WanAus 201 - Bendigo ICEM East Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
By WanderingAus on 28-Sep-11. Waypoint GA3409

Due to the temporary nature of pens and pencils in my geocaches
PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN WRITING IMPLEMENT!!!

BENDIGO ICEM

I've Cached Everywhere, Man is the largest cache series hidden in Australia. It is made up of the locations made famous by Lucky Star in the song "I've been everywhere" in 1962, lyrics by Geoff Mack. Bendigo is the eighty-third town mentioned in the song, at line five in verse four. After eighteen weeks on the road, covering over 15,000 kilometres, I only cached in nine towns mentioned in the song or in the extra verses written for Geocaching Australia. I should be able to cache in a few more on the way home, and once I'm home I'll be doing maintenance on quite a few of my GC caches in the towns of the song, so there might be a few more placed there too.

Bendigo is a major regional city in the state of Victoria, Australia, located very close to the geographical centre of the state[2] and approximately 150 kilometres (93 mi) north west of the state capital Melbourne. It is the second largest inland city and fourth most populous city in the state. The estimated urban population is 91,713.[1][3] It is the administrative centre for the City of Greater Bendigo which encompasses both the urban area and outlying towns spanning an area of approximately 3,000 square kilometres (1,158 sq mi). Inhabitants of Bendigo are known as Bendigonians.[4]

Originally taking its name from the Bendigo Creek, the name became official in 1891. Shortly afterwards, the term "Bendigonians" was coined to describe its residents.

Bendigo is one of the most significant Victorian era boomtowns in Australia. Gold was discovered in 1851 at The Rocks on Bendigo Creek and the Bendigo Valley was found to be a rich alluvial field where gold could easily be extracted. News of the finds intensified the Victorian gold rush bringing an influx of migrants to the city from around the world within a year and transforming it from a station to a major settlement in the newly proclaimed Colony of Victoria.

Bendigo is notable for its Victorian architectural heritage and gold mining history. Since 1851 over 22 million ounces of gold have been extracted from its goldmines, making it the highest producing 19th Century goldfield in Australia in the nineteenth century and the largest gold mining economy in Eastern Australia. It is the largest finance centre in Victoria outside of Melbourne as home to Australia's only provincially headquartered retail bank, the Bendigo Bank, and the Bendigo Stock Exchange (BSX).

A number of cachers have commented on the location of this cache, being in Bendigo East rather than Bendigo, but anyone who has picked up GA0620 The Tardis by smileypj knows how big The City of Bendigo is. Not being a native Bendigonian,  I wasn't sure what areas would be safe from inundation, so I sought the high ground. I could have gone further south within The City of Bendigo but that would have been even further from the centre of the city, which is less than 3 CroKs away. Many people feel Lake Weeroona is at the centre of Bendigo, and that's only 1.66 CroKs away.

I commend all cachers to study the I've Cached Everywhere, Man Wiki, particularly this part:

Staying with the Free and Open nature of the Geocaching Australia website, you are free to choose any location you wish and hide a geocache there. There Can Be More Than One. i.e. Just because a location already has an ICEM geocache does not restrict you from placing another one.

The only requests for this cache series are:

• Try to hide the geocache within the area described by the location. It doesn't have to be "town centre", but it shouldn't be 50km away either.

Perhaps someone would care to hide an ICEM cache closer to the centre of Bendigo, rather than just complain. I'm happy to archive my rarely visited cache.

The cache is a 180mm x 180mm x 80mm cliplock container hidden at the base of a tree with a piece of an old drum and leaf litter for camouflage. Initial contents are toenail clippers, thong keyring, Hot Wheels '66 Ford Fairlane GT HW Premiere car, ring and bangle, horse, cow, pig, log book, pen, 2 pencils, and a pencil sharpener. The swaps are in a separate ziplock bag to give them extra protection.

Congratulations to Romax on the First To Find.

Swaggies are not tradeable items. Please feel free to take them without making a trade, but please leave a note in the logbook and your online log, and do log them online. Groundspeak Trackables (geocoins and travel bugs) can NOT be logged into this cache, or any other GCA cache. Please don't drop any Groundspeak Trackables in this cache, and if you find any in this cache please remove them and log a "Grab it from somewhere else" log for the trackable.