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Whatsapp Smartphone technology has led to a burst of geocaching activity (cc).

The widespread availability of GPS technology has led to the development of a giant global treasure hunting game: geocaching. With the hobby attracting more and more fans, Ann Jones hunted down some of Australia’s geocachers and asked them to explain the appeal.

My first run-in with a geocacher was when I was delivering a toilet to a toilet collection. On the day of the installation of the toilet, a man appeared on the side of the road.

Today I’ve climbed two trees, I think—maybe more trees—who does that as an adult? It brings back the kiddie adventurer in you; it’s fantastic.

He was there waiting to put a small cylinder inside the toilet. It was a geocache.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game with over six million followers around the world. Using GPS, smartphones and even good old fashioned maps, you track down the location of treasures known as geocaches.

Geocachers are sometimes viewed as some sort of benign lunatics by society at large. As far as I can tell, though, the broad majority of them are outdoorsy people who like an adventure, and the hobby has really taken off as technology advances.

GPS technology was not available to the public for many years because governments withheld the satellite capability and GPS units themselves were quite expensive.

However, these days, when your smartphone is able to act as a GPS, geocaching has been opened up to many more people.

It all started about 14 years ago when GPS owners wanted to check their units’ accuracy set tests for fellow technology enthusiasts.

The idea of a treasure hunt using the technology spread until it became the worldwide phenomenon it is today, with millions of caches hidden across the globe.

The caches come in many forms: a small cylinder with a joke inside, a box with a log book for you to sign, or perhaps a more complex puzzle, such as a CD featuring audio clues you need to listen to in order to to ‘claim the cache’.

Read more: The secret world of geocaching

Then there are moveable caches, such Tania the Smoking Frog who is currently somewhere, waiting for you to move her to her next location. ‘She should be pretty easy to locate. Just look for a cloud of smoke and listen for that rattly breathing,’ says ‘stagetree’ who started Tania’s cache-hop.

There are even snap meetings of cachers at non-permanent sites—geocaching flash mobs.

Ben McAdie recently organised a meet-up as part of the World Wide Geocaching Flashmob.

These are some of the only times that geocachers get to network in person.

‘Over the last seven and half years we’ve met say five or six people randomly out at geocaches, and if you think about how many there are and what time of the day people go out, it’s quite random that you’d go on the same day, let alone at exactly the same time,’ says McAdie.

‘It’s just a little meet up, a lot of people we’ve seen many, many times over the years, and others we’re meeting for the first time, and everyone gets to have a bit of a chat and learn a bit more about geocaching.’

‘A lot of people find that as soon as they meet someone else that has got the same hobby, the want to talk about it with someone who actually cares.’

On the cold, damp morning in the Ballarat suburb of Sebastapol, about 40 people had turned up to ‘claim the cache’.

Listen: Geocaching took over my life

The take-up of the hobby in Australia has been widespread, with many grey-nomads using geocaching as an excuse to see more country on their annual migration.

They are by no means the only type of enthusiast, however.

‘Frog Girl’ comes from Geelong and is in her twenties. She’s a passionate geocacher, and is so into the hobby she travelled from Geelong to Ballarat the evening before the flashmob and spent the entire night moving around the area’s logging caches before turning up for the flash mob.

‘Some people think we’re stupid—I say it’s dedication! I just enjoy it so much,’ she says.

‘Today I’ve climbed two trees, I think—maybe more trees—who does that as an adult? It brings back the kiddie adventurer in you; it’s fantastic.’

‘My Mum, she just thinks I’m crazy and wishes I wouldn’t go out into the woods alone at night time, but I think that any time is a good time for a hobby that you’re passionate about.’

It’s easy to get take up a bit of geocaching these days—you can download free apps to your smart phone and use the map function to get you to caches, or just look up the coordinates on the internet and find them with a good old fashioned map.

‘I know one gentleman in South Australia who still does it like that,’ says McAdie.

‘He’s probably logged 1000 caches.’

A geo-flash in a park in Sebastapol Listen to the full episode of Off Track to find out more.

The hobby, say all the cachers I talked to at the flash mob, makes you see the world around you in a new way, even if you live in the same house in the same town you grew up in.

‘You see things and look for things that you normally wouldn’t,’ says Frog Girl.

‘You’re looking at rocks and stumps and trees and leaves and what doesn’t fit into the environment and what does.’

‘I found things in Geelong and Torquay where I grew up that I never knew where there, and they were my old stomping grounds.’

Head outside and venture Off Track for a show about the great outdoors. Listen to the environment discussed by the people who live in and love it.



