Wealth, Whales, and Wildflowers (Beautiful Albany's Heritage Penny Collection #01) Emu Point, Western Australia, Australia
By Albany Canucks on 16-Oct-10. Waypoint GA2640

Your mission is to find an Australian penny hidden at an outstanding whale lookout in the wildflower-rich Mt Martin Reserve that overlooks Albany.

Whales. Wildflowers. And an old Australian penny.  Those are some of the things you can expect to see on this cache hunt!  Like most virtual caches, the main requirement is to get to the location indicated by the coordinates.  This will bring you to a magnificent location near the top of Mt Alfred, overlooking King George Sound towards Albany.  To get here, park in the parking lot at the end of Ledge Beach Rd, and follow the clearly marked trails through the bush for about 2.3km.  Both the Mary Stewart Trail and the Nutrans Trail will get you there - the former is slightly more challenging, but offers nicer ocean views from Mt Eileen on the way.   See the image gallery for a map of the trails.  Designated as Mt Martin Regional Botanic Park, this area is known for its many colourful wildflowers (such as the spectacular Scarlet Banksia) that are on display each spring.  The Mt Martin Reserve is considered representative of the flora recorded around Albany by the early botanists, much of which has disappeared through cultivation.  From the Whale Lookout near GZ, you'll get fantastic views towards Albany, and from July - October you can often spot Southern Right Whales and Humpback Whales in the water below.  If there's no wealth of whales or wildflowers to be seen, you'll still enjoy an excellent walk and some outstanding views, and you can round off your morning or afternoon with a picnic at Ledge Beach if you are so inclined.  There are several regular caches in the area, so you can kill several geocaching birds with one stone while doing this walk.

But this is a virtual cache with one small difference: we do have some wealth for you to find, because we've hidden an old Australian penny right on the very spot where we recorded the coordinates. The original requirement to take a photo of a view from around GZ is now optional, but to prove that you were really there, after you've logged the find please send us a private message telling us the year on the penny.  You should be able to find the penny without too much difficulty when you pinpoint GZ, but please do NOT try to remove it. An old penny won't make you rich, so leave it here for others to enjoy the somewhat unusual challenge offered by this virtual cache.  The penny is not buried and doesn't require the removal of rocks or anything else, but is in plain view - you just need to look in the right spot!  Is the penny hunt like looking for a needle in a hay stack?  Not when you have a GPS receiver and the exact coordinates where it's located!  

This is the first of what the Canucks hope will become a Heritage Penny Collection sprinkled throughout Beautiful Albany, in some of the wonderful places that this area has to offer.  Our aim is to bring you to a nice place where you can enjoy the beauty of the natural environment, and the additional challenge of finding the equivalent of a needle in a haystack - made easy with today's technology.  The more accessible the location, the harder we'll try to make the penny hunt.   The real "wealth" that this land abounds in isn't measured in pennies, but in nature's gifts of beauty rich and rare, and we hope our penny trail will help you get there to appreciate it all.  Enjoy Beautiful Albany, enjoy our Heritage, and enjoy the hunt!

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