Greetings,

After listening to the Geogearheads podcast this weekend I was wondering if there have been any geocaching rallies (car, bicycle, walk) in Australia and how it was experienced. Anybody?

Edwin

There was one in Adelaide years ago (2011 era I think). It was only a short one but it was a fun event and well received. The organisers put a lot of effort into it though.

One of the event ideas in the back of my mind has been combining this with "puzzle solving to find the next WP"...

They do one at the June long weekend in S.A., I believe. Have done for years.

I have looked at these before but the public liability insurance is a killer, so avoided doing anything with the idea. I'd love to do one, a hundred km or so around an area, finding specific caches, getting the points, choosing which ones to get next to maximise results. They sound like a great activity.

Oh nice, do you have some documentation on it like a website or so?

Melbourne folks run one: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC5 ... shine-2015

I attended the 2015 one - Good fun. Didn't make it too competitive but was a nice day around the hills with the family, bumping into people, etc. Well worth it.

I know calypso62 has run a couple in Sydney.

June LWE is competitive caching - not really a car rally. At the start of the day you get 100(ish) caches (in a GPX file) and you've got 6 hours to find as many as you can (in any order - hence planning the right route is critical). Each cache is assigned a number of points (depending on how hard it is to find) and whoever has found the most points wins.

(source: I was part of the winning team 2 months ago)

How do you stop people speeding and doing other illegal things in your name?

I just saw the facebook page, very impressive! (https://www.facebook.com/JunelongWeekend/ for the rest)

Edwin

It is a problem (along with cheating). Getting a traffic infringement is an instant disqualification. (and there are un-marked police cars around the area) Caches that are deemed to be in places that encourage illegal activity (trespass, dodgy parking, ect.) are removed from the GPX file before the game begins.

And the way the points are allocated means you can't win just by driving fast. Been able to run though forests/national parks (and other places you can't drive) is important. Puzzle solving is also quite important.

But despite that, cheating does happen. Although it is usually in the form of colluding with other players, prior knowledge of game caches, bribing the organisers, ect. as appose to things that are illegal.

When I've done it elsewhere we signed a disclaimer saying we would abide by all road rules and were participating as individuals. Don't know how that stacks up legally, but it was understood by all parties.

We also had a minimum time penalty at several locations, finishing '1st' actually wasn't something to target, getting accurate answers was.

The ones we have participated in have been based on mileage. They take your speedo reading and anything over the measured course loses you points. It has been very successful at slowing people down