Rocks on Rocks Umina Beach, New South Wales, Australia
By barefootjeff on 25-Oct-13. Waypoint GC4QX50

The last time we had a big east coast low, I was fortunate to find the cache after it had washed out of its hiding place, but not this time. It's had a good run, time to move on.

When checking on this late this afternoon, it appears to have been washed away in the weekend deluge. Will have another look at the weekend but I fear it's gone.

Finally, after 4? attempts. This has been driving me nuts. However lesson learnt to use the location checker. As it was I had had the right spot in the past (and must have spent a good 20 mins searching this exact spot); but with that added certainty it then took me about 5 seconds. Very happy to have earnt my smiley face. Thanks for the cache!!

#373
Brought the geoWife with me as a good luck charm and it definitely paid off. Nearly as much as reading the cache description. Funny how when you have your mind set on a particular type of hide you can be blind to anything else. Got to GZ this morning and had CIH within 10 seconds which makes up for the recent DNF. Enjoyable multi that we finally found after starting back in December. Thanks barefootjeff !

Collected all the clues back in December but ran out of time to go to GZ. Finally back in Umina today to visit a friend. We had a nice lunch and took a walk along the beach ending up at GZ. Must have searched for over 20 min on a hot afternoon without luck. We did find a kids spade, a toy mammoth and a toddlers sandal but I guess they don't count. Thanks for a great hide. Will have to return with fresh eyes.

Garbageman kindly said we could join him for adventure monday and the adventures we had. We really enjoyed this cache it was the favourite of the day , All the girls loved the park at waypoint one, we had some yummy chips and chocolate milshakes and the girls even sat on dog chairs which they found highly amusing. At waypoint 2 we spent a long time looking in all the rock pools looking for crabs , we found about 6 dead ones and only 1 live one . it was fun jumping across the rocks, when we got to geo zone there were a few young muggles climbing up the rock wall nearby to eat there pizza, very adventurous young people around here. garbageman made the clever find . thanks for the cache barefootjeff tnln sl

Teamed up with the Mighty Minions today for Adventure Monday and today we decided we would explore the Woy Woy area.

This was far and away our favourite cache of the day. Each way point provided solid coordinates, and more importantly took us somewhere interesting. We must have spent an hour or more playing in the park with the kids, having some lunch (chocolate milkshake was very good), and then we spent ages crab hunting and climbing rocks around wp2 and GZ. If I could award 2 FPs for this one, I would - one from me and one from the kids. Almost missed it at GZ - camo was very good, and I put my hand on it twice FACEPALM, before my brain started working. TNLN TFTC

My first puzzle cache. Great fun, nice ramble round umina beach! TFTC!

Waypoint one..., ok.., grabbed the number and got the coords... What? It can't be... Came back to check if the numbers were right. Yes, they were, but still... Well, if Jeff said so, there I went! I did an unecessary climbing, but that was ok.. A little bit of spice didn't hurt! Had to do a little trick to see the remaining numbers (I may need to fix my glasses..). Final leg and..... a couple was exactly at the GZ. Thank God the day was beautiful! So, I took my time, sat down and completely relaxed.... When the time came, I started my search.. Everything seemed to be so equal.., but something got my attention, and voìla! Cache alive and breathing! Logbook signed and cache replaced in its safe hide.
Well done Jeff! Perfectly perfect !
Favorite point awarded!

Thanks
#320

Found it!

Found it

Best multi cache, so much fun!

Returned to where I had looked before and it still took me a few minutes but a least i was on the right level this time, of course it was (almost) in plain sight
Ta BFJ

Got both WPs but after a quick look phone clapped out
Long loo in dusk later had to bail

For the record the song in my head - "David Essex - Rock On" Very appropriate I know!!

I'd been saving most of the caches in the peninsula area for some time now. Not sure why I had been saving them, perhaps for a rainy day? It just so happens that today was the day (or at least afternoon) that I set aside to do them. It also just so happens to be a rainy day, but with my mind already set on geocaching I wasn't going to put off making these finds any longer! I had also promised Jeff that I would do his remaining two caches of which I was yet to find shortly after completing my 100th find.

I'd come here after doing a couple of the nearby Kahibah Creek trail. It had started raining and I decided that I'd go to McDonald's and grab a feed to eat in the umina beach car park before doing this cache. I was hoping that the rain would stop by the time I was done but unfortunately that wasn't the case.

I walked out in the rain and took a photo of the sign. There were people about waiting to pick their kids from school. They were sitting in their cars and no doubt were wondering what the hell I was doing!! I headed back to the van and did the calculations. Straight away I knew where I needed to go to get the next numbers. To be honest I had a good indication that was going to be the spot anyway. As it was raining I decided to drive around rather than walk to the next waypoint.

I parked my car in the car park and then headed out along the rock in the rain. I actually enjoyed this as it added a greater challenge (only slightly) to the rock hopping which I really enjoy doing. Once again though if anyone was to have seen me they would have been wondering what on earth I was doing going out there in the rain!

When I got to the waypoint I quickly memorised the number needed and headed to the safety of a nearby cave. I did the next lot of maths sums and plugged the co-ords into the phone to come up with a likely GZ. I made my way along to the GZ and was thankful now that it was raining. The rain had kept fisherman, yoga students and general muggles out of the area. I was able to search freely without worry of being spotted. The downfall of the rain was that everything was wet and the rain was coming down off the rock and dripping onto me...

I had a quick look around GZ and decided where the cache has to be. I thought I knew what I was looking for but couldn't spot it. I then thought it could be another form of what I was looking for so included that option also but to no avail. I read the hint and that narrowed down what to look for but nothing really stood out. It was time to take the bag off and really get down and dirty! This time I was able to spot the container and it was exactly what I was looking for, just with a different colour scheme to any I have seen before. This is a well placed hide and it definitely suits the area! There was a really good opportunity for you to become "Evil Jeff" with this cache if you wanted, but I guess that's just not your style, unlike some others from the area! coughcoughEvilKellcoughcough

Thanks for giving me a reason to come back to this area and rock hop again!

TFTC Cheers

Really tricky camo. Loved the hunt. TFTC

Took us about 10 mins to find the specific 'rock' but once seen was pretty obvious. Really nice multi cache. Thanks very much for hiding!

2nd find on our camping trip. Good camo! Found with wrs explorers. Tricky; somehow found by one of our new geocachers. At a point just above high tide. TFTC

There's still lots of storm debris along the headland, and even on the beach, but I've cleared away the worst of it at GZ and returned the cache to its hiding place, which is pretty much unscathed. For now this is probably best approached at low tide, and be careful where you're putting your hands and feet.

After the storms of the last two days, I ventured over to GZ to find the cache intact but washed out of its hiding place and in amongst the piles of debris now littering the headland. I've removed it to stop it disappearing in any clean-up or scavenging and will reassess its future viability in the coming weeks.

With the state Surf Lifesaving Championships happening here over the next three weekends, parking anywhere near the posted coordinates will be at a premium, however the cache and all its waypoints are outside the competition area and remain accessible on foot.

After much huffing and puffing, searching high and low, looking everywhere possible except in the water, we nearly gave up. However, one Shocker persisted and looked again in the space which was indicated, and "Wacky Do!" the cache was in our hands. It was worth the search. The tide was low, making the walk to the cache site so much easier than it otherwise would have been. Thanks goes to barefootjeff for the extra hints when we were already onsite but looking clueless. TFTC, barefootjeff and please receive a favourite point from us for the clever hide and for the beautiful location.

Following a query, I did a quick check to find that it'd been placed behind another rock rather than hiding in plain sight as intended. All good now.

That was a hard morning walk and I think, that should be more than T2.
First you must find a parking space on sunday ( joke ) and then stage 2 is partly flooded.
But I found it and give you also a point.
Thanks.

Well, I am picking back up from where I left off, about 14months ago! Somehow missed it last time. Gave the CO a quick email, and we met down at GZ, we had just found and signed the log when he arrived, a little different to last time I was here, I don't think I knew Barefoot Jeff then! Had a good bit of geotalk, lasting well into the dark. TFTC!!! Barefoot Jeff!

Found 7:30 pm. Again out today to keep my streak going. Decided to do this multi when I managed to get a bit of company from family members. So my geodaughter and her geoboyfriend joined this geocacher to do a wander along the beach with a suggestion to have a dip. When way point 2 was calculated I knew I had a photo of the object so went straight to working out GZ the only problem was none of us could read the photo properly so my GZ calc was wrong. As we neared where we thought it was I decided to recheck the cache description and noticed the geo checker so using it I then got told the GZ calc was wrong so we ended up walking to waypoint 2 after all, only to discover where we went wrong not reading one number right in the photo. Now that I had the right number I worked out the right GZ coords and found a location that made more sense than the last. So off we walked to GZ and started the search at first it seemed there wasn't any likely object there and continued to look but then I found it. Whilst I've encountered this style of cache before this particular one is different and hides a lot better. Thanks for the cache. We also had our dip in the water which was quite pleasant.

TFTC
A beautiful stroll around a lovely playground and beach. Not a cache to hurry.

TFTC it was very well camouflaged. It was a fun adventure but we were exhausted afterwards - some tricky spots scrambling over the rocks for my more urban young finders. We searched with out more experienced geocaching friends, sakciphone (sp?) a fun holiday outing. Our first multipart cache.

KICK OUT OF THE HOUSE.... More time with geocaching!!!!! I drive to Blackwall meet Jfindit and drive around to find cache... Today Beautiful warm weather... Beautiful drive around to the road find number... Zoom to found cache... yay thank barefootjeff

Today I headed back to the scene of last week's DNF, armed with the photo of GZ provided by GeoChecker and in the knowledge that the cache was back where it was supposed to be ... thanks for doing a cache check over the weekend, barefootjeff.

This time I had my hands on the booty pretty quickly ... and unsurprisingly, in the very same area I had been in last week ... it amazes me how on some days you can look and look and look without finding anything, but on others success comes so easily and quickly. I happily signed the log and returned it to its hidey hole before heading off to convert my other outstanding DNF from the other day into a smiley as well.

Thanks for this cache, barefootjeff, I thoroughly enjoyed the adventure ... even the long wait to get the numbers off the plaque.

Unfortunately, no smiley for me on this one ... yet! Having worked out the final coordinates (after having to wait for half an hour while someone sat meditating on the plaque), I made my way to GZ and searched in all the nooks and crannies to find a rock on a rock ... but came up with nought. So frustrating!

I will now have to check that I was looking in the right place (perhaps, after 2 years of retirement, my arithmetic skills are not what they once were) and may have to even seek the counsel of my mentor in all things geo, so that I can return soon.

Update:
GeoChecker confirms that I have yet to lose my arithmetic skills (yay) and has even been gracious enough to offer me a photo of GZ. If anyone sees some balding guy standing on the rocks at Ocean Beach in the coming days holding up an A4 printout of rocks, they'll think I'm some crazy!


This entry was edited by opa-bob on Thursday, 07 August 2014 at 11:23:38 UTC.

TFTC! I love walking over the rocks...makes me feel young again!
Found this one with Shellumbus.

Slipped and bruised my buttocks sad face but had heaps of fun searching for this little devil

Back here to clean up my main DNF in the area today, this time with correct co-ords.
I put the mobile in the pocket as I hopped along to GZ confident of a quick find, when I then realized I'd walked straight past GZ, heading back I spotted a suspicious head bobbing about, which then disappeared. Heading for GZ again I spotted the man with bare feet leaving in a hurry. Whistled and called him back to witness my find
Found easily today, nice camouflage
Spent several minutes catching up with barefoot Jeff, before heading for another of his hides.
I have to say I've thoroughly enjoyed this multi. Will be awarding a Favorite Point for this cache, well deserved.

[green] - Found It on Saturday ... at 1:44 PM ...
TFTC! - [blue]barefootjeff[/blue] ... [/green]
Total Finds now ... 1022
[blue] This log was posted with CacheSense v4.105, available on Android and BlackBerry ![/blue]

At long last I persisted and persistence pays off. Got the right GZ ages ago, but could never find the cache. Finally, on my third attempt and looking slightly at a different level I found it! Thanks, barefootjeff.

Went with Dad again, after getting the extra hint.

found it today

We found the first clues a fair while ago. Then headed back this week to get the second lot.
We found where we thought we should be and hunted high and low, with no luck.

Came home, checked the co ordinates and we were definitely looking in the right spot.

Sent a message to Jeff, who confirmed we were looking in the right place and gave another hint.

Went back today and found it. I have no idea how we missed it the other day

Thanks Jeff.

Given the recent spate of DNFs, I've checked this again. The sign at the start is fine (the phone number hasn't changed!), but the plaque at the waypoint can be difficult to read at times, depending on the angle of the light. The last digit in particular may be ambiguous, but there are really only two possibilities and one of those will give nonsense coordinates. The cache itself is fine - the container is hiding in plain sight (there's no need to move anything to see or retrieve it) but is well camouflaged. The checker will provide an extra clue as to where to look - the cache would be visible in the photo if it wasn't in deep shadow. Good luck and please email me if you need any extra help.

Been here so many times, can't get my maths right, and even the clues are no use to me.

What an effort I've put in for this cache today. Seems like hours and hours of searching and re-searching... Two trips to GZ, first time I was guessing ... due to a very hard to correctly read, set of numbers ... and then hampered by muggles camped at GZ for 30 mins, so I sat and read a book for a while lol
Tried PAF as well on this one too, but it didn't help, memories were fuzzy and an extra photo didn't really help without a reference point and correct set of co-ords.
Sitting here now checking my co-ords, the error has been corrected, checker confirms I was searching wrong spot.
Looks like I'll be back another day

[red]DNF...Could Not Find It on this fine Thursday ... at 4:36 PM ... [/red]
[size=1][blue] This log was posted with CacheSense v3.1.21, available on Android & BlackBerry ![/blue][/size]

Since this is proving more difficult and frustrating than I intended, I've added an extra hint and changed the checker for the final coordinates to show a photo of where to look.

This one is really hard! We looked every where for it and we were sick of looking for it by the time we gave up I say to give this cache a miss

Barefoot-jeff
Can you please send/put more pictures on for help. We are going to have another look tomorrow morning so wish us luck .

Checked the cache this morning and all is well.

This was our second attempt, we must have our eyes painted on :/
Will be back soon for another crack

Probably spent a little too long here > 1 hour with the three of us and the green light from the geochecker we have to log a DNF here today thanks anyway

This entry was edited by xPhenoms on Sunday, 09 March 2014 at 08:28:10 UTC.

After some dialogue with the CO and starting today fresh and rested we decided to revisit this only being just down the road , the cache was located in just a few minutes in between the mugglers with their dogs a great spot for a morning walk all I can say that we didn't look properly yesterday maybe due to a number of factors tftc bearfoot Jeff

The NSW State Surf Lifesaving Championships are being held on Umina Beach over four weekends from the 22nd of February until the 16th of March inclusive. While the waypoints and cache are outside the competition area, parking anywhere near them will be difficult.

Deed vandaag een poging om deze multi tot een goed einde te brengen maar de coördinaten die ik verkreeg na wat rekenwerk bij het eerste waypoint leiden me naar de rotsen onder Umina point en ik was mij niet zeker of dat wel klopte dus heb ik de zoektocht maar afgebroken

Thanks jeanke53

Good puzzle found the rock

Found the mars like rock

Nice afternoon to go rock hopping. The marsians have left some rocks here. Nice cache

Group effort today. Fun little adventure with another member and geokids. Be sure to start at the beginning! Left behind our "footprint"

An overcast afternoon and not much to do so I suggested a little rock ramble. Having already picked up the digits required from the first waypoint (a frequented park by the geo-kids) we knew where we were headed, so parked at that end of the beach. I'll admit I cheated a little by skipping the 2nd waypoints...having picked up the 1st set of numbers awhile back I had time to deduce the final 3 numbers and land upon the final coords....enjoying the rocks and it's delights with the Geokids, we stopped to look at some crabs...they must have been guarding the cache because I looked back at the compass and it showed 1.3m. I looked up, spotted the likely ledge and in moments had alien rock in hand. Nice one Barefoot, I probably would have missed it if it weren't for the crabs we signed and replaced, before continuing along the rocks a little further to investigate the man-made wall before returning for a frolick on the beach. THanks for the smile, in more ways than one!

With a little encouragement form the CO, I returned just on dark (8:30pm) to have another ..err look!
being almost dark didn't help. but thanks to the hint barefoot sent me, i found the cache a little further afield than i had been looking earlier today.. i guess i just gave up too soon.
thanks for the assist, i owe you one now BFJ!.

NIAH - I hate these types of caches.
Had no trouble with getting correct GZ form the data given. even checked it with the clue checker to be sure. Well that's 2 hours of my life i'll never get back.

Who'd have thought finding a rock in a pile of rocks would be so hard!.


This entry was edited by GeoMonkeys on Sunday, 05 January 2014 at 10:03:25 UTC.

On my way to visit CO to go and find a couple of other caches, I thought I'd do his. Finding GZ was easy enough, but it was rather well supplied with muggles. Trying to be discreet didn't give me enough opportunity, so with CO's encouragement, I just went in there and soon found the relevant rock.

TFTC - just remind me not to go to caches at popular places at Christmas

After repeated checking and comparison with Google Earth, I've made a slight adjustment to the final cache coordinates (and the corresponding puzzle code). For anyone with the old coordinates, the last decimal place of both S and E has been incremented by one.

I've also added a checker for the intermediate waypoint so no-one else should go wandering out to sea.

Please feel free to email me if you need any further hints.

Perfect day for a beach-multi cache. Low tide, nice breeze and no muggles. Pleasant walk around rocks, but GZ mmmmm lots of places to look, after finding nothing seaeagles1997 climbed in where I had been and came up with CIH. Fav pointer! TFTC

Have been to this beach hundreds of times before and I was glad to see a decent cache published here.
We parked 30m away from WP1, quickly approached the sign and grabbed the number. As missluckie and I were scrambling ahead along the rocks the coordinates we had were looking more and more unlikely and ended up sending us 90m into the water... hmm
We had a look around and soon found a possible answer for WP2 and soon after this missluckie looked up the rocks and saw a plaque shining in the sun, so I rushed up the side of the cliff to check it out, only to find there was no 3-digit number on it. When I got back down the GeoMother had caught up and we ran through the coordinate calculations again only to realise i had written the wrong phone number down. Luckily GeoMum had remembered the numbers and put us back on track.
After more rock hopping we reached GZ with no muggles around! Yes!! We could give this the proper search it required and after banging my head on the rocks a few times, I spotted the container which blends in really well with its surroundings, right where missluckie had looked and moved on.

Thanks barefootjeff for this fantastic multi and good final container as it was really enjoyable with conditions for caching were perfect.

Will be catching up with MrNoo17 soon, so it will be interesting to see if we were in the same area for our DNFs. Got the required info, but was only able to see a young girl go splat on the slippery rocks below; and nothing extra-terrestrial.

After grabbing the necessary numbers and getting the all ok from the checker we soon arrived at GZ. A free a quick search we soon found the cache nearly placed. Log signed with no muggles insight. Nice to grab a multi so close to home. TFTC

Just checked and the cache is still there and intact. Perhaps there's another extraterrestrial rock lurking in the vicinity.

Sorry to break up the party but got all the way to the final cache and didn't find anything! Although we found the extra-terrestrial rock, and a good spot to hide the cache. searched for a good 20 minutes, and re-checked my coordinates, to find that they were correct. Has it been muggled?

We headed out to GZ again today and it was a much easier search without the hail and lightning. There are several spectacular rocks around here and their colour suggests it has not been all that long since they fell into place, so you just have to hope others don't come down while you look. Thanks for a great multi and hide, a favourite mainly for the location but also because everything worked first time.

Noticed this one published the other day, Decided to get up early to try to find it, Found the first waypoint with no problems, Jotted down the required data back to the Geo Truck to do the maths. Drove a little bit closer to the GZ. Walked down the beach past canine central, Never seen so many happy dogs, Geo Dawg would have loved it. Continued along the foreshore Absolutely fantastic our coastline never fails to amaze me. Found Second waypoint, Maths done, First mistake followed the GPS blindly as it pointed up the cliff scrambled up the cliff and along the track until the GPS pointed over a vertical cliff 16 Metres out and straight down, Back down the track to the Second Waypoint. No further problems reached the GZ. Quickly had the little Martian in hand, An to my surprise an empty log On top of a beautiful walk along the foreshore a FTF. Great wander, Great cache will award a favourite for this one. TFTC. Only one question though No Fish, Where are the Fish, Still asleep I guess.

After fetching the WP2 numbers I calculated and headed off to GZ, which I have since checked as correct. These days I am useless around large rock piles, and with a massive storm arriving I called it a day. I might return with additional eyes and someone else to crawl around GZ.

Published