Big Crocamadile Wyndham, Western Australia, Australia
By
TeamGeoPlesk on 01-Jul-08. Waypoint GA1138
Cache Details
| Difficulty: | |
| Terrain: | |
| Type: | Virtual |
| Container: | Other |
| Coordinates: | S15° 29.227' E128° 7.405' (WGS 84) |
| 52L 405974E 8287603N (UTM) | |
| Elevation: | 14 m |
| Local Government Area: | Wyndham-East Kimberley |
/128.123417,-15.487117,14/400x200?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiY2F1Z2h0YXR3b3JrIiwiYSI6ImNqa2l4ZzNzMDE5bjgzdm1sZGpuODF1Mm0ifQ.q8YMzVyzDJJlJHHV8EMjwQ)
Description
A simple virtual cache in Wyndham, WA
Logs
Staying down at El Questro, we had a spare afternoon, so headed back out to the highway and up to Wyndham for a dozen caches, with a few virtuals and a trig too...
That's a big croc.
That's a big croc.
Rated: for Overall Experience
A quick find today after arriving in Wyndham for the first time ever. We managed lunch at the Rusty Shed then began our caching here. Thanks to TeamGeoPlesk for the cache.
Rated: for Overall Experience
Staying at Kununurra we did a day trip to Wyndham to find the caches we missed on our last visit and this was one of them. Easy to spot our target and managed to get a photo of both of us from the friendly tourists snapping their own happy snap. Thanks TeamGeoPlesk.
So I am in Springfield, Western Australia 
Hey kids !! Look at the Big Crocamadile
Cue kids running one way and Homer headed for the pub for a round of Duff
Heh !! Heh !!
Alright, so maybe Marge was here too and I had to behave
So I wandered quietly around the giant MAN EATING CROCAMADILE until I spied an opportunity to take a snappy photo
TFTC
Hey kids !! Look at the Big Crocamadile
Cue kids running one way and Homer headed for the pub for a round of Duff
Heh !! Heh !!
Alright, so maybe Marge was here too and I had to behave
So I wandered quietly around the giant MAN EATING CROCAMADILE until I spied an opportunity to take a snappy photo
TFTC
Rated: for Overall Experience
23 June 2013, Sunday, Week 8 – Day 56 of our Trip Around Australia
Blog - http://mrlocks.tumblr.com
https://www.facebook.com/mark.seberry?ref=tn_tnmn
Check out photos at –
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=2188733&share=1
“1CADFAY”, (1 cache a day for a year).
Kununurra WA - Wyndham
OMG, what a hectic full on day, it was an early start, and it needed to be, as we were doing a day trip to Wyndam. What? Where?
“Wyndham is the oldest and northernmost town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, located on the Great Northern Highway, 2,210 kilometres (1,373 mi) northeast of Perth. It was established in 1886 as a result of a gold rush at Halls Creek, and it is now a port and service centre for the east Kimberley with a population of 800. Wyndham is split into two areas. The original town site of Wyndham Port is situated on Cambridge Gulf, while Wyndham's Three Mile area is the residential and shopping area of the town.
The first European to visit the area was Phillip Parker King in 1819. He was instructed to find a river 'likely to lead to an interior navigation into the great continent'. He sailed into Cambridge Gulf, which he named after the Duke of Cambridge, and then sailed up a river which was subsequently named after him. Finding no fresh water on the mudflats, he departed.
The town of Wyndham was established by John Forrest in 1886 as the major port and trading station of the East Kimberley, after finds of gold in Halls Creek a year earlier. By mid-1886, the town was booming. There were six pubs, one of which was a two-storey building. Ships brought in at least five thousand miners who headed off to the Halls Creek goldfields. It is known that during this boom there were times when up to 16 vessels were moored in Cambridge Gulf.
However, by 1888, the gold rush at Halls Creek had ended and the fortunes of Wyndham declined. Wyndham became a tiny settlement serving the pastoral interests in the East Kimberley. By 1912, money had virtually disappeared from the Wyndham economy, and purchases were paid for using promissory notes known as "shinplasters".
During World War II, the town was attacked several times by Japanese aircraft.
Wyndham's significance as a service centre was crucial for the construction of the Ord River Diversion Dam and the town of Kununurra in the early 1960s. With the rise of Kununurra as a larger population centre the significance of Wyndham as a service centre had diminished by the 1980s. Wyndham has regained significance as the port for the region with new mines shipping ore from the port.”
(Stolen from Wiki).
OK, so now you know! Anyway we were on the road by 8.15am, which was good but could have been better due to children dissappearing off with their friends when they were told clearly to get in the car, oh well better late than later.
We drove directly to Wyndham only stopping at the information bay at the entrance to town to look for a cache “Wyndham, GC1VFQ6”, a quick find for Jacki, then moved on into town to stop at “Big Crocamadile, GA1138” for a photo. Next it was straight up to the lookout at “Five Rivers Lookout, GC1VFTV”. A quick find for Charlie. WOW, what AMAZING views from up here! Could have stayed up here for hours, just looking, wish I had bought a set of binocs. Got a quick photo to log “Wyndham Views, GA1136” then went for a walk up the hill to find the trigg point, “Five Rivers Trigg, TP1475” and get a photo to log that.
It was now back down the hill to the town, we went and found “Warrin Park Monument, GA1304”, which was an interesting set of statues of indigenous family, a kangaroo, a dog, a lizard and a snake, all much larger than life. It was disappointing however to see that the area has not been maintained. Nearby we went to look for “Super Wyndham, GC3FAY4”, there was too many muggles coming and going to have a decent look for this one so after a while of looking suspicious we decided to leave it, a DNF on this one. Next was “Pioneer Cemetery – Wyndham, GC1VFR1”, this was a quick find for me while Jacki and the kids went looking around at the graves, not my favourite place, cemeteries. Our next stop was to visit the local museum to find “Flight to Hell, GC1VVY6”, I would have probably left this one as I didn’t realize there was an entry fee for the museum and because I’m such a massive tight ^R$3, that I wouldn’t have paid if I had known, LOL. But I went in and started chatting with the very nice old chap inside and before I realized the kids had wandered in behind me and were busy ‘touching things’ as they have repeatedly been told not to, sigh. Anyway I then had to pay the nice old man, well we were here now so we had a look around and I made sure to try and bore the hell out of the kids with all the historic stuff as punishment. We ended up outside after a while looking at all the old machinery and despite my best efforts the kids were having a great time running around climbing all over the stuff while I searched for the cache. I applied my ‘cache-dar’ (radar for caches) and soon had a win, signed the log and we were on our way.
We jumped back in the car and drove a short way down the road to find somewhere to have lunch and came across a park with some old train engines and, strangely, a bunch of boab trees which had been cut down and were laying on their sides nearby. We had a look and found there was a cache right here, “The Port of Wyndham, GC1VFTO”. Jacki came up with the goods pretty quickly, the kids were having lots of fun climbing all over the old trains while we looked. We continued on down the road to “The Residency, GC1VVYB”, in order to continue the history lesson, LOL.
It was time to head back to Kununurra and drove back out of town, on the way we took a bit of a detour to Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve and looked for a cache, “Fireplace? Where? GC1VHBK”. The drive to the area was along a wide flat grassy plain eventually coming to a hill in the middle of the plain, we drove to the top of the hill and parked in the car park. There were some old stone chimneys and concrete stumps from a wireless station building which had been here once. From here all around are magnificent views down onto the grassy flood plain below and a lush green oasis billabong, in the distance could be seen some mountain ranges. We set off to find the cache walking along a rocky trail to get to GZ, the coords were indicating a spot which didn’t make sense so we extended our search and Chloe came up with the goods after I pointed out a spot to check. Jacki claimed that she had said it would be there when we were looking at GZ, lol. While we were here we got some photos to log “Telegraph Hill, GA1307”.
From this point we could see the nearby lagoon and drove down to have a look, we parked in the car park and noticed hundreds of brown ducks all congregated on the nearby shore of the billabong, they were all huddled together resting and preening, there were several other types of birds in amongst them including some tall white egrets. We walked along the sturdy boardwalk which had been made to also accommodate wheel chairs, there was a viewing platform near the edge and information boards with photos of the different type of birds as you continued on. At the end of the boardwalk was a large hide, again there were bird identification boards. Some thin slots are provided to give 180 degree views of the billabong, there were a great number of birds and many different types. It would have been good to stay longer but it was time to get going again. While we were here we took some photos to be able to log “Parray’s Lagoon, GA1137”, we also found the cache “Marlgu Billabong, GC28K6V”, this was a quick find for Charlie.
We drove out of here heading south, the road became a little bit rougher travelling along a dusty track bordered by the long grass of the flood plain and at times we were not even sure we were on the right road. We eventually came out onto the Parry Creek Road, made a turn right and headed for the Parry Creek Farm Tourist and Caravan Park to look for a cache here, “ Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve, GC28K8P”. This was a fairly quick find by me while the kids were busy climbing all over the old grader machine, lol. We returned back to the Parry Creek Road and drove to the ‘Old Halls Creek Road’. There was a cache or three down this road which would eventually bring us back to Great Northern Highway.
The first section of the Old Halls Creek Road was a rough gravel track which gradually degraded as we continued on. We noted that at points along the road could be seen the outline of the original road which was lined with large rocks placed by convict labour, the existing road criss crossed this older road and sometimes followed partly alongside. The landscape here was between rounded hills with their sides covered in forests of boabs. We eventually got to the area of the cache “Stockman Camp, GC1VHA5”. There was something strange going on with this one, the coords were telling me that the cache was 100 metres off into the bush, which didn’t make sense but I went and checked anyway, after bush bashing through spikey spinifex I got to listed GZ but there was nothing here except bush so I went back to the road and looked around in that area with no luck, so a DNF for this one. Later that evening I read a log which stated that “……..the cache was found lying on the ground, so we replaced it in a suitable pipe.” I did check a couple of pipes in the ground that had been cut off at ground level but did not spot it. Time was slipping away so we continued on our trip, there was a creek crossing to negotiate over a causeway, parts of the causeway had started to break up and was washed away, this road may become impassable if not repaired. There were other caches in this area but we had run out of time now and the road had become so rough, rocky and bumpy that we were only able to advance at about 20kph. The journey out required a few more badly degraded causeways which ended up very tricky to negotiate and were quite nerve wracking, another concern for us was the long spinifex grass in the middle of the track, I’ve heard stories of this grass building up under a vehicle and eventually catching fire resulting in the loss of the vehicle so this was a big worry as we drove along through some very grassy sections.
We arrived safely back on the Great Northern Highway, with a huge sigh of relief. On the way back to Kununurra we decided to have a quick look at The Grotto, we parked in the car park and went for a short walk along a track over wide flat, smooth rocks which appeared to be the bed of a watercourse, this took us to the top of a high waterfall that was a sheer drop into a rocky gorge below. The views from here were spectacular and the drop into the gorge was head spinning, extreme care was needed here, especially with young children. The sun was on its way down so we passed on the walk down into the gorge. I went off to find a nearby cache, “WanAus 48 - The Grotto, GC1CN9Q”. This required a difficult bush bash over loose jumbled rocks and tall spinifex, once at GZ I circled around for a bit before spotting the cache between a couple of larger rocks, signed the log and headed back to the car.
On our drive back the sun was setting, bathing the rocky hills in a wonderful warm red glow, as we came into town the Super Moon was rising up above the red hills creating a postcard like scene. We diverted down to Swim Beach to capture a photo of the moon rise and ended up at Ski Beach, while we were taking photos of the moon above the lake, a guy ran up to us asking if we had jumper leads, so it was off to the rescue, we soon jump started his car and were on our way back to the caravan. After a long tiring day it was good to relax with a cuppa before organizing dinners and retiring for the night.
Blog - http://mrlocks.tumblr.com
https://www.facebook.com/mark.seberry?ref=tn_tnmn
Check out photos at –
http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=2188733&share=1
“1CADFAY”, (1 cache a day for a year).
Kununurra WA - Wyndham
OMG, what a hectic full on day, it was an early start, and it needed to be, as we were doing a day trip to Wyndam. What? Where?
“Wyndham is the oldest and northernmost town in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, located on the Great Northern Highway, 2,210 kilometres (1,373 mi) northeast of Perth. It was established in 1886 as a result of a gold rush at Halls Creek, and it is now a port and service centre for the east Kimberley with a population of 800. Wyndham is split into two areas. The original town site of Wyndham Port is situated on Cambridge Gulf, while Wyndham's Three Mile area is the residential and shopping area of the town.
The first European to visit the area was Phillip Parker King in 1819. He was instructed to find a river 'likely to lead to an interior navigation into the great continent'. He sailed into Cambridge Gulf, which he named after the Duke of Cambridge, and then sailed up a river which was subsequently named after him. Finding no fresh water on the mudflats, he departed.
The town of Wyndham was established by John Forrest in 1886 as the major port and trading station of the East Kimberley, after finds of gold in Halls Creek a year earlier. By mid-1886, the town was booming. There were six pubs, one of which was a two-storey building. Ships brought in at least five thousand miners who headed off to the Halls Creek goldfields. It is known that during this boom there were times when up to 16 vessels were moored in Cambridge Gulf.
However, by 1888, the gold rush at Halls Creek had ended and the fortunes of Wyndham declined. Wyndham became a tiny settlement serving the pastoral interests in the East Kimberley. By 1912, money had virtually disappeared from the Wyndham economy, and purchases were paid for using promissory notes known as "shinplasters".
During World War II, the town was attacked several times by Japanese aircraft.
Wyndham's significance as a service centre was crucial for the construction of the Ord River Diversion Dam and the town of Kununurra in the early 1960s. With the rise of Kununurra as a larger population centre the significance of Wyndham as a service centre had diminished by the 1980s. Wyndham has regained significance as the port for the region with new mines shipping ore from the port.”
(Stolen from Wiki).
OK, so now you know! Anyway we were on the road by 8.15am, which was good but could have been better due to children dissappearing off with their friends when they were told clearly to get in the car, oh well better late than later.
We drove directly to Wyndham only stopping at the information bay at the entrance to town to look for a cache “Wyndham, GC1VFQ6”, a quick find for Jacki, then moved on into town to stop at “Big Crocamadile, GA1138” for a photo. Next it was straight up to the lookout at “Five Rivers Lookout, GC1VFTV”. A quick find for Charlie. WOW, what AMAZING views from up here! Could have stayed up here for hours, just looking, wish I had bought a set of binocs. Got a quick photo to log “Wyndham Views, GA1136” then went for a walk up the hill to find the trigg point, “Five Rivers Trigg, TP1475” and get a photo to log that.
It was now back down the hill to the town, we went and found “Warrin Park Monument, GA1304”, which was an interesting set of statues of indigenous family, a kangaroo, a dog, a lizard and a snake, all much larger than life. It was disappointing however to see that the area has not been maintained. Nearby we went to look for “Super Wyndham, GC3FAY4”, there was too many muggles coming and going to have a decent look for this one so after a while of looking suspicious we decided to leave it, a DNF on this one. Next was “Pioneer Cemetery – Wyndham, GC1VFR1”, this was a quick find for me while Jacki and the kids went looking around at the graves, not my favourite place, cemeteries. Our next stop was to visit the local museum to find “Flight to Hell, GC1VVY6”, I would have probably left this one as I didn’t realize there was an entry fee for the museum and because I’m such a massive tight ^R$3, that I wouldn’t have paid if I had known, LOL. But I went in and started chatting with the very nice old chap inside and before I realized the kids had wandered in behind me and were busy ‘touching things’ as they have repeatedly been told not to, sigh. Anyway I then had to pay the nice old man, well we were here now so we had a look around and I made sure to try and bore the hell out of the kids with all the historic stuff as punishment. We ended up outside after a while looking at all the old machinery and despite my best efforts the kids were having a great time running around climbing all over the stuff while I searched for the cache. I applied my ‘cache-dar’ (radar for caches) and soon had a win, signed the log and we were on our way.
We jumped back in the car and drove a short way down the road to find somewhere to have lunch and came across a park with some old train engines and, strangely, a bunch of boab trees which had been cut down and were laying on their sides nearby. We had a look and found there was a cache right here, “The Port of Wyndham, GC1VFTO”. Jacki came up with the goods pretty quickly, the kids were having lots of fun climbing all over the old trains while we looked. We continued on down the road to “The Residency, GC1VVYB”, in order to continue the history lesson, LOL.
It was time to head back to Kununurra and drove back out of town, on the way we took a bit of a detour to Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve and looked for a cache, “Fireplace? Where? GC1VHBK”. The drive to the area was along a wide flat grassy plain eventually coming to a hill in the middle of the plain, we drove to the top of the hill and parked in the car park. There were some old stone chimneys and concrete stumps from a wireless station building which had been here once. From here all around are magnificent views down onto the grassy flood plain below and a lush green oasis billabong, in the distance could be seen some mountain ranges. We set off to find the cache walking along a rocky trail to get to GZ, the coords were indicating a spot which didn’t make sense so we extended our search and Chloe came up with the goods after I pointed out a spot to check. Jacki claimed that she had said it would be there when we were looking at GZ, lol. While we were here we got some photos to log “Telegraph Hill, GA1307”.
From this point we could see the nearby lagoon and drove down to have a look, we parked in the car park and noticed hundreds of brown ducks all congregated on the nearby shore of the billabong, they were all huddled together resting and preening, there were several other types of birds in amongst them including some tall white egrets. We walked along the sturdy boardwalk which had been made to also accommodate wheel chairs, there was a viewing platform near the edge and information boards with photos of the different type of birds as you continued on. At the end of the boardwalk was a large hide, again there were bird identification boards. Some thin slots are provided to give 180 degree views of the billabong, there were a great number of birds and many different types. It would have been good to stay longer but it was time to get going again. While we were here we took some photos to be able to log “Parray’s Lagoon, GA1137”, we also found the cache “Marlgu Billabong, GC28K6V”, this was a quick find for Charlie.
We drove out of here heading south, the road became a little bit rougher travelling along a dusty track bordered by the long grass of the flood plain and at times we were not even sure we were on the right road. We eventually came out onto the Parry Creek Road, made a turn right and headed for the Parry Creek Farm Tourist and Caravan Park to look for a cache here, “ Parry Lagoons Nature Reserve, GC28K8P”. This was a fairly quick find by me while the kids were busy climbing all over the old grader machine, lol. We returned back to the Parry Creek Road and drove to the ‘Old Halls Creek Road’. There was a cache or three down this road which would eventually bring us back to Great Northern Highway.
The first section of the Old Halls Creek Road was a rough gravel track which gradually degraded as we continued on. We noted that at points along the road could be seen the outline of the original road which was lined with large rocks placed by convict labour, the existing road criss crossed this older road and sometimes followed partly alongside. The landscape here was between rounded hills with their sides covered in forests of boabs. We eventually got to the area of the cache “Stockman Camp, GC1VHA5”. There was something strange going on with this one, the coords were telling me that the cache was 100 metres off into the bush, which didn’t make sense but I went and checked anyway, after bush bashing through spikey spinifex I got to listed GZ but there was nothing here except bush so I went back to the road and looked around in that area with no luck, so a DNF for this one. Later that evening I read a log which stated that “……..the cache was found lying on the ground, so we replaced it in a suitable pipe.” I did check a couple of pipes in the ground that had been cut off at ground level but did not spot it. Time was slipping away so we continued on our trip, there was a creek crossing to negotiate over a causeway, parts of the causeway had started to break up and was washed away, this road may become impassable if not repaired. There were other caches in this area but we had run out of time now and the road had become so rough, rocky and bumpy that we were only able to advance at about 20kph. The journey out required a few more badly degraded causeways which ended up very tricky to negotiate and were quite nerve wracking, another concern for us was the long spinifex grass in the middle of the track, I’ve heard stories of this grass building up under a vehicle and eventually catching fire resulting in the loss of the vehicle so this was a big worry as we drove along through some very grassy sections.
We arrived safely back on the Great Northern Highway, with a huge sigh of relief. On the way back to Kununurra we decided to have a quick look at The Grotto, we parked in the car park and went for a short walk along a track over wide flat, smooth rocks which appeared to be the bed of a watercourse, this took us to the top of a high waterfall that was a sheer drop into a rocky gorge below. The views from here were spectacular and the drop into the gorge was head spinning, extreme care was needed here, especially with young children. The sun was on its way down so we passed on the walk down into the gorge. I went off to find a nearby cache, “WanAus 48 - The Grotto, GC1CN9Q”. This required a difficult bush bash over loose jumbled rocks and tall spinifex, once at GZ I circled around for a bit before spotting the cache between a couple of larger rocks, signed the log and headed back to the car.
On our drive back the sun was setting, bathing the rocky hills in a wonderful warm red glow, as we came into town the Super Moon was rising up above the red hills creating a postcard like scene. We diverted down to Swim Beach to capture a photo of the moon rise and ended up at Ski Beach, while we were taking photos of the moon above the lake, a guy ran up to us asking if we had jumper leads, so it was off to the rescue, we soon jump started his car and were on our way back to the caravan. After a long tiring day it was good to relax with a cuppa before organizing dinners and retiring for the night.
Rated: for Overall Experience
You certainly would not miss this monster as you drove through town. A great attraction for the area. TFTC
The interesting huge figure of Croc. Happy to pose myself with GPSr to be taken of the photo. Thanks for fun.
Rated: for Overall Experience
Had a great drive from Kununurra to Wyndah just to try the Barra bugers - definitely worth the drive.
I was up here 16 -6 2008. A very crocodile town. Albida
Rated: for Overall Experience
Took the obligatory tourist photos here, stopped for afternoon tea in the park. TFTC
Rated: for Overall Experience
hugh crocidile!!! see photo 
thanks for organised the hunt.
thanks for organised the hunt.Rated: for Overall Experience
Jointed FTF with Everlasting. We found the huge crocodile, boy can imagine if it is alive!! Thanks TPG.
Rated: for Overall Experience
Jointed FTF with Bushies2. As They knows all about Wyndham, they shows me all the area. Wow huge one. Thanks TGP for organising the vurtual.
Rated: for Overall Experience
