GEOCACHING WESTERN AUSTRALIA

GEOCACHING MAGAZINE

Geocaching information and reference for Western Australia

TEAM LANDCRUISER'S GPS ADVENTURES

Lists our GPS adventures, Caches and Finds or DNFs

Here's how it works. Geocachers seek out hidden treasures utilising GPS coordinates posted on the Internet by those hiding the cache. So to geocache, you'll need a handheld GPS receiver. GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System, this system shows you your exact position on the Earth anytime, in any weather.

Once you've purchased a GPS unit, you'll need to know where the caches are hidden. When a cache is hidden, the cache's coordinates are submitted to many websites for all to see and log. Enter the coordinates into your GPS and you're off. Currently there are more than 100,000 caches in over 200 countries.

Sounds easy armed with a GPS and the coordinates, how tough can it be? Well that's where the fun starts there are so many different ideas out there now you'll never be out of entertainment. Some are relatively easy so new users can get up to speed quickly. Just look at the terrain and difficulty ratings and start off with some easy 1/1 rated caches before you head off on a 5/5 or you may be disappointed. A 5/5 rated cache is 'supposed' to be difficult, you may decide to never even visit a 5/5 cache the choice is yours another great aspect of the sport.

Read the descriptions well and decide if this cache is for you ... there are many types of caches some require a simple park the car and step out the door to find it, others may require a full days hike in the bush to locate the hidden treasure, others may require a boat or 4WD there are a lot of different types to suit every family/team.

It was, once upon a time nearly all caches were found on geocaching.com but owing to the commercial nature of the site and some politics, many users have broken away from the 'self proclaimed' official website which it obviously isn't. Geocaching started out on the internet after selective availability was turned off by the US government. This allowed GPS users to more accurately plot coordinates as selective availability was a scrambler used by the US government for military purposes to lower your ability to precisely plot your position from the 24 satellites orbiting 11,000 miles above.

GSAK

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife

Undoubtedly the best software for all your caching needs.

The original idea was created by Dave Ulmer on an internet newsgroup. So on the 03 May 2000 the first geocache was placed. It all started with three simple rules 1. Take something from the cache 2. Leave something in the cache 3. Write about it in the logbook. Then along came the 'self proclaimed' - official site Geocaching.com and Jeremy Irish and turned it into three simple rules with some guidelines, it then progressed to three simple rules with a LOT of inflexible guidelines (umm RULES!), then it started down the slippery slope releasing caching variances that are allowed only in the USA like benchmarking and various US only competitions. Then came the pay for use caching and the site copyrighted and trademarked itself out of the minds of most traditional cachers. Jeremy even 'tried' to claim ownership of all the cache data, caches paid for and listed on geocaching.com by it's users.

Please do read the full history of Geocaching on GPSgames and its commercialism and hijacking.

Some sites value the original free community owned idea of caching as it was originally intended to be by Dave Ulmer. There are a lot of different websites you can visit to find caches and even some that have some different ideas on the original theme. Here are some of the websites we've found : GPSgames : Navicache : Terracaching

There are also cache listings for different countries that separated from the unofficial website AUSTRALIA : GERMANY : FRANCE : BELGIUM : NORWAY : RUSSIA : DENMARK