Melville's Hard Find (Waikato) Hamilton, North Island, New Zealand
By novalightning on 15-Mar-12. Waypoint GC3EMNF

An impromptu all night affair with no muggles, no traffic and all the parking we could want! Set off with ApacheD & Davidsonclan around 7pm with a couple of sneaky Tauranga caches before starting the 'Hamilton Assault' It was a productive 10 hours in spite of the weather & DNFs. Signed our logs as PAD to save time and log space.
Not here though...... no finds here for a long time and no update from the CO. Might be time to say good bye

Time to archive and allow others to hide in the area

My wife had some business in Hamilton .... Now so do I This is my fourth attempt at this one including one time with previous finders.... Today I'm here alone but have reached out for help and received 2 very similar responses back confirming where the cache was for them. Happy to say - I'm confident it's gone. No finds in over a year only compounds the need for owner intervention. Thanking you in advance.

No luck for us today with this one.

As this has not been found for almost a year could the CO please verify that the cache is still there.

Look and look didn't find this one

not there look for 20 minutes

It's a sad day when you return to a DNF with two others that have found it in the past only to walk away with another DNF. I'm not giving up but will return after a few more found it logs. Cheers Nova.

Has a good look but no find today

The end of 2015 saw us take on a big couple of days of caching. At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of reaching 4000 caches by the end of the year. Towards the end of 2015, it wasn't looking too promise as geocaching got put a bit on the backburner for us as life and things happened. Come two days to the end of 2015 and we realised we were much closer than we realised, so set off to Hamilton for some binge caching to reach that milestone! Today was a day with a lot of more DNFs than expected and less numbers than we wanted, but regardless, it still brought us that little bit closer to our goal.

We had to wait for some muggles in the shops and the bus stop to leave before we could have a look around. After some great power of deduction, we soon figured were the cache would be hidden, and voila, there it was! Thanks for the hide.

Holidays in New Zealand! We have been looking forward to them for years. We had lots of time to prepare ourselves for a great trip. As geocachers, we also picked out a number of great caches. Armed with a "to-do list" and accidental encounters we were lucky to log many caches. Thank you for placing them and keeping the game go on!

Day 4/28: Karaka - Waitomo
Had a lovely sunny day at the bridal veil falls, driving around these midlands and the waitomo caves

This was found number 6777

Greetings from the Netherlands

#295. I'm not entirely sure this deserves its 5 star rating... But in saying that it was quite easy for me because the previous few longs made it crystal clear where it was.
I've had difficulty 2s which took me longer to find than this one
A bonus though... I'm now at 45 out of 81 on my DT matrix!
TFTC!

FIN (laalaa, janahola, temyllyl, kapeka) holiday in New Zealand. First we drove from Auckland to Wellington. We enjoyed the scenery.
Greetings from Finland.
Thanks for the cache.

Found it with Team FIN [janahola, kapeka, laalaa & temyllyl]

We had fun with caching few weeks here in New Zealand. Lots of geocaches and many sort of them too. We saw awesome places, weather was pretty good all the time and people were friendly and polite. Caches were pretty similar like in our home country. Of course there were some exeptions. Nice and really scenary country!

Greetings from Finland

Third day on our geo-roadtrip in New Zealand, and caching our way towards south. Logged using our group nickname FIN with janahola, laalaa and kapeka. This day we started to head towards south and to Christchurch Mega event.
After attending todays event, we started heading to our next night accommodation, via some caches of course. We had a hunch about what to look for, and eventually we managed to sign logbook!

On a geoholiday road tripping to Christchurch MEGA and around beautiful New Zealand. Our four people group (temyllyl, laalaa, kapeka and myself) from Finland used group tag FIN to log the caches.

This sounded interesting so we drove to see is there chances to find the cache. It didn't took so long before laalaa found it. TFTC!

Welcome to MEGA Finland in 5-7 august 2016!

Found just after dark with some recently converted muggles. didnt take too long, but these things dont if you happen to look in the right place! my first D5. TFTC.
Oh... log was full.. and damp, so I replaced it for you with a brand new one. I have kept the old one... let me know if you want it.

Out and about in the Tron trying to sign off on some solved puzzle caches that have sat in my solved pile for far too long. Not that this is a puzzle. But the stats on this were intriguing so I deceived to stop by for a look. Soon had to move on as a few muggles arrived to wait for the bus. On my return I out waited another bus passenger muggle and had a good look. However I was unable to come up with the goods. A bit concerned that it may be MIA I enacted a phone a friend. Hmmmm, already checked there and a recheck didn't help. In the end I decided to check the ground to see if it had fallen. That did the trick as I soon spotted the mostly buried cache. Dug it out and happily completed the formalities on this one. I think I earned those five stars on this one! Replaced the cache as I believe it was supposed to be hidden. Cheers for the cache placement!

Suspect cache may be muggled, checked with z-master who confirmed I was looking in the right place but could not locate it. Z-master mentioned that magnet was not sticking correctly.

Managed to gather a couple of guys from the BOP Geocaching Facebook page to commence a small assault on the Waikato. So together with KiwimikeBOP and TNXpro we left Tauranga around 7pm, head lamps in hand




Another novalightning cache and this time a D5... after a DNF at the Intermediate we were keen to get this one especially as it would probably be our last Hamilton cache for the night. We searched high and low, under, over and behind. We factored in co-ordinate inaccuracy and widened the search with no luck. Again 3 sets of eyes and a DNF. Because it's a D5 I won't log a maintenance request but I'd ask the CO check on it please.




Cheers again novalightning

On another improptu night mission with Kiwimikebop and Philip.Perry. Why Thursday night I will never know but I agreed anyway and we were off from Tauranga about 6pm. I had set a time limit of home by 1am, as I had a big day following at work. We headed over to Hamilton as a team, but with Philip doing the driving, the navigating the reading the descriptions and eating pizza (all at the same time) I could relax We hardly made a dent in the caches in Hamilton, but we certainly had fun and found a few good ones. Home by 2am - damn, work in a few hours.

It was approaching midnight and we figured this was probably the best time of day to search for an urban D5. We spent quite a bit of time here checking out every conceivable and non-conceiveable spot. We were even muggled by the neighbour across the road who initially didnt want to talk to us until we asked him if he has seen other people searching here. He was aware of several others who have looked all over the structure and thought they (and us!) were we searching for a drug pickup. We tried to explain what we were doing, and assured him it had nothing to do with drugs, which he was relieved about.
We decided to call off the search, as we had to get back to Tauranga. DNF's are never fun to log. It appears that this may need some maintenance though. Perhaps we will return.

Well this has been a nemesis cache for me, I think this is visit number 5. The first two I went off caching sense rather than trusting in the compass more. the other couple were being too close to being muggled.

Never the less it's nice to grab this one for the roadtrip, and tick off a nemesis cache TFTC and the challenge, the rating is quite fitting given my struggles lol

This entry was edited by Z-masterNZ on Saturday, 08 August 2015 at 22:52:25 UTC.

Very tricky indeed! first went with my gut and cache sense, this proved fruitless! a re think and woohoo the cache has been found signed as Dr B to save space in a veey full log!

Logbook full

Not many people around so took some time sticking fingers into lots of nooks and crannies but couldn't find this one.

My 400th cache! Found earlier this year. TFTC

At last, got here when there weren't too many muggles about... At least during pick up. Now waiting to put it back and we get an influx! With Raewyn. Log looks too full so I didn't sign. Good hide. Thanks to previous commenters as they helped me look in the right place. Tftc

823 Late night collect. Log is full but managed to squeeze my initials on the end.

Came back to stake out the joint, in prep for a hard search with a fellow cacher ... lol. Accidentally found cache where it shouldn't have been. Emailed CO log is FULL and where I have placed the nano.

See log below.

This cache was on my list to fill in a hole in my D/T grid, found while in Hamilton for a Dahlia show. With the log being full, signed Pm and date. Thanks for the cache

Found caching with alpenmilch80 on day #3 of a 3 day road trip to the Taranaki.

Found quickly, but two items on us nearly got stuck in the retrieval process here.

Thanks!

My second day on a cache run to Taranaki together with Slieschke. Today the goal was to explore the Forgotten World Highway and to make our way back to Auckland. We decided to take a longer break in Hamilton to help celebrating its 150th birthday with fireworks and a Time Warp. Very hard find.. wait no, we found it but it took time to get it out of its hidding place. In the end we almost lost two pens in there... TFTC

Yah I finally found this one without the boys in tow. Its official they really are my bad luck when it comes to locating nanos and giving me time pressure! Basically walked straight up to it today but rehiding was the issue with muggles everywhere. Thankfully the muggles all departed at the same time after a bit of a wait by me. I managed to squeeze our name onto the log.

This entry was edited by iammrwalker on Tuesday, 28 October 2014 at 03:05:19 UTC.

So exited to see a cache with a D/T rating like this. Needing this for my Provisional license almost too scared to contemplate a possible find. God bless the geo kids for this find. Log is fill so unable fill this in. TFTC and another challenge met.

This entry was edited by Fencarrows on Wednesday, 08 October 2014 at 08:33:33 UTC.

after quite a bit of pretending to wait for a bus i managed to go in for the grab while no muggles were around good spot but unfortunately no room to sign the log

Found it but could not sign the log as it was totally full.

Had to wait as there were a lot of muggles going past. TFTC

Tftc

Out and about with Gap (of Fap and Gap). We planned on a big round up of caches around Te Rapa... so we started off early. It rained as soon as we arrived in Hamilton, and never let up. I got so wet, I had to ask Gap to visit a second hand shop to get a warm, dry coat... All part of the adventure we had today.

Yes, been here before - failed here before. I asked Gap to put me out of my misery, as he's found this one previously. I searched all the usual spots... I've learnt that it's a waste of time firing up the gps here. Gap showed me the cache... where I'd not thought to search. TFTC.

Dnf

Too many muggles.. The 2 old guys at the bus stop thought we were inspecting the bus solar pole so we let them think that

Too many muggles today to have a really good look with causing too much suspicion. Will have to come back when it's not so busy.

Nice sneaky little cache.
T4TC

finally managed to get this one. Tricky hide. TFTC

Over from OZ for a few days and was introducing a couple of muggles to caching. A little embarrassing though as one of the muggles spotted this one before me. Now off to check out a couple of the near by caches.
TFTC

I had a quick hunt around on my way past the other night but I was unsuccessful. Tonight though, I was able to eliminate all the places I'd already checked, and it wasn't long before I had this cache in hand. The log is getting close to full and it was a bit hard to read so I wasn't sure where to scribble and I ended up just picking a spot. Thanks for the hunt.

Stopped for a quick look at the end of a lovely summer's afternoon caching. I started looking, but someone nearby was indulging in illicit substances, and the smell got a bit overpowering so I called it quits. I'll search again soon though!

This entry was edited by NZ Skyliner on Saturday, 01 February 2014 at 00:32:41 UTC.

Chose today to attempt this as Hamilton has been quiet (expect the Base!) and a quick find it was! TFTC!

Needing to make the requirements for a challenge this one was on my radar, and as had been at the nearby Christmas event it only made sense to stop. Great Idea

TFTC

Well we didn't know what to expect for this one but It didn't take too long till it was found.a sneaky hide indeed. Thanks novalighting

Found with renelm and Difool, logged as RAD to save log space, time and trees.

I am not much of a logwriter, so see renelms, and possibly Difools, log for details.

TFTC!

Surprisingly not so hard a find at all.. Coordinates are good and not much doubt where to search

Found at 12:13 - #4685 - together with aedk and Difool - logged as RAD to save space and time

TFTC

Not that hard with good coordinates

Logged as RAD together with renelm and aedk.

TFTC

Difool - #1531 - 2013-11-16@12:13 NZDT

After a bit of a lazy day I was wanting something Difficult, and that is what I got!
Lots of muggles, and an ice cream, then a sandwich, talking on the phone which was turned off, and finally found it. BUT could only just scratch the date in green ink, and the initials would show up - doh!
Obviously TNLNSL
TFTC and challenge Novalightning

Mum is usually pretty good with the tiny sneaky hides but with people continuously coming and going we couldnt have a good look for this one. Too bad too cos we've never had a 5/1 find.

Reperio at 1915.

After a fantastic weekend in Auckland attending the NZ Mega event, I headed down south with Grahame Cookie to find a few select caches. This one was high on the priority list being a 5/1...and so after grabbing some refreshments at the nearby grocery store...we walked over to give this one a shot. We searched in all the likely places before GC made a suggestion, and as I leaned in to take a look...he was spot on! A nifty little hiding spot for this type of cache.

Gratias novalightning.

1913 GAFF3 Had a stop for nourishment, and I was wondering why Warren was off looking for something, then realised that I must have input the coordinates into my GPSr incorrectly. Sure enough.
Took a bit of searching, but eventually saw something that wasn't quite right, and Warren able to make the extraction, GREAT. Dry and intact
Brought through for mileage: 12-12-12 Event, 3 Bros, Aust Light Houses, BEAGLE BIXBY, B 2 B ingot, BROWN BEAR 15, Coin of Danmark, CRDAVIS-Scottish Thistle Geocoin, Fishing Bell TB, GoLeo Travel Bug Dog Tag, Iconic Bridges, land rover TB, Lil' Miss TB, cache critters Baa, Neigh Neddy, and Oink, PAP, Rienan TB, Spooky, steben6's DNF Duo - Super Cacher Geocoin, Trakabulldog geocoins, and trackable shirts.
TFTC Nova Lightning

A great day out geocaching with my Grandchildren.TFTC

I figured based on the description that I would need to be selective about when to look for this one, so I came looking somewhat outside normal people hours. Nonetheless, someone emerged from the nearby dairy and eyed me suspiciously so I've returned another day and been successful. A cunning hide, given the other metallic objects around.

Yep hard, also a little busy here today, so looked a bit suss, had a bit of a look, but no find.

Found orginally as part of phasevisitor team, now created own account, re-logging as yorkshirekiwi83.

After attending the Winter Solstice event we headed across to have a go at finding this D5 cache. We had looked once before, but we had focused on the wrong structure. Armed with a hint from a previous finder, we starting looking around a different structure this time, where we were initially distracted by another object before stretch.kerr arrived and made quick find! A tricky little hide, TFTC!

It's raining and cold (but skiis not required), and we look rather dodgy sitting in the bus stop on a day that the push-button voice tells us no buses are running. However, we are being stealthy and not attracting too much attention on a Sunday afternoon. GZ was easily found, but not at a location I would expect to find a tricky little cache like this. Spotted a few options and had a little look. Decided to PAF to narrow down the search area and avoid too much attention. Found after a wee search. A good challenge. Thanks. Now we can jump back into a warm vehicle and plot our next move. TFTC

This entry was edited by tparty on Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 09:53:08 UTC.

Met Phasevisitor here after this mornings event the the gardens. Must admit I had a bit of inside knowledge about the hide, so made a quick find. Stoked to have found this, as it fills in a vital gap in my D/T grid. TFTC.

After attending the Winter Solstice event we headed across to have a go at finding this D5 cache. We had looked once before, but we had focused on the wrong structure. Armed with a hint from a previous finder, we starting looking around a different structure this time, where we were initially distracted by another object before stretch.kerr arrived and made quick find! A tricky little hide, TFTC!

Dismissed the obvious, checked the devious, spotted the cache. Thnaks.

YEAHHHHHHHHH found it. On our way home we pass this area. Just told my hubby that I have looked here before with another cacher, but couldn't find this one. As he was in a good finding mood today after finding a cleverly hidden/oberservation butterfly-multi, he felt confident to go for this one.......
And yes..... Yes..... He found the little one....
The smile will not go off my face for today...imagine the face of the other cacher to let him know that we have found it this time.

Wow this one indeed was hard to find and get to! We got here and tried all the likely spots but failed. After re-thinking our next move, we decided to extend our search area and wollaaa, something was felt by evilno9. He decided to get a tool but then I manage to pick it out from the spot without the needed tool. Very pleased to get that 5/5 difficulty cache off the list too.

TFTC novalightning

After just having lunch and boosting our energy levels for this one we had a go at trying to find the cache. Spent a while searching and deciding whether to flag it or not as we weren't getting anywhere though we thought we'd investigated some pretty sneaky areas. Reconvened to the car to formulate a plan and the PAF option was used to give us a bit more clarity without revealing too much. Went back and soon had the sneaky cache in hand. Very nicely done, TFTC

Nice sneaky hide requiring stealth mostly because of the dude buffing his car across the road. I think this cache fills a D/T grid spot for me too, so that's a bonus! TFTC!!!

Very sneaky little hide this one! Had to make sure we werent causing any attention from the muggles at the laundromat just up from GZ. Had a brief search around in what we thought were to be the most likely spots but came up empty handed.

Headed back to the car thinking that we may need to come back a little later when it was less busy but decided we would PAF as we had a big schedule to complete while down here in Hamilton for the day. Turns out, the coordinates were a few meters out for us as we were searching in the wrong spot. We made the find quickly once we were told were to concentrate our search on.

A very nice hide and extremely tricky given the location and amount of stealth required to get this one! A bonus too on filling an empty spot on the D/T grid with this one! TFTC!

# 399 Was surprised with the quick find on this one, then again we guessed there might be other factors that may make this harder... TFTC

Pretty busy area but I managed to locate the cache. SL TFTC

A good hunt and this one was found in its sneaky spot. tftc

ticked this one off the list clearingout hamilton

Quick find while collecting a puzzle cache nearby. TFTC

Looked in a few likely places when suddenly heard Andy go 'ooh', pulled out what he thought was the cache but we were quickly laughing at the fact he'd managed to find a snail! Kelly had more luck and with a tool to help the actual cache was soon in hand!

Found without too much problem. Tftc

Made this one harder than it should have been. Luckily the trusty eyes of Nuss&Steve were working today

thanks

Not too hard for us this morning. Paint coming off cache which did make it slightly easier to spot. TFTF!

Had to go out today when we found out it is International Geocaching Day, so took an afternoon stroll from home to acquaint ourselves with a few locals. Our first nano.Now we know how small they are.

So many places this could be hidden but we trusted our GPS and spotted the little blighter. TFTC

What can i say, there were two of us and we were in a hurry so it was a quick find but maybe becuase we were very focussed. t4tc

Took a little looking but soon had the cache in hand - sneaky hide TFTC

This entry was edited by NZFlossy on Sunday, 08 July 2012 at 08:03:54 UTC.

Sneaky little blighter but we found it at 8.13pm TFTC

Very easy find, good hiding spot T4TC

4.15pm on a Saturday is a good time

3.55pm. Took a few minutes before I spotted this one. Hard, but not that hard.
Thank you. David.

Quick find despite the rating --- but took a few minutes to retrieve it, He needed our trusty pincers!! Then opening it was even harder as it appeared to be covered in grease, so used Her hanky to wipe it clean!! No muggles around so returning it was easy!
TFTC!

Ours was the only car parked at the shops and not a muggle in sight. The GPS homed in on the right spot quite quickly, making it an easy find. The rating for this cache fills in another square on our Difficulty/Terrain grid.

Took a lot of looking but got there in the end. Didnt want to leave without a smilie. TFTC.

Didn't take to long to find this but took ages to be able to replace it! Thanks very much novalightning

Took a while but got there in the end. No one around .

1.05pm - Had us looking in all the wrong places to start, but found it rather quickly. SLTFTC

After a bit of searching finally figured it out

Today started off OK in that I had downloaded the latest auto-routing map and bunch of unfound caches for the Hamilton area. Checked that everything had downloaded Ok by disconnecting from the computer and turning on the GPS. Everything loaded OK. The map was there and only the Hamilton caches were showing. So turned off the GPS.

Loaded everything into the car for the trip south and connected the GPS. Started the car and the GPS showed our position. It wasn't until I was moving I noticed that the GPS had the good old BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH look but this was just the sea. Hang on, the sea was at least 5km away, how could the GPS show that I was in the sea so I stopped. Hello, what's this, I back on land again. And this happened everytime I moved and stopped. DAMN! The GPS has packed a sad. But the weird thing is that it showed the correct position once I had stopped. Then I noticed that all the caches had disappeared except for one South Island one that I visited in March last year. Ah well, went back home and picked up my old Magellan Meridan Gold GPS.

I was going to try and visit about 10 - 14 caches today but without cache info that wasn't going to ber the case. So it was only one for the day.

So I reckon the difficulty rating for this cache is spot on.

Cheers for the cache.

Took a little bit to locate the cache, and a little bit more to retreive. Pretty sure noone spotted me, as a few muggles were about.

Sneaky wee hide!..found with duduam...TFTC

Not suech a hard find for me, but it was quite muggle free at the time

T4TC