown. Luckily they were both more concerned about parting company with themselves rather than worry about me. The Brown however did strike at a stick nearby. needless to say it had a laxative effect on me. They finally disentangled and fled. The rest of the way down I was rolling rocks in front of me to make sure there were no more slippery surprises in store.

Another time was while placing "The Gib". I spotted several Eastern Browns slithering in the grass just near a barbecue stove. The place was alive with them, and I had to tread very carefully all the way. My advice is, if you do this one wear gaiters or long pants or both.

If you are going to cache in summer make sure you brush up on your snake bite first aid.

I had a Death adder move between my feet whilst out finishing off i!6 Quay.

My foot slipped on some built up leaf litter.. I looked down and froze as the snake slivered on his way... no more than 3inches at the most from either foot. I told my wife to freeze and we waited it out, needless to say Clare didn't follow in my footprints again that day...

I found out afterwards that death Adders need to be trodden on literally before they will attack....

I have spotted heaps of snakes since then But that adder has been my closest encounter so far.

Well I was one of the smart arses that voted for "How can you hurt yourself caching?" - of course that came back a bit me hard

Whilst searching for Wile E. Coyote last weekend I slipped on a rock and with trying to save myself from plummetting to an untimely death* my head snapped back rapidly, I was a bit stiff at first but thought nothing of it. The following morning I was in agony, I could hardly move without a sharp stabbing pain shooting down my back. In fact I've been pretty immobile all this week, but reasonably comfortable thanks to a neck brace and some heavy duty pain killers. The annoying thing was CraigRat had slipped on the very same rock about 3 minutes earlier and I made a mental note to be careful!!



* Some artistic licence may have been used for dramatic effect here, but the pain was real

The most recent one

Picture omited to protect the squeemish....

Looks better now its had a week to fester.....

CraigRat wrote:The most recent one

Picture omited to protect the squeemish....

Looks better now its had a week to fester.....

What a ripper, no pun intended

EcoDave

Horus wrote:The following morning I was in agony, I could hardly move without a sharp stabbing pain shooting down my back. In fact I've been pretty immobile all this week, but reasonably comfortable thanks to a neck brace and some heavy duty pain killers.

I know of a couple of incidents (Mama Bear amongst them) where the specialist the GP referred the patient to was suggesting nerve-cutting surgery to deal with this sort of injury. Like, if you can't feel it there's nothing wrong!

Get yourself to an osteopath or an accupuncturist or a chiropractor, preferably one that comes recommended by people you know. They'll all try to treat the cause of the distress, not just wait and hope that it gets better by itself!

none yet... but i am only new to this so its just a matter of time. I am fairly accident prone

broken my arm fell out of a tree geocaching

I broke my finger, after slamming a gate shut on my fingers, whilst hunting a FTF!

and i missed out on the ftf too!

Closely followed by: (I'll quote the log!)
"So for the last couple of weeks, i have been on crutches recovering from a soft-tissue injury in my ankle (which ironically enough was NOT caused by geocaching!). Got off them yesterday, and thought i'd go for a nice easy earthcache to get back into things. 350m walk through the sand? No problem. 100m or so walk around the rock pools? Easy. Found the information, and was writing it on my phone, when *THUD* i slipped into a rock pool. AAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNND i'm back on crutches. I sprained my other ankle. Doh!"


And dinosaur bandaids? Really? Dora the explorer bandaids do an even better job (believe me i consider myself quite the expert on this)