HMAS #71: HENRY BURRELL Coombs, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
By Cankid on 10-Mar-14. Waypoint GC4V3WA

This series has come to the end of its life. With pine plantations being cleared and new suburbs encroaching on the area, it needs to be archived. Thanks to all who helped with the CITO this morning and to all who have supported the series. Special thanks to Cankid for the research and original placement of the series.

Found during HMAS Pickup CITO event. Heaps of ppl showed up - one even with a TV.

Thank you for letting us log the caches at the event Smittengranny
I had the chance to do the caches 80 to 90 a few 50ies and a 20 with Fred yesterday. This was a nice series.
Would have liked to do the others as well but couldn’t because I had a sour leg.
Thank you for putting out the cache Cankid

Dino

Found this one during the CITO event with Loci612

Thankyou Smittengranny for letting us log the series.

I was devastated when Angel27 told me that these once will be gone by the end of the week! Horror! I was overseas when the came out looking forward to do them ever since. I had left them as they are the perfect opportunity to go nearby with the dog and the entire family. So waiting for the right moment here. (Not realizing that their days were ending of course). So since this is final opportunity to take on the HMAS series before it's archived I am making a late effort now. See how far we get before dark.
Dino was keen to join me after school, hence the late start, but his knee was hurting anew from an injury a couple weeks back so he was sad that he has to miss out.


TFTC Smittengranny and Cankid

Last one of the day in the HMAS series. Thanks for this series, it has been great for getting the geopup out for a few walks of the past few months.

TFTC!

My final opportunity to take on the HMAS series before it's archived. Need to get through 20 traditionals in the northern section this cold morning, plus 3 stragglers in the south.

....And we're done - last of the traditionals, now on to the puzzles if I have time.

TFTC Smittengranny and Cankid

Number 2 for the day
Out hiking with Fricka on our caching adventure so I can try and clean up the last of the HMAS trail. Such a lovely walk! Tftc

Tackling HMAS with Nibletricecakes. TFTC

Out and about with Happy Uke again for a big weekend of caching. In Canberra with our sights targeting the HMAS series before it vanishes over the horizon.

This proved to be a great walk for the both of us through some nice countryside.

I do enjoy these historic caches.

Thanks!

Sorry for the generic log but Finalf29 and I found seventy two for the weekend. We came down to Canberra to finish the HMAS series before it gets archived at the end of the month. We found the last HMAS puzzle as the sun set on Sunday afternoon. We were very tired after walking goodness how many kilometres, but had a fantastic weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. Thanks to all the CO's for your caches, but a HUGE thanks to Finalf29 for joining me in this crazy game... you are the best walking buddy a person can ask for!

Tftc

Tftc

TFTC! Found it with legocacher79, Mithane, Gonkj, Acorn.

Nice simple little cache not far from the track.

Found today with friends while doing the HMAS series before it's gone. TFTC.

1st one on this trail! Great start!

After picking up a few HMAS caches on foot yesterday, I have returned today better equipped (with a mountain bike) to pick up a few more. After parking in Coombs I set of to finish the southern section. This was the first find of the day and not a good start Found the cache vandalised, buried under logs and rubble with the lid removed and cache filled with rocks. All vital components were found, so I cleaned it out and replaced it under natural camouflage for next finder.
TFTC, Cankid and Smittengranny

Looked and looked but no luck on this one.

Great find. Might need a new log sooner rather than later.

Found with leah22

.

Austpark love challenges such as finding all the caches in a series. It may take a while, but this series is a logical challenge for me, as I spent almost 45yrs in the RAN/RANR. Interesting to read the CV of those so honored. I suspect I served with a grandchild of ADM Burrell.
TFTC

Looks like we will get the job finished today!! TFTC

Found with mistysoho thanks for the cache

TFTC!

Finally got to finishing the HMAS series with Runner5ive. The other Zombros did not join us this time. 27km and 65 caches later we had this all knocked off. A fair bit of backtracking through the first half due to some bad navigation. Sorry for the generic log but it has been a big day. Thanks for maintaining and looking after all of these.

Finished the HMAS series (traditionals only for now) with aramil. Also did some incidental nearby ones. 65 caches in one day, and not a single DNF! It certainly helps having two pairs of eyes. Thank you to the series creator and the current series custodian, sorry for generic logs, CIH TNLNSL TFTC

Specific log: after having completed the northern HMAS traditionals, we drove to Coombs to do the entire Southern side! All on foot. It was a lot of walking but this whole area is now full of smileys.

13 of 47 Today

With an indeterminate time between my old and new jobs.. I've taken the oppurtunity to just treat every day like it's my last day of leave.. so with that, I've come down here to finish up the HMAS series.. for the second time

Started today's run by heading straight into the pine forest down south, and then across to the Zoo pines

With only 2 DNFs, I was stoked to have to have over rest of the caches done here!

TFTC CanKid, SmittenGranny & DRT!

### A beautiful sunny day ###

----------

I have already planed the walk of the HMAS series.
It was beautiful weather so I’ve started this tour with enough food/drinks to keep me going.
I’ve met many cows along the way and was happy about the tranquillity and the nice caches along the way.
I was able to find all caches and bonus numbers despite the heat of 40 degrees on that day.
I’ve watched many kangaroos in the afternoon and a big echidna.

I got back to the car after 10 hours of walking 38km. I’ve had a nice day and I was happy to convert all the caches into smileys.
Thank you for this nice tour.

Team sissifalke

I will look for the bonus numbers tomorrow.

Found by grandson..hes 9 lol. Score 4-2 my loss

Tftc! Top spot and an easy find

First time to get a chance go out go out caching with a great group of girls ticking off some of the HMAS series under the log stamp of Capital Crunchers. Thank you to Joolay for the organisation and Kitty Katch,minniek, Joeylovestreasure, JM383, Smittengranny & ZimbaW.

Thank you for a great day out caching with the girls before being summoned for beer and music by GeoSnag1.

Thanks for the series.

TFTC Smittengranny

Joolay organised a walk around the HMAS series so several of us girls joined her for the walk. Spent several hours caching with Joolay, Kitty Katch, Canberra Cacher, Joeylovestreasure, JM383, Smittengranny & ZimbaW. All logs were stamped as Capital Crunchers.

All caches were found easily (except one #61, but has now been moved by the CO). Thanks for the caches, we had a most enjoyable day.

Found with Capital Crunchers. TFTC

Found as part of the Capital Crunchers Ladies day out TFTC

Found with Capital Crunchers. A very clean cache.

Found with jazzy3008

Found with sumbloke. Tftc!

Quick find with wethinks

Found with sami_180

Nice day for walking. Tftc

With LBG Sea Scouts

H

Tricky find, but perseverance paid off

Enjoying this afternoon caching ride TFTC

On the way to 8000 finds... only about 300 to go!
I have a plan to find my 8000th cache on the 29th of July, in two weeks time. So I have a lot to find before then. So I planned a couple of weekend trips to Canberra of intense caching. Today the HMAS series was the target! I brought my bike with me as suggested... but when I started this morning at 8AM it was minus 4 degrees! Frost covering everything and ice on my car windows and bike. On top of that all the layers of warm clothing made it a bit difficult to move freely so I decided to go by foot.
By the end of the 8th hour I found the last cache, and had another hour walk back to the car. In the end I walked 30Km for 8 hours 50 min and found 99 caches in the area ( a few of the HMAS caches were offline and 1 DNF). Followed by a nice 3 hour drive home!
I'm still short of my goal so I'll probably come back down again next weekend.
Thanks for all the caches!

took us a while to find cache as compass was out by 15 meters.... nice cache to start the day !!

After a busy weekend, what better than to go for a nice walk and find some caches? All alone to start with but muggles appeared as the afternoon progressed.
17th of 20. TFTC.

First find today to Travel Granny. TFTC

Nice easy one for the kiddies, tftc

Met up with dty73, youban and Mr youban to see about a number of caches in this area. This was our first cache for the day. We did have a bit of a search here all spread out. I was just going off the gps and it wasn't until I checked with the phone about the change off coordinates! So my gps and phone had some differences and the phone was quite bouncy. Soon those magic words were said and then the phone did settle once found. TFTC!

Aquilus1, Youban and I decided to tackle a couple of the HMAS series and a couple of extras. We parked in a provided space on Madgwick Street, then walked across the bridge to Coombs Crossing. We continued round a circuit from #71 towards #70 and down then back round to #72, obtaining 21/21.

3:20pm My iPhone had me roughly 10mtrs away from the new GZ! Then Aquilus1 finally found it. Tftc!!!

Out with dty73 & Aquilus1 for the afternoon's caching. Extra eyes help. Kutgw

Tftc

Coordinates changed from:
S 35° 18.982 E 149° 2.858

Coordinates changed to:
S 35° 18.977 E 149° 2.847

Distance from original: 62.5 feet or 19.0 meters.

Due to all the sewer upgrade work that has been happening in this area the cache has been moved to S35 18.977 E149 02.847. Many thanks to Lola1983 and Maris4 for all the maintenance they have been doing while I am interstate. We all appreciate your work.

Good to go.

Doing the a second third of the HMAS series with Maris4 and the geo-Lagotto.
We fixed this one up - new log, container and hiding location.
Thanks for the series Smittengranny and Cankid.

We found the cache today and replaced the container and logbook. Because of the tree maintenance we moved the cache bit further from the road. CO was notified.
Untill the cache is re-enabled and coords updated, look here: S 35° 18.977 E 149° 02.847

Easy find, first of the HMAS series I found on this nice sunny Sunday! Great spot for so many caches. Started doing the series today, but I will be back to finish the rest. Thanks for the caches Smittengranny!

This one is accessible now by the way. And the cache container has been broken but is still there.

We enjoyed the location - we took the long walk and found this cache.. Thanks to Smittengranny for placement of this cache and adding to our enjoyment of the area.

Sewer line is being upgraded so area is fenced off temporarily. Will get to this cache as soon as possible.

Container broken and looks like log has gone.

Nice walk after the heat of the day. TFTC

I decided to come down to this end of the HMAS series and do some of them (and 2 or 3 others in among them) in the late afternoon. I started with Coombs Crossing on my way in, and kind of kept going and going ... until well after it got dark (not my original plan so I was finding the last several by the light of a key ring torch - lol) All together I found about 18 caches - 15 (if I counted right) HMAS ones and 3 others. (and didn't find a few too - some were missing (not found by others either) but a couple I missed - have been found since I looked ... I will have to go have another look for those
TFTC - this was my last find for the night - was glad I found this after not finding the one before ... but it had a broken lid, and no log book ...
After this one I walked back to the river crossing, actually remembered to collect the pretty (but too heavy to want to carry on my walk rock that I had left beside my first find, and headed for my car, and home ... all in all a quite enjoyable afternoon/evening ... I will have to come back to this part of the trail later to pick up the 2 or 3 I obviously didn't look hard enough for

The Geocache was wet.

A straightforward find with gekin and a geofriend. The lid of the cache is broken and the log is wet although it is still possible to write in it.
Thanks cankid for the cache and the series of caches.

Sorry to advise that this geocache unloggable because some fool left it out in the rain.

Nice easy cache but car is crack in and won't last long. Sorry no replacement w me. Tftc

Case is cracked. Zip lock holding but cache could do with some tlc

Matilda found it! Thanks!

Tftc!

A gorgeous sunny winter day today, so we packed The Woofer in the car and headed out to tackle the lower half of the HMAS series. We climbed fences, tackled the multitude of blackberries, and one of us (won't say who!) went home with a backside covered in tree sap from sitting on a newly-cut tree stump. We had 2 DNFs (ground clearing in the area has resulted in some casualties), but found 49 so we're not complaining! We took nothing from any of the caches, but left something in all of them. Thanks for the great series! We'll be back to complete it soon.

This was the first of the day for us, and was a nice easy find.

One of 60 HMAS caches found today whilst enjoying the walk around the area. Looking forward to finishing the rest off some time. TFTC!
Cheers,
The Hancock Clan

Our current visit to Australia had been in the planning for over a year with the very significant help and advice from friends who live in Melbourne. The original plan was for a 2 month visit, but as things progressed we just couldn't help extending our trip to the full 90 days allowed on our visas - after all it's a big country and so much to see and do, especially with our favourite pastimes being birding, hiking and of course geocaching! Our journey started with our arrival in Perth before travelling on to Adelaide. We then continued on to Kangaroo Island, before heading to Melbourne via Goolwa, Strathalbyn, Coorong, Mount Gambier, Cape Bridgewater, the Grampians National Park, Port Campbell, Cape Otway and Lorne. The second leg of our journey was a fabulous 9 days in Tasmania. Having returned to Melbourne we then set off on the third leg of our journey, which is to Sydney via Wilson’s Promontory, Lakes Entrance, Mallacoota, Pambula Beach, Thredbo, Canberra (where we are at present) and Fitzroy Falls. We then travel on to the Gold Coast and the nearby mountainous birding hotspots before flying from Brisbane to Cairns for a week in the area. We then fly to Alice Springs for a week on the circuit to and from Kings Canyon and Ayers Rock before flying to Darwin from where we will spend the last two weeks of our holiday making our way to Broome before flying back to Perth, from where we connect with the flight all the way back home to Zimbabwe via South Africa. We already know we can't wait to return!

We had our sights on this series months before we arrived in Australia, but we only had one opportunity to undertake the trail, and so when the day finally arrived and we woke to pouring rain we were not going to be put off - and so following on from a large breakfast to avoid the need for lunch we arrived at the parking spot, donned our waterproofs, crossed the road and found the gate locked! - but we were definitely not going to be deterred at this stage, and so we climbed over the gate and started what turned out to be a MEGA hike. We managed to complete the entire trail, covering a total of just over 32.9 kilometres in 11.5 hours, although it felt like much more as the rain didn't let up even for one minute during the entire day, so making the track very muddy and slippery so that it often felt as though we were walking on ice, slipping and sliding frequently. The last few caches we searched for by torchlight - and then for the hardest part of the day - the LONG walk back to our hire car, as the last cache was nowhere near the start point! Along the way we saw many kangaroos, lots of cows and a good number of birds including two 'lifers' for us - the best bit of all was we didn't see a single other person in the entire hike - this place is definitely a cachers paradise and very muggle free - we had a great day! When we had crossed the nearby road ford early in the morning the river was just a small babbling brook, winding through the boulders way below the road level, but when we crossed back in the evening the river was just below the level of the road! Being dedicated geocachers we then went on to find 3 more caches on the way back to our hotel to make up for the 4 DNF's of the trail, as we wanted one of our days in Australia to include at least 100 finds. Thanks also to the CO for the massive amount of information provided throughout the trail.

A nice quick find at Ground Zero. Thanks so much for the cache.

#1395 Today I found a total of 42 caches, 40 in the HMAS series and 2 others, Coombs Crossing and Aerial Bold. Parked at the corner of Harold White Ave and Annabelle View. Walked 10.5kms in 3 hours. I averaged 14 caches per hour. Most were in great shape, found relatively easy. Thanks for placing & maintaining this series.

After yesterdays rain and a cold frosty morning a clear day was the time to finish the HMAS series TFTC Smittengranny and Cankid

TFTC out with MGROCKS for the day on our push bikes, bloody cold out here after a -2 degree morning.

A quick find. TFTC

I had to be in Canberra for other purposes this morning, but given I didn't have to be anywhere else until the evening, I decided to bring my bike along and try for a few more in this series. I came in via the Arboretum and was able to park near my first target cache then set out on bike. It was very windy again and this time I saw lots of other people, unlike last time when I didn't see anyone apart from some distant workers. Two mountain bikers, a walker and two people on horseback, as well as various maintenance or land care workers. Anyway, between about noon and 3:30 I picked up 40 in this area, then another 5 on the way home. So that was pretty good for a flying visit. Thanks again for this series and the interesting theme.

As for this specific cache: Getting closer to civilisation here, with sounds of building etc in the distance. Another quick find, TFTC!

Having spent the past few days in the alpine area I returned to Canberra to grab a few caches. This series was my target and under clear skies today I set off on the bike to bag a plethora caches.
Starting down near the RSPCA I was nerved to find pockets of smoke coming from various parts the series…. It appears hazard reduction season is well underway.

After 8hrs in the saddle I had found all the caches. Thanks for putting this series together. I actually learnt a bit about our naval history and explored a nice part of Canberra. Sorry for the duplicate logs.

Great cache the label has fallen off so I just put it inside the box tftc

TFTC found with iskaroth98

#8188 Found and Logged at 7:28:00 AM
One of 42 finds for the day while in Canberra for rhe week
A great day to be out in the great outdoors geocaching
Thanks for the series Smittengranny

Out for a pleasant day on the trail with teamwhitedoggang, this is such a great area for a ride. Perfect weather for it, and we made good time around the park. Gave my legs a good workout, and they were about ready to drop off by the end of it all. I think we may have just missed a couple of other cachers out today, with some other logs for today in some of the logbooks.

TNLN - Thanks Smittengranny and Cankid!

Found this cache when out for a cycle around the Arboretum area bike trails with Winterdragon.
Beautiful day, kicked off at 7.15 & wrapped up about 2.15 with 60 finds in total.
Nice spot, thanks for bringing us here
Thanks for the hunt Smittengranny

Decided to give the HMAS series (and a few others close by) a go. Headed out early, met MJW1 at the car park. With bikes at the ready off we went. The goal, to complete as many as we could (had 100 in mind originally, but it was probably also going to be a little too many). A cloudy day to start, but as the afternoon went on, the sun made an appearance, which made it a comfortable ride. A few muggles riding and jogging along the tracks but didn't meet any fellow geocaches. A great day was had, thanks MJW1, we'll finish the remainder soon. 71 finds and 4 DNFs (3 of them already logged). TNLNSL TFTC

A terrific day of geocaching in the company of the most excellent IamCoust. Our aim was to knock off the HMAS series, perhaps with a couple of extras in the way, using our trusty bikes to speed through the twisting forest trails.

While the goal of 100 caches for the day was feasible, it would have required a bit more emphasis on achieving the target and a bit less on achieving a really enjoyable outing with some great chats on the way. As it was, we covered 22 odd kilometres, found 71 caches (and recorded 4 DNFs - 3 of which had been DNFed by a few recent searchers) and had the aforementioned really enjoyable outing. Even allowing for the less than enjoyable blackberries.

Apologies for the generic logs. IamCoust was rather more organised and methodical than myself and made notes on the way, so his entries might have some more details. Sincere TFTCs to those who placed and subsequently maintained these caches.

Out for a huge day caching with The Storm Man, with the goal of breaking his best-day-of-caching record by getting 200 caches. Not the easiest thing to do in the ACT, but we were up for the challenge.

We got up at 5am and drove out to the HMAS trail. With only a few DNFs and most of the puzzle caches found we were able to complete this series on bike by 1pm, then it was off for a quick lunch break before hitting the new CTF trail by car all the way to Captains Flat. We bumped into many different caching groups heading the other way coming back from the day's event. Only 1 DNF on this series and even some time for a few local caches.

We left Captains Flat at 8:30pm knowing we were sitting roughly on 180 caches, we still needed about 20 more to get across the line, and the sun had well and truly gone.

As we drove back I looked through the maps to see what we could manage doing and decided on a night time walk through the Kowen Pine Forest. So at 9:00pm armed with our head torches and iPhones we began our walk through the Cache Constellation Trail. Very still and pleasant this time of night, with only 1 DNF we got back to the car at 11:15pm. Enough time to pick up a few single traditionals around Queanbeyan before midnight just to make sure we were well and truely over the 200 mark.

All in all a huge yet fantastic day.

Thanks StormMan for the fun and thanks to all the geocachers who placed these caches for us to find today. (Sorry for generic log.)

Joelisa was coming up to visit and do some caching and left it up to me to figure out what we would do. Decided to try and crack 200 for caches in a day and after talking to some friends figured the HMAS series would be a good place to start. Armed with camelbacks, head torches, snacks and bikes, Joelisa and I started the trail at 6am (still dark). We finished the trail at 1pm with only 2 trad DNF's, 1 puzzle DNF and 3 other puzzles that we didn't find the coords too, probably because we forgot to look for them. Loved this trail. It wasn't too hard to ride and was really tight so made for some quick finds. Thanks for creating it CanKid and for maintaining it Smittengranny.

Once we had had a quick lunch break it was off to the newly created Captains Flat Trail. Bumped into some other cachers as we made our way through this trail. Very nice to meet you all. Only one DNF on this one, although some took longer to find than others. At the end of this trail we continued on into Captains Flat town where we found a few more before heading back into Queanbeyan.

We still needed more caches and needed them to be close to each other. Joelisa made the call to go for a night cache of the Kowen Constellation Trail. By this point I was getting weary and was sceptical about this idea but went along with him anyway. Turns out it was a lot quicker than I thought and the walk was so easy.

We had about 45mins left before midnight so we made a dash for a few more finds in Queanbeyan just to top the day off. Don't know what the final count is but after a quick review of the day we knew we cracked 200.

Thanks to everyone who created all these caches and for the cool places it took us. Thanks Joelisa for keeping me going when I was close to giving up.

We took a pleasant walk to find another section of these caches. TFTC Smittengranny.

Out with Goldenwattle, finding some of these caches. TFTC Smittengranny.

Found it, thanks for the cache.

Had some time this afternoon to get a few more of this HMAS series. tftc Smittengranny

Nice clear area, no #%# blackberries

G'day, Smittengranny. HMAS #1 ANZAC has the story of my day.

KittyKatch, ZimbaW and I went out today to grab a few more of this series, we met noikemeister at the first one and had a nice little walk chatting along the way, ZW and I had our geodogs who enjoyed the walk too. This was No 20 cache for the day. tftc SmittenGranny

Found at 1:14:00 PM

A few hours on the HMAS trail, my first time. I normally eschew these types of power trails (these days). But it is a nice area to walk in and having company makes it better. I needed a walk to burn up a few calories, so it was a good excuse to get out and cache with some fun people. Thanks KK, DD and ZW (hat's what you'll see in the log) for the company and the chance to accompany you.

Thanks Smittengranny

Found with Darzee Di, ZimbaW and Noikmesiter. Another quick find - TFTC

F(H)ound it 1:14:00 PM with noikmeister, Kittykatch, Darzee Di and the geohounds. Great day caching thanks Smittengranny