Rockvalley Ruin District of Paddys River, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
By Tankengine on 22-Jan-20. Waypoint GC8JFJJ

Last find of the day (#7) got a bit fording the creek but arrived relatively safely ,a great day ebike caching despite the stack earlier,

Out in Tidbinbilla for the day with Noikmeister picking up some caches on various ridgelines around the place. That done and dusted N had to make a move but I realised I still had some time up my sleeve so I headed back in to pick up a few easy caches. Headed to the wrong side of the building first and got distracted for a while before I realised my GPS was pointing quite some distance still. Aha...now I am in the right spot and a quick find made.

Unreal that 3 generations lived here with only biannual trips to Queanbeyan for supplies. TFTC Tankengine!

Today we went to the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. In addition to many animals such as turtles, koalas, kangaroos, bandicot and birds, we also found a few of the geocaches laid out. Thank you for putting the caches !This cache could also be found. Thank you very much.

TFTC

I did a tour of the area with a group from GeoBash and a local ranger. We learned a lot as we found some caches along the way. After that, Joolay took me on my personal geocaching tour. Isn't she the best? Another cool cache to add to my day. Life is good!Thank you for the smiley and the fun!The day:Today was day 1 of my time in Canberra for the GeoBash Mega and getting to spend time with my friends. Hooray! It all started with a an awesome tour and then Joolay was my tour guide to a lot of other cool caches. What a great way to start off my time here. And the added bonus is spending time with my FRIENDS!Many thanks to all the geocachers who placed and continue to maintain their geocaches for folks like me to find. I know it's not always easy, but know that I appreciate you.

No luck with this one - I have to admit, it looks like it could have been muggled

Found with buckoraider today after an awesome day at the nature reserve with fellow cachersCache is in great condition Thanks TE

What a neat old homestead to explore. This park is a really cool area! Saw so many cool animals today! Might have to come back here before the trip is over! Thanks for the cache!

How cool is it that you can actually go in and explore this old homestead! And not only that, there are plenty of signs around with some history of the family who used to live here, and the development over time of the building itself.Sad to hear the fires took hold back in 2003, but I love how theyve preserved this place.Quick find at ground zero after giving ourselves a mini tour of the site. Thanks for giving us the incentive to stop here!

Found with SJG66, the 6 monthly trip to Queanbeyan must have been big expedition in the day.

Found with O319. Had never visited this part of the reserve before.

Found 16:11 4/11/2023 while exploring this nice homestead with overseas visitors. Thank you Tankengine for the cache and bringing me to this location.

We have never visited this location before.Its hard to believe that its only had 40 visitors to this hide sent it was placed. It really has a lot of history here, and we spent some time reading the information and wandering around the gardens and historic home. The family who have lived here in the past were quite remarkable, and the building is testament to a type of building and architecture which is beautiful and quite unique . Its great to see there is renovation happening here, due to the family trust, descendants and friends of this homestead. Thanks Tankengine. Very happy you could negotiate with the Park Rangers to showcase this history. A FP for sure. Domsky

Found a couple of days ago

We did some walks at Tidbinbilla today. We saw many kangaroos. Unfortunately internet coverage was pretty bad, so we could just download the coordinates, not the cache description.

Anyway, we found this one at an interesting abandoned house. I was happy, because I found my first cache in ACT.

Greets from Germany!

Went to Tidbinbilla to pick up a few caches. This one was first, and a nice easy one in a very interesting spot! Cache was quite exposed so hopefully covered it up a bit better, thanks for the location highlight Tankengine!

Super easy

Driven past here dozens of times but never stopped to check this homestead out, and only did for the cache so thank you.

Out on a beautiful sunny morning with the gang. Came by here to pick this one up. Its just such a lovely spot. So worthy of a cache! Tftc!!!

Just wow. What an awesome place.

Fabulous Autumn day to be out in the country.
Thanks for getting me out and about Tankengine

Found on a trip to Tidbinbilla to check out the site for a GeoBash tour. What a lovely spot and such interesting history here. Thanks for the cool hide Tankengine

Spent the morning bagging a few caches in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Quick stop by and find and then spent some time reading the information boards, TFTC.

After finishing the Tidbinbilla Mountain walk, I decided I had it in me for one more easy cache in Tidbinbilla before heading home (I wanted to use my time out this way wisely). Drove down the rickety road and walked around the fence before realising the cache was inside. At GZ, I spotted where the cache was most likely to be, but I required my camera to see it and retrieve it. I have a feeling it was in "deeper" than what it was meant to be, I've concealed it well whilst also making sure not to push it too far. I saw a lizard go under GZ on approach too, so I was a bit on edge (I was worried that I could've mistaken it for a snake). Lovely location, really cool how accessible this historic site is to the public. TNLNSL. TFTC TE!

Our first find at Tidbinbilla. At first we thought we were going to be out of luck; but then Ilmari_the_Red managed to extract it from the back, under. TFTC!

Back for round 2! I came here with my visiting family (including Trifolia Argentea) and we stopped by Rock Valley on our way deeper into Tidbinbilla. I remember finding the first years ago! It actually took us a bit longer this time, and the last 2 DNFs were discouraging, but I was sure that Tankengine wouldn't leave a lost cache just sitting there and sure enough, it's still where it should be.

Thank you for the cache!

Second time to this location and no luck.

No luck this time. DNF

Had some fun out at TNR after lunch today. I had some funds to clear up, until next time, and I was ever hopeful I might bag a FTF while I was at it.

And so pleased to turn this one from a frown to a smiley. And it was so easy this time, straight to it. Think I had snake phobia last time!

Gotta love a Tankengine cache, always so well done and such a pleasure to find. Thankfully this one didn’t stump me!

Thanks for the caches Tankengine

DNF No luck here today, not sure how I could miss it as spend about 20mins looking under at each level. I will try another time. ️

It's always nice to revisit this place. A quick find. Tftc

Found with my mum while making the most of the last few days of free entry at Tidbinbilla. I have never been to Rock Valley Homestead. I always love abandoned and historic places! Reminded me of Calthorpes House and Lanyon Homestead. I quite liked the garden path edgings made up of long neck beer bottles! There were quite a few people touring the ruins at midday, but once there was a clearing I quickly made the find. Excellent hide - I'm pleased the rangers approved of this spot! Thanks Tankengine.

Spending an afternoon around Tidbinbilla enjoying the mild weather. Our first visit back here in ages, and so many caches to choose from! This is such a lovely spot, thanks Tankengine.

Not enough reception to load the hint
I’ll grab it next time

The GeoKids and I had a lovely day exploring Tidbinbilla and finding caches. This cache was a straightforward find at GZ, thanks Tankengine.

Lovely day for a wander around parts of Tidbinbilla that I haven't seen yet. Find #7

I had a look around and took some photos before making an easy find. I wonder way it looked like before the bushfires. It's great that they rebuilt it. Very interesting. Thanks for bringing me here.

Great find. Great location!

A surprising find in a location I have previously visited - having now read the cache description I understand why. TFTC - I was the only one here today on a mid week visit after a group walk earlier.

I remember doing the old cache here. Same hide from memory. Anyway, quickly found the cache then had a look around the building. Lots of work been done here, and the garden is nice at the moment.

Thanks,

A nice place for a spot of lunch as well as the opportunity to grab a cache. Quickly in hand and TFTC Tankengine.

Can’t ever remember being aware of this place but glad we came in for a look and an easy find. Nice gardens

Found it with sumbloke today. Was really happy that admission to the National Park was free, so decided to try for this. TFTC!

Impressive old building. Great to see they have been preserving it. You can still see some of the charred timbers from the 2003 fires.
TFTC

#12951 @0935
My mission for the day was to clean up (again) most of the Tidbinbilla caches. A quick find here. TFTC.

Found it

Thanks

Remember the old hide well so didnt take long.
Love this historical location.
Many thanks to Tankengine.

Good cache find. Even better getting to chat with one of the relatives of the inhabitants who happened to be there at the same time.
TFTC

Found at 12:30:00 PM with DogBoyOz

This took a little finding after it wasn't in the obvious spot and you can see under. But I got there eventually. I like this house, how some of the rooms can only be accessed via the verandah

Thanks Tankengine

Clever spot easy find, tftc

Had planned to be out here for most of the day with Gerriactive but the weather was so cold, sleety and windy it just turned into a reconnaissance trip. Anyway, this was found, safe and sound. TFTC

Weather not so nice today. Silvereyes and I did a recce from the car of others we will be back for. Have never been to these ruins before. Great place and quick find of cache. Thank you for bringing me here Tankengine

Found This cache with FurfacesLL Signed DSD

**This Cache**

A dejavu feeling here that's for sure! Awesome that the ranger allowed it to be replaced however and it can be found without any damage being done!

Thanks for replacing Thomas

**Today:**

Went for a drive today with FurfacesLL and DSD to get out of the house and visit Tidbinbilla now that it has been opened again. Been a while since we have all been here so good to explore and pick up a couple of caches along the way!

Insanely busy, so much so that some areas we wanted to park were full and parking was a struggle! Still managed to find some quiet amongst the chaos though!

Hopefully Namadgi will be the next to re-open in the near future!

A plan was hatched to go for a drive with DSD and Loci612 today to visit Tidbinbilla that had just been reopened. The weather was beautiful and there were a heap of cars out here, although we didn't come across many people while walking where we went.
We personally have not been in here since 2011 so we have heaps to find in here so no doubt we will be back.

This was our first stop as none of us had found this one being new. Only spotted a couple of muggles here but they soon left. Checked the old place out, very impressive.

Thanks for the hide Tankengine.

Wonderful getting out of the house after quite some time. It took a little while to find it, I guess I might have been a little distracted by the pretty landscape after the recent rain. TFTC

Found with SA. TFTC

With the new overnight COVID-19 policy in place we had trouble explaining to the grandkids (5 & 4 yr olds) that all playgrounds were now out-of-bounds. Up till now we had targeted unused / unpopular playgrounds as our afternoon go-tos. As we have now become the grandkid's full time weekday carers it has been essential to run down their high powered batteries to remain 'in control' or at least be charmed by their energy levels .

We turned to the Internet for advice and found that the Tidbinbilla Reserve appeared to be one of the only handful of places we were permitted to attend as a family unit. Unsurprisingly, the Visitors Centre was closed and their notice board stated that we could enter the park to restricted locations. While we could not reach as far as the Koala enclosure there was plenty of lush green open spaces to run, run and more running. And, the homestead was open to visitors and luckily we had the place to ourselves which was a critical to retrieving this cache to maintain social distancing with our little people. The cache was wiped down on-retrieval and on-return now ‘safe' for the next person to retrieve. Quick and easy find leaving plenty of time to explore this location. TFTC Tankengine.

**The rest of our day**
There were about 6 cars at the picnic ground down the road. Most were elderly couples (80s?) at picnic tables. Just one other group had 2 children, a little older than ours, and playing soccer ️ on the superb grass fields. We chose to have lunch on boulders to avoid touching anything others may have before us today or in the recent past.

From Tidbinbilla NR we headed to the Cotter Reserve. We only stopped because we spotted a group of emus at the reserve. We then had the pleasure of meeting cacher '123' who was finding caches in this location - and of course we kept our distance. This place now looks a picture with the recent injection of rain. There was a group of 6 young people having a party sitting very close together, and families with their kids enjoying the playground. Try telling little people that this didn’t mean that they could jump on the playground as well. Ahh life is interesting, scary, fun and sometimes a real challenge.

*FTF* at 1530.

#1773

I got the emails about a few new caches being published while I was out and about, so I headed off to try for one. This one was a bit closer than the other traditional cache, so I headed out here.

I decided to be a cheapskate and not drive all the way in, which meant I got worried every time a car drove past. When I got to the homestead there were a couple of cars parked there, but they were muggles.

Eventually I got a chance to make the grab without the muggles watching and found a log sheet with several names on it already. Checking the listing explained that this was a re-listing of a previously archived cache, so I'm first to find since the re-listing.

Published