Lurking in a Dark Corner Patonga, New South Wales, Australia
By barefootjeff on 13-Dec-14. Waypoint GC5H5G2

Thanks BFJ for another awesome cache. Smashing spot.

Pig found, great hide. TFTC

My first visit down here. Took a sunny walk, as did many others, and then traversed off piste when the level seemed right. Checked the big wrong spot before seeing access to the deep, dark corner. Thanks BFJ.

Cool spot and cache, kids loved it. Thanks

Went off track and bushbashed through many spiders trying our best to avoid them. Got to GZ and read the hint and quickly found the cache. Nice container. TFTC

Brilliant! Well hidden and camouflage couldnt be better. Nice one

Looked for a long time. Hint didn't get me there either. Will be back

I checked on the cache this morning and everything's fine, including the trackables that have been marooned in it for quite a while. I've updated the hint to make it a bit more specific without giving it away completely.

Looked for a while but didn't find, but we are pritty bad at finding lol

The GNW closure has now been lifted.

While the construction work has ended, the Great North Walk through Brisbane Water National Park is now closed until Wednesday due to a forecast extreme fire danger so I'll leave this disabled for now.

The Patonga end of the Dark Corner track is closed this week while constuction is carried out on the climb up the hill, thus blocking access to this cache. The work is expected to be completed by Saturday.

Wow my heart was in my mouth

After a few squeals and some trepidation of putting hands into tight spaces… we found it! A truely Aussie outback experience!

While down visiting Patonga for the first time, collecting a few smileys. Climbed up for a scary surprise to keep the theme going, thanks BFJ

The GNW has been reopened following yesterday's burn-off. This cache and its access is well outside the burn zone and remains fine.

A hazard reduction burn will be taking place on Friday and Saturday, with access to the cache along the GNW closed.

Took way too long to find it. Advice for those who need it, stick near the cave

This was so cool to a trackable left a trackable

After a long journey these trackables should enjoy the views here at Patonga till their next retrieval.

Down this way tohave some fun at The Dark Grotto cache, I continued along and up to this one. It was so hot! A week ago I was in -7degrees at Mt Charleston Nevada, this week back to the Central Coast to 33+ degrees temperature. I approached GZ and instantly knew where to look. Thankful I still had the headlamp I used for The Dark Grotto in my hand. Made it less startling! TFTC. Dropped trackables I brought back from the US with me.

Pleasant diversion while working on CC. Short walk from the grotto to another scary creature lurking in a dark corner. Thanks BFJ. Fav for location and those beadie eyes.

another page 1 cache I needed to find to clear out my radius , So after being scared at the last cache I set of to find this one , A nice walk to GZ and yet again I needlessly crawled into a cave thinking something was going to jump out at me, checking every hole and crevice , Once again i widened my search area but I knew this CO would have accurate co ords , so I kept coming back to the same spot so I crawled into the cave again . I again widened my search area no luck. so after coming back to my original GZ a third time, I stepped back and looked at the area and finally spotted something i had walked past several times without noticing and then I carefully used a tott to check the spot and yay cache found and again I had to laugh, very clever . Another fav point for the fun and great location . Thanks for the cache Jeff tnln replaced as foun sl

No scare this time

Dad and the eldest geoson have been on an overnight hike from Wondabyne and geoson was a bit worn out and could only think of the cool water if the beach. As a result, Dad sent him on ahead with his uncle and headed over to this cache. Probably a good thing too in the end.

Spent a bit of time at GZ looking too high, belly crawling towards the edge and trying to reach down and over. Finally took the plunge and head down to find a much more appropriate cave. A suitable hiding spot was soon found. Dad is not keen on reaching in to places so decided to use the torch first. Might have been better just to reach I think.

Thanks for the cache!

Sad to say we didn't get thus one after a lot of lurking in dark places. Really wanted to get it. Nice area to picnic nearby.

Tftc Paul and Lou from the Blue Mountains NSW. Visited on a wet day, beware the rocks can be slippery. Great cache.

Not for me today. Spent way too long on this for a dnf. Searched high, low, hint and logs. Not a great start. Oh well, it's there, I just can't find it.

With a dry sunny morning instead of the forecast showers, I headed out for a quick check on this one. As expected, given its hiding place, the cache is snug and dry, but more importantly, access to it is still good.

It looks like the Great North Walk between the Hawkesbury River and Yarramalong has reopened, except for the section between the Mooney Mooney Creek bridge and Reservoir Road Somersby. I'll go out and do a check on this cache once we get some dry weather but I expect it will be fine.

The Great North Walk remains closed between Sydney and Yarramalong. The promised update from Crown Lands on the 21st of April hasn't materialised but I'll keep monitoring their site and post any further updates. The closure notice for Brisbane Water National Park is attached.

The Great North Walk between Sydney and Yarramalong is now closed indefinitely due to the severe weather.

Mistook another obvious feature nearby as the referenced cave and was searching in the wrong area for quite a while. Once I assumed the less obvious cave was the "big" cave I made a soft quick find.
TFTC Wilbert67

Found this cache as part of the GNWalk from Patonga to Wonderbyne. Had a little laugh upon retrieving the cache . Nice one . Did the legals and replaced as found. TFTCM
Cheers dkmacca

I made this far harder than it should have been. Wife was doing the 25k run starting nearby so thought I would do some caches whilst waiting. Shame about all the rain though.
Arrived at the location without much difficulty and saw a fairly obvious feature. Looked around it and found nothing. Went higher and lower and further and further afield, Put my hands in lots of dark holes to no avail. After at least 30 minutes was about to give up when I once again visited the original place I had looked at but then noticed something extra. That couldn't be it could it?
Put my hand in - what the heck was that! Oh. Clever. And cache was in hand.
Co-ords were good. Terrain not that bad. A fave

This was our first cache of the day on our walk from Patonga to Pearl Beach and exploring the surrunds. A bit of a search turned up the surprise cache, what a good one! TFTC

Nice walk today
Was a bit wary to reach in but took the risk a got the rewards

Nice red back!

The repairs are complete and the cache back in position.

Taking the container home for some repairs.

Great hide a little scared

Found it but lost our pen on the way, the kids were excited with this find.

Took the risk and reached in ............ gotcha. Once again BFJ delivers with an awesome location and container. TFTC!

Having the week off work, and the weather looking ok, I decided on an early start and headed for Patonga.
This was the first cache of the day, and once I found the right dark corner, I soon made the find. Lucky for me, I was too quick for the creepy crawlies. TFTC, Fave Point for the great container

Went for a nice Sunday lunch at the boathouse so made the walk over to the cache. After a bit of hoping we were heading the right way due to a shaky gps we found the spot. More afraid than I’d like to admit on the reach in. But cache is found and log is signed. Thanks for the cache

Woah! There it is. Or is it? Yeah. Nah? Hmmmm. Yeah okay. Woah!

The family headed to Patonga today, so i snuck off to make a find. All is well with this cache - coordinates were spot on, the container was in a spot matching the description and hint, the container is sound and the log is nice and dry. Thanks for the cache barefootjeff - a lovely spot. I just wish I'd had time to find a few more nearby.

Need to bring gloves and beaver folk

The team searched for a while, but we didn't find it.

What an awesome cache, bit freaky. Beautiful area. Tftc

Great work. Found with 10yo daughter. Bit of bush bashing but all good. Great views.

Off for a drive and a bit of a cache today. What a great way to start. An awesome container and a beautiful walk. TFTC.

Wasn’t sure if I should put my hand in but did so anyway and made a friend! TFTC

Good to go again.

The cache has been left in, um, let's just say an inappropriate state so I've taken it home for cleaning.

Great find!!

With the DNF last month and then someone else having difficulty and messaging me on Sunday, I did a check this morning and all is well. Please take note of its terrain 3.5 rating which means it's not going to be an easy level walk from the GNW track. Some rock scrambling is required whichever way you come at it.

Not sure if it's because I attempted this alone or if it's because I'm fairly new to it all, but this was very very hard. I was there searching for a solid 2 hours before the sun started setting and I had to give up. I think because of the tree coverage it was also hard for the GPS, or at least my phone, to pinpoint the place I had to be so for the first hour or so I was kind of searching a 15 metre radius of where it originally told me I should've been because it kept saying I was 8m away once I turned off the trail. Other than that it is a beautiful spot that I enjoyed, although I dont think I've cursed that much in a while...I'll definitely be giving this another crack soon.

Amazing cache!

Too far too long to find it though. Was searching for over 20 minutes in the wrong spot before I spied her

Hahaha great hiding spot TFTC Great cache

The spider was scary i was look in the place I look at. I was so scared. TFTC.

The Park Closed sign has now gone and, with the NPWS website showing no track closures in Brisbane Water National Park, I'm re-enabling this. Please take heed of any fire warnings before attempting this cache, though, as there's still a lot of bad fire weather to come this summer I fear.

The Brisbane Water National Park website now shows the park is open with no mention of any track closures, however there's still a Park Closed sign at the Patonga Beach GNW trackhead. I'll try to ascertain the true status of this track when their office reopens after the holidays but for now will leave this cache disabled.

Brisbane Water National Park is closed until further notice due to the approaching 3 Mile bushfire. Please don't attempt this cache until the park is reopened.

Unreal but be careful. This was so unexpected TFTC that bites.

The park has reopened, with no fires reported during Tuesday's extreme conditions.

Brisbane Water National Park is currently closed due to catastrophic fire danger conditions. Please do not attempt this cache until the park has been reopened.

Repairs completed and the cache back lurking in its dark corner. I've also modified it slightly to make it easier to extract the logbook and hopefully prevent future damage.

I've taken it home to repair damage to the camo caused by excessively rough handling.

Great hide!

Found it TFTC

Took a bit to get to it but loved it. Kids loved it too. TFTC.

Geocaching, not the safest sport on earth but definitely fun. Love the camo

#7561 11:00
We have been to Ku-Ring-Gai National Park a few times and sitting at Flint & Steel beach we could see a nice long strip of sand on the other side of the Hawkesbury River. We always wanted to take a closer look, so today we decided to drive to Pearl Beach and from there walk to Patonga Beach and back.
During our descend to Patonga we welcomed a cache half way. The cave was found and then it was a matter of sticking my head in dark places. I thought I saw something looking at me, and so I switched on the torch to check it out. It was the cache in a great camo. I grabbed the cache and threw it to my geo buddy. Needless to say she jumped a meter in the air, screaming loud. Then it was followed by a few punches on my head. Good fun and because of that a Favourite point from me.

TFTC

After enjoying lunch with friends at Ettalong, they dropped us off at the start of the trail so we could walk back to Patonga to catch the boat back to Palm Beach. Enjoyed the walk and had plenty of time to go cache hunting. Took us a good 10 minutes as we searched high and low,definitely worried about putting our hands in places (hey, this is Australia after all). As I was looking in all the wrong places, a loud laugh told me the husband had found it and it was a good one! And so it was. Great hide and great camo, left it well hidden as we found it as muggles definitely visit the area (as evidenced by the rubbish scattered near GZ, which we took away with us).

Thanks for the laugh and TFTC!

Found this one after quite a while, was looking around all corners until we finally had it. Thanks for the cache!

Brought gloves with me this time after all the critters encountered last visit.
Found after 60 seconds. I know I looked here last time and I didn't see it this time but I used my fingers instead of my eyes and Bazinga there it was.
Grabbed the traveler and toddled off a happy camper.
This would be fun in the dark.

TFTC
Ironbark.

Creepy

#2028
I had a very quick look for this one back in July after finding "Patonga's Grotto". But because I was meeting up with some fellow cachers for a kayak expedition to "Up the Creek", the time pressure didn't allow me to have a "proper" look.

Returned today after visiting Uminas Potholes and made an astonishingly quick find. Its funny to think how close I was back in July. But having spotted the prize, I still had to check twice just in case. Thankfully the ones at home aren't on steroids like this one . Very nice and put a smile on my face.

Next - off to Hawkesbury Heights #6 EC

TFTC BFJ

A bit of an ‘adventure Sunday’ with the whole family today.

Kids and wife decided to spend time on the beach while I grabbed a couple of caches and scrambled around on some rocks.

I’ve been here once before but got it today after a bit of frustration repeating my mistakes of last time. Eventually I decided to look in a place where I had assumed there wasn’t a dark corner, and there it was! Oops! Face palm!

A word of warning. If you are shoulder deep in a hole in the ground you are both wrong, and doing something a bit dangerous. I’m not sure what I touched in there, but it’s best not to think too hard about it I think there’s no need for stupidity to find this one!

Coords were pretty much spot on for me today. Within a few metres anyway. Great to turn the sad face into a smiley! TNLN TFTC

Loved it. We were here two years ago and wasted an hour trying to find it and found it within a minute this time, part of it was exposed...very scary...so it made it easier. TFTC

Found this one in between showers during a wet weekend camping with Team Canary. Took a little while to find the right hidey hole and even then had to check twice! Nice one! Left a TB. TFTC!
Cheers,
The Hancock Clan

A routine post-school-holidays check, all good.

OMG. Geowife hates insects. Scared the crap out of her. Love love love.

Mr 8yo found it & wanted me to tag as favourite. The whole fam decided it was a nice day for some adventures. TFTC

Raced up here after the Grotto with high hopes but after 40 minutes of looking and putting head and hands in places they should not go in a 20 metre radius of GZ I admitted defeat and went home to have a beer as this was to be my last for the day.
Bugger.
P.S. Found 3 lizards, 1 snake (small), 1 bandicoot, 1 centipede and one angry rat.
No cache.

A fun find. Love the container. TFTC.

Intimidating

Got the kids out of the house for mum today and decided to get onto a few caches I've had on the to-do list for a while which included this DNF from a month or so back. Today, we had one of the kids' muggle friends along for the ride (and I think he's hooked BTW lol). We've all just come from finding a creepy friend at a nearby cache so while I have with me all this keen-eyed help for creepy caches, it was time to get back up here for some unfinished business! But once we got to where I remembered GZ to be, nek minnit ..I got the phone out only to realise: no reception as I hadn't yet loaded the cache up on my app.. so it was down to a blind find x 4!
Ironically, it was I who made the find about 10 or 15 mins into it! While I remember searching this spot, I DO NOT remember that particular dark corner last time! It turns out my coords were about 8m off last visit I announced to the party that I'd found it, gestured over to the ballpark, and let them go for it. They totally got a kick out of this one. I wish I could post some of the pics! Cheers again, BFJ. Nice to have this one sorted and great to come back out here to this spot.
#305

Beware of spiders! Great cache and was surprisingly a quick find for us. TFTC

I did a check this morning for the lost geocoin and sadly it's not there.

Could the next finder check and see if there is an ' I love theatre' geocoin in the cache. I am chasing it up for my American host family I gave it to.....

What a great find for Halloween did a bit of a jump TFTC

Ah man, a big fail today. Typical Monday - nothing went right! Thought I'd attempt this one before the rains come this arvie. Got down to the suggested parking area at around 10am but just as I began my trek the tide came in right before my eyes and the track up to the start of the hillclimb was under a decent amount of water in a very short time. So I took off back to the trig road up top, down to a more north eastern access point and made my way onto the GNW from there and made my way down. A lot longer walk (about 800m) but a beautiful path with plenty of views as I made my way down to the dark corner. Highly recommend it! At GZ I got into the search but after about 20 mins nothing. Kinda sure I had GZ from the start -I mirrored probably half the logs here -going back to the place I started and then spending another hour probably around this spot. It is the only place it could be. But unlike many of the experienced cachers who gave it one last look around here, with my headlamp set, I gave it a thorough going over not just reaching down into there, there, there, and there too but going under and coming up and into there, there, there, and there. Even look around under here to see if maybe something has fallen. I got nothin. Rain sprinklin down now at 12.15pm. Time to move on! A really great hide, BFJ. I got the sense that I was right there where everyone is on about and I looked EVERYWHERE even finding hidey holes that the recent blokes hadn't found. But I guess not the one that counts. I doubt it's muggled but two great little potential spots with nothing. It really surprised me! I'll keep an eye on this for a while and maybe bring some others back with me next time.

Another day caching around Patonga Beach.

Round 2 ... or is it round 3 (two visits yesterday to GZ) and I am heading back up here first thing. Another 1/2 hr of looking here and there without success.
Don't you just hate it when you know the cache is here and you CAN'T FIND IT. AAArrrrrggggggggg. So an email was sent to the CO for help.

In the meantime I went looking for a Swamp Critter and the Lost Sheriff. Both of which I DID find. It seems while I was doing this the CO came and checked this one. YEP, It is there and here is a hint. [8]

My first thought on seeing the hint was .... I have searched there. So back up the track I go. Standing at the hint I start my search ...... again.
Oh look, a little Dark Corner I have missed (how many times have I looked in this hole [?] ) and there is the beastie.

Obviously a fav point given. Another awesome cache.

Thanks for the cache.

Today I made my way to Patonga Beach to find a few caches. [^]
This cache had me crawling, climbing and cursing.
And more cursing .......
After an hour or so , before and after walking out to the Earthcache, I still had not found the beastie.

Tftc. Sent the geo hubbies up. Us girls sat and relaxed watching the boats go by. Thanks boys

Worth the walk around the rocks to a great hideaway TFTC

DNF at 4:41 PM.
A great location, but after going around the various rocks, tunnels and overhangs for about 30 minutes we left exhausted with nothing to show for our efforts