Oamaru Geofest 2017 Oamaru, South Island, New Zealand
By LSteamer on 21-Oct-17. Waypoint GC6M2V0

Thank you for hosting this geocaching event! The date of the event has passed. We automatically archive events after 30 days (60 days for Mega- and Giga-Events). Attendees can still log archived events, log trackables, and share their experiences.

Logging a note to place Nemo. Grabbed from my hands by K C N but won't be logged as out of my hands until her logs are caught up.

Thank you for a fabulous weekend. Exciting finds and beautiful places.

Oops... just looked and realized I hadn't logged the attendance. I suppose I should as Mrs abxt350 is asking questions as to where I was all weekend

Please log your attendence. I know that there are still a lot of people who haven't and the event will be archived soon.

Came, saw, conkered

Was definitely an amazing weekend! Loved being able to spend it as part of three generations of Geocachers in the family. Thank you so much to all the organizers, I had a ball!

So much fun. Thanks so much.

Dropping TB here to remove from my list. I handed it to jess.daphne.

We had an awesome weekend at the Geofest, was great to be back in Oamaru to clean up some old caches I hadn't got and to get some new ones. Many thanks to the organisers!

Thanks for a great event

Had a great time thanks

Thanks for organising. Had a great time. TFTE

I found this Geocache on a Geocaching mega mission along with Cats&Dragons and HKCB. With only just over three and half thousand Geocache finds I was very much the over achiever in training. We were in the South Island to support the Oamaru Geofest event, hunt down some Jasmar and D/T harder to find Geocaches, lonely caches (those not found in more than 6 months), virtuals and try and meet some milestone numbers. We signed the logs HIC, an abbreviation of our respective Geocaching names, (H)KCB, (I)ammrwalker and (C)ats&dragons. A huge thanks to all the CO’s who placed and maintain the Geocaches we found.

I arrived in Christchurch late Thursday evening having left straight from work and was picked up by my intrepid companions in our four wheel drive rental to find they had already grabbed about 270 finds in the previous twenty four hours. I wonder if the rental company would have still let us have it had they known we would travel 3300km in it before returning it four days later? Our trip took us to Greymouth via Arthurs pass, Ngahere, down the west coast to Haast across to Hawea, Cromwell, Twizel, Aoraki Mt Cook, Tekapo, onto the east coast up to Oamaru and back up to Christchurch via Akaroa and countless diversions and small towns along the way. We slept in the car for the first two nights, grabbing some shut eye between cache finds, taking turns to drive. We rented a small place in Oamaru for the other two nights and appreciated a bed to sleep in and a hot shower. It was an amazing trip, in which I discovered the South Island has some of the most incredible scenery in the world.

Last cache logged for the day. Thanks to the organisers of the event to get us down to this very cachiful place!

My first event in NZ and got to catch up with rellies in Dunedin before attending. Unfortunately didn't spend a lot of time at the Auditorium as was out during the day with fellow Qld cachers gathering challenges and puzzles. Quiz night was fun, clean up the beach CITO attendance and final prize giving night. Also found our 2000th cache in Oamaru!!!
Thanks to all the organisers and helpers for putting on this event.
Will have to check the diary to see if we can make the Wellington event next year.
Cheers and thanks again.

Had a great time and lots of laughs soo much to do and so much fun thanks to the organisers and what a great place to have an event. Cant say thanks enough Aroha and happy caching

Caching the Geo-Fest for the weekend with purdiepurdie; decided to attempt finding 9 cache types in 1 day and had found out 4th to 6th with a cluster a bit north of here and this was out 7th.
To collect our 9 required a trip to Seacliff, so we were on a Mission!
Thanks very much, Team LSteamer, for organising this weekend of events, greatly enjoyed.

another great event shame we did't make Mega status still it was a great group who all seem to be enjoying themselves. many thanks to the team for all their hard work.

Thank you so much for all the effort that went into organising the event!!

The (major road trip was about to begin) that was for the Oamaru Geofest trip in the company of HKCB and iammrwalker for a bit of a road trip across to the west coast, through Haast and in a roundabout way to Oamaru.

My trip stats were as follows: 617 caches (214 Puzzles), 3300kms, 500 litres of Petrol, 21 hours sleep, 100+hours caching time. THe weather was wonderful and apart from about a 6hour period on the sunday we had fine weather all the way and feel that we made a bit of a hole in the region.

Firstly thanks to all the CO's that put in the effort to to set up these caches and to all the CO's whose caches we did not find this trip, well we are already planning our next trip.
We worked hard at getting specific caches (especially the Geo Art around christchurch and hence our concentration on this area for the preliminary 24 hours. So after a couple of running repairs to the rental vehicle (fuses not working) we were off knowing that all ports could be charged and that sleep was for the weak.

Sorry about the copy and paste logs but that is what tends to happen with a number run of this size. Last came through here a couple of years ago as we worked towards starting a 24 hour run to secure the NZ 1day/24hour record. Nice to finally get to finish this trail through here before heading back and up to Oamaru

**************************************************************

Did you know that planning has started for a Mega Event in Wellington in 2018? Check out the details on the [WENZ Website](https://sites.google.com/site/wenzgeo2018/home) or visit the event's page on [FaceBook](https://www.facebook.com/groups/590545297801072/) and don't forget to log your attendance on the [WENZ Event Page](https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC78NMQ_wenz-event-2018-wellington?guid=23f451a2-08ac-4374-883f-ed6814687147/)

***************************************************************

I visited on the Sunday with my sons.

I went to see Mum on the Sunday.

Thanks for a great event to all the team - I have still to log all my other found caches but that is the last of my priorities right now.

KotukuSI and I hatched a plan to have a serious CCC, Coffee, Cache and Chat that had the Oamaru GeoFest as a focus.
We had a great weekend, playing, caching, attending events and socialising.
Thanks to the hard working committee who made this event possible.
Also a big thanks to the local Oamaru cachers who had such entertaining and well maintained caches for us all to enjoy.
This event was the 8th different type for the day.

Thanks for the excuse to visit again.

Thanks for a great event - We got 3rd equal in the quiz despite only having 4 in our team.

A great event with lots of learning both formal and informal. Great people.
Thanks for all the work to the organisers.
erninz

I have had a great time and I reached 4000 caches this weekend. Yes I know that this figure is low considering I have been caching since 2004. I go for quality and I can boast that I have cached in 25 countries. The quiz was fun and I was impressed with the steampunk entries. Even better is that I received a text from my son to say that he mowed my lawns while I am here.

doing a tb dip

It has been a great weekend. As always, catch up with friends and make new ones. Even managed to find a few caches!

Have had a great time over the weekend and would like to thank the committee for all their hard work. - Thanks Bitsprayer

Great event with lots of activities to get involved with. Disappointed about Smash Palace & the missing shuttle but I was able to go off and grab aboout .02 percent of the local caches. There are so many!
Thanks for puting it on, and might see you in Wellington next year,

Thanks for organizing the great event. Really enjoyed myself. Good to meet new cachers and old. Always like coming down to Oamaru

Thank you, we had such a great weekend!!! This was our first big event so we did not really know what to expect, well we could not have imagined it was going to be as good as it actually was. Such a lot of work and orgainisation had obviously gone on in the planning. I learnt so much during the workshops on Saturday, I really appreciated the presenters being so willing to share their knowledge.
We were so enthusiastic when we returned to our farmstay family, they are now signed up (as premium members) and out and about finding caches. Again, we wish to express our appreciation to the committee for all of their hard work to put together a very well run weekend.

Great to attend an event especially in New Zealand with friends. Having a great time

Thanks

Came down this way from the North for the Oamaru Geofest, and decided to add a few more days to the weekend trip and turn it into a bit of a Mega mission, starting 5pm on Wednesday 18th and finishing 3pm Monday 23rd! Teaming up with Cats&Dragons for the first 24 hours then with Iammrwalker joining the team for the remainder.
Just a few of the stats for the trip were:
- 700 caches found, including 270+ puzzles (thanks to the Christchurch Geoart)
- 3300 km's driven, using over 500L of fuel $$$
- Just over 20 hours of sleep (about 4 per day on average), and about 100 hours of caching time.
Certainly a Mega Trip!

Day 4: With the lack of sleep starting to take a toll we finished Day 3 off early and got a few hours sleep before getting back to finding about 2am this morning. Todays mission was to find caches around Tekapo before heading South through the Mackenzine Country via Hakataramea Pass, and onto Dansey's pass before coming out on the coast and heading to Oamaru for the Geofest and caching around the area.

A bit unfortunate that we didn't get Mega status, but our trip was Mega enough. Still a huge thanks for all the organising and planning you guys did. Looking forward to next year already!!

Sorry about the cut and past logs, but that seems to happen with cache runs of this size!

Thanks to everyone involved for all the work that went into making this weekend possible. Fun times.

Was a great time up here with Sirbennis and KJR racing all over this what I have to say is a bigger town than I thought it was from driving through it dozens of time. I had a blast and can't wait till the next one.

Thanks to the organisers that made it all possible.

We hope to attend on Saturday before leaving town on our motorhome holiday.

#206 ready steady rogaine! TFT geofest

Up and out early this morning for a second to find with Infoferret. Now looking forward to the race. Thanks for great organising and I hope you have a great weekend too.

This is our second visit to NZ for geocaching our thanks to the organizers for planning this event

Log to follow TB well

One more Tb to drop off.

So here we are bright and early at eight in the morning for the start of this great event along with the Griffo team and ready for a big day caching,thanks for putting on the event

Coin drop

Nice to meet with lots of people that I’ve known but never had met before
Thanks to all the organisers and especially the gift pack.
Well done guys!

Thanks for putting on the fest for us all. A great idea for logbook and great to catch up with some friendly faces thanks for all the effort that went into organising this

Perfect timing to be travelling thru Oamaru while enjoying our NZ Motorhome adventure. There were several Aussie cachers in the caravan park last night who told us about the Event. Great to be part of the Geofest. Thanks for including us

A great little box of goodies and time for some catching up with caching mates from afar. Thanks for puttingthe effort into organising this weekend. Cheers

We better listen to the Porject GC talks in the auditorium, And see the town. We have travelled eleven time zones to be here. And we must agree that this could be a MEGA

A great excuse to fly over to attend this event. Meeting lots of new people from all over the place. It is a lovely area with some great caches, activities and all the geofest entertainment. It was also great to reach my 6000th find at the event.
Thanks for putting on the event for us to attend.

Headed out for a Mad Mission with Team_Gaters and 8ManAfter we signed our logs today 'T8T' cos were dynatmite! I grabbed 8Man at 5.30 am and we grabbed TG just before 6am and we were on the road before 6am with the bikes on the back. The plan was to drive to Oamaru and then attend the events and thrash the caches hard. We wanted to do as much of the A2O as we could and as many PnGs that we could manage. We stopped by the event first and then we had to stop an grab breakfast at 10am. We grabbed some lunch and headed for the hills. Had a great time and worked our way back to town for the CITO at 6pm. Scored a delicous dinner in town and headed home. Got home just after 12am knocking out 620km and 115 caches. Good times!
Thanks for organising.

Thanks for the event LSteamer.
#5105

Attended with LaStorm15
We are over from South Australia and have been in New Zealand since the start of October, we arrived in Auckland and slowly made our way down the North Island before making our way to Oamaru. Everything about our New Zealand adventure has been awesome
We had a great time at this event, attending the GSAK user session, the pathtag trading and the quiz night.
Many thanks to the organisers for all their hard work putting this event together, hopefully we will make it over again one day

Today the big day at the Geofest in Oamaru. Thanks to all for a great event. It was an awesome weekend with lots of happy geocachers doing what they do best. TFTE LSteamer.

Great to yarn to old and new faces had a great time racing around town and things topped off nicely to win the geraldine prize pack thanks for that and for all the hard work you have put into the organising

My first big event. Had an awesome time and met lots of new cachers as well as catching up with familiar faces. Great to put some faces to names we come across often - thank you to everyone involved for organising.

I was hoping to make this find #1500 but need to log for Saturday as it is #8 type for my goal of 8 different types in 1 day = mission accomplished WOO HOO!!! (Currently at #1446)

Also got the final trackables for a challenge cache I have been working on GC3YEJX - "Making New Friends" in Dunedin

#2,952: Binge Smiley!
What an adventure we had today! TheWanglers, Team_Gaters, and I headed out at dawn from Christchurch with four goals in mind: 1) Find Many Caches, 2) Get TG to 7,000 finds, 3) get me to 3,000 finds, and 4) Have Fun! Needless to say, all were accomplished in spades. It was only my second 100+ day ever, and had us driving, walking, running, biking, and even crawling to make the finds. We were also able to find at least 7 different cache types, and attend two events, in order to catch up with old friends. Thanks to all the hiders, but most of all, thanks to my partners in crime! We signed all logs as "T8T", sung to the tune of AC/DC "TNT".

Happy to make the visit to HQ before heading back out to find some more!
SL/TFTC!!

Came down for the long weekend with GreenGoblinNZ.

Well, what do you know! It was more than a year ago, before the NZ 2016 Geocaching Adventure event when I went to a small meet&greet event in Lincoln where a LSteamer TB was released and got into a youtube video about Mr Cuddly Brick and me telling that I might be at this Geofest event in 2017. At that time I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be in NZ anymore but here I am, almost year and half later, attending the Oamaru Geofest 2017!

It's a shame that the event didn't get the MEGA status but that didn't make it less awesome. Looking at the last years event, which barely made over the 500 WA's (517), only 215 Attended logs registered there. I guess they had a better campaigning for getting the people to sign the WA. Will be interesting to compare the actual turnout later, when everybody will have logged their attendance here.
Organizers of 2018 event seemed overly confident about getting 500 genuine WA logs, can only wish them good luck.

**Friday** we only went to Meet&Greet briefly (just in time for photo!) and then off to meet some friends who live in Oamaru.
**Saturday** was mostly dedicated to the Race, that was a fun time! Collected some rubbish on the way, took lots of moustachy photos and found a couple of caches on the way as well. I did also listen to a little bit of reviewers talk.
Ending the day with a quiz - I guess that is the tradition in NZ! Our team did somewhat average, I think. not too bad, but no prized spots.
And to end the day, we even saw some little penguins, roaming around!
**Sunday** started off with a CITO - a good way to start the day. We did not go to the planting one but concentrated on getting 8 different cache types on this day instead. Although I have done 12 types before, there was a challenge somewhere that required to do 7+ in NZ specifically.
GreenGoblinNZ got her first geocoin from a spot prize in the prize giving and that was the event concluded.
**Monday** was the long way back to Christchurch, visiting some historic and epic caches on the way. Somehow, the 3-hour drive ChCh-Oamaru turned to around 10-hour drive back

OUT - [Four Elements Micro - Earth Geocoin](https://coord.info/TB4N06W); [Go West II](https://coord.info/TB7N6R3); [Muggles Geocoin](https://coord.info/TB1DY4N); [Sp8sm8's 2006 Kiwi Geocoin #2](https://coord.info/TBYGY4); [Spåtind Geocoin#2](https://coord.info/TB7QTAT)

TFTE!
#5376

We were attendees and had a great time thanks. Thanks to the organizers for all of their efforts in setting this up. Also dropped off a number of trackables.

TFTC - what an amazing job you have all done. I wished I had more than one day to spend here . The caches I found were all so well maintained it was fun all day.
Will be back soon to find more that we couldn't cover in one day.

I went with Swissfamily1 and Poppa and Grandma.

Came down from Jaffa-land for the weekend, with Jag50 and Aiden29.
We had an absolutely fabulous time, and met up with lots of cool people. Thanks heaps to the organisers for all the great events, and the good weather!

2801

Saturday. Slow Puncture has teamed up with Orange Crew to make a Moreton Bay assault on the Oamaru Geofest. Day Two saw us travel from Christchurch to Oamaru.

Of course, this event is the reason we are here. A great time looks like it was had by all - congrats to the organisers for putting on such a good time!

This was the 20th of 49 caches found on today's trip.

Thanks ***LSteamer***, for showing us this place.

It was good to catch up with old faces and new. A lovely weekend and thanks to the organizers for all the effort put in to make it possible.

Thanks for organising this event and bringing me back to Oamaru.

I had a great time, thanks to the committee for organising this awesome event. Such a lot of organisation from a small group of people I really appreciate that. Apart from the event itself I really enjoyed exploring Oamaru and the surrounding area .

Thank you LSteamer for bringing us to Oamaru for the long weekend. Despite Splash Palace letting us down, we car pooled out to Windsor for our ride back to Weston and completed the piece of geo-art on the way. The registration pack was well received too. We now have a better understanding of the layout of Oamaru thanks to the Geofest and we will be back.

Top of the agenda today was to head in here and sign the log book and find out about the race etc. This has been a long anticipated weekend away ever since Turangi last year so great to actually get here as it was looking a bit dicey a month or so ago. I love caching in Oamaru - have had some great days caching here over the years so I think it was an inspired choice - lots of the overseas people I spoke too came because of where it was. Hats off to the committee and all the helpers for pulling off such a great event especially all the new caches. It was certainly better than some Mega's I have attended and equally good as some too. you did an amazing job so I hope you have some time now for relaxing a bit and of course finding more caches. Thanks heaps! TFTE # 11,067

With Gap (of Fap and Gap)… Our journey to the bottom of the South Island has been almost two years in the planning. We were determined to make it to Oamaru Geofest. We decided to also factor in completing a couple of missions (JASMER and Virtual challenges), and the wheels started turning...

Day Five: Oamaru Geofest

Our day began at Geofest headquarters. We planned to sign in and sort out any loose ends before hitting a few of the local trails... We were blown away by the pack we received - that was awesome!

It was a shame this event didn't make Mega status. However, we think the organisers should be totally proud of their product. Thank you for bringing us to this amazing town. We had a blast exploring some of the back blocks and side roads of this community. Thank you for organising all of this for our enjoyment. TFTE.

Many thanks for organising this event. It was really nice meeting everybody.

Stopped by briefly with harisree on our way through town heading south.

Great Event. I really enjoyed catching up with some people I haven't seen for a while. I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. See you next year.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Did you know the **WENZ** Event is being held in Wellington over Labour Weekend next year. Visit the web page at [GC78NMQ](https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC78NMQ_wenz-event-2018-wellington) for more details.

Hey everyone!
A typical Mega event (apart from the numbers). Busy busy busy at the event, and busy busy busy away from it. I didn't get everything done, but I at least some of what I wanted...
Great to meet everyone, and i was surprised at how many faces I recognised, and not surprised at how many I didn't.
Many thanks for having me, and I'll see you all again next year. And thanks to the penguin for putting on such a great gathering!

Dipping some TBs that turned up here but the person carrying did not drop in. Just to fix their kilometres.

Thanks to the committee for the hard work in making this such a great weekend. I got more caches than I expected during the event itself as I wanted to attend all of the workshops, they were all brilliant and I'm looking forward to using the new things I've learnt. Unfortunately you can't do everything so we had to give the race a miss. Loved Oamaru so much I stayed an extra day and will be back to clean up the caches and see everything I missed this time

#6794

#14751. We really enjoyed the Geofest, and took part in a number of activities. Congrats and thanks to all involved in organising the event.

Thanks for putting on this event, dakotacats and I managed to tick off a few caches which had been bothering us for a while! We visited some new places and enjoyed all the caching we did.

This was my first big event and I loved it. I think this could be very addictive! Thanks so much for all of the hard work and planning. It's been the most fun I've had in ages. TFTE.

DAY 5
Another day with a variety of caches to be found, attended and answered.
Thanks to all the CO'S for their caches and the arrangement of the Oamaru Geofest. SLTFTC

It was fun thanks everyone for coming along.

Its Saturday - Geofest17 Day and day 2 of our expidition. Its a day around here. The Seagnoid has commitments here, so I sit in on a couple of features. Thanks to you all for the effort in hosting this event. Cheers

An excellent event. Thanks very much to all the organisers.

Our journey started with a flight into Dunedin, then a scenic drive up over Dansey's Pass to arrive in Oamaru for this event.....
Checked in her early to start off the day before we headed off to explore the area...

Thanks for organizing this event .....

TFTC.

Thanks for a great event and all the hard work from the committee

3rd of our 6 Day Adventure to Oamaru for [Oamaru Geofest 2017](https://coord.info/GC6M2V0).
A HUGE Thanks and round of applause for the organizing committee and all involved.
We had an absolute blast doing 'The Race' while still managing to fit nearby caches aswell.
Thanks for the event, the reason for coming and of course adding to our smilies

Attended with fellow Southland Geocaching group. Great event with plenty of activities for all. Thanks for the opportunity to be able to cache in such a great area.

A brief stop over with FMZ to support the geofest. Nice to catch up with many new faces. We are heading to the south for more adventures. Thank you very much for organizing this.

It is a shame it never made it to be a mega. We still enjoyed our stay and further travel around the South Island.
During the event we enjoyed the talks on Project-GC and the quiz in the evening. We never made it to the Cito event but decided to go south. Thanks for arranging.

Day 4 of my Oamaru GeoFest week. Cycle trail this morning with KCN and DSI. Hope I last the distance.
Checked in this morning g and picked up my box of goodies.
Thanks for the effort in organising the event.
Thanks for the smilie.
1668 21 October 2017 09:54

Day 1 of Oamaru geofest time to have some fun
Great to be here and meet new caches

Will log attended later, dropping TB

Have been there and keen to search some new caches

Just arrived in Oamaru after flying down from Auckland this morning, then driving up from Dunedin. Called into the event to register and drop off some TBs. Looking forward to the rest of the weekend now! Thanks for putting together the event, I know how much effort they require!

Signed in got a neat box of goodies, and awaiting the publication of five new caches I had in the queue for the event. Now getting heaps of emails. Great to have so many cachers in Oamaru for the weekend. TFTC

Big weekend ahead with lots of new faces .

Yay. The Geofest is finally here. Looking forward to a weekend of full on caching.

Dropping TBs

Yeah!! Here at last. Been looking forward to this. Great people, and lots of fun. Thanks for organising.