Get into the Abbey Habit (Whangarei) Mairtown, North Island, New Zealand
By Hairy Little Dwarf on 22-Nov-02. Waypoint GCAD17

Cave is closed however the reserve is now open again so Cache is back in business.

The latest information I can find was updated in September Stating Abby Caves Reserve is closed until further notice, The Rahui was reduced to the area around the cave which does not affect the Cache.

Disabling in due to the rāhui in place.

The Abbey Caves reserve is temporarily closed.

We are supporting the rāhui (restriction of access) that Ngāti Kahu o Torongare and Whangārei Hapū have placed. Please be considerate and stay out of the caves and the reserve.

RĀHUI
He Aituā: Mō te hunga tatū ki Te Whenua Tāpui o Kiore Taretare mai i te 10 o Mei, 2023

Nō te aituā i pā ki tētahi taiohi o Whangārei i te Tūrei, te 9 o Mei 2023, kua rāhuitia Te Whenua Tāpui o Kiore Taretare e Ngāti Kahu o Torongare me Ngā Hapū o Whangārei. Hena koa, kia manawa popore mai ki tēnei aituā, ki tōna whānau, ki tēnei rāhui anō mā te kore tomo mai ki te whenua tāpui nei.

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Mayor Vince Cocurullo expressed his sincerest condolences to the whānau, friends, fellow pupils, staff and all members of the community grieving for the loss of the young man at the caves yesterday.

"Thank you to all who took part in the search in any capacity and to those who prayed for everyone involved."

"This is not the outcome anyone wanted, but returning the young one to his family to farewell over the next few days would not have been achieved so quickly without the enormous efforts of many people."

"Thank you to all who have come forward to offer comfort and support as well. I support the words of the Hapū, who said this is a time for manaaki and care to all, particularly to the family, his peers and school community."

He reiterated that multiple organisations will be involved to identify how a tragedy like this could be prevented in future and Council would be part of that process.

Good one. Took a little while, but not too tricky! Thanks!

Man that one took some time!!! It was really fun trying to retrieve it. TFTC

Having had a lovely time walking around the area and exploring the caves, we were making our way back to the start picking up some caches as we went.
We found our way to GZ and carefully negotiated the electric fence, then the fun began.
It took quite some time to finally spot the cache, which really required looking from the right angle but we got there eventually. We certainly needed the conveniently left stick to reach the cache.
Thanks for putting this here for us to find

Think I was in the right place but could I find it No, looked for ages. It’s hiding good might need to go to Spec savers and come back for another go

GPS led me right to the spot. The hardest bit was getting the cache out of the hidey hole. Thankfully someone had left a handy stick which helped.

Oh, oh, oh, we looked here and there, but there are so mutch options, and the koordinates are hopping...

Driving to Whangarei today to pick up a few bits and pieces to finish building our new van. After crossing of all the things we had to get of the list we decided to go for a walk at the Abbey Caves. Arriving at the beginning of the track we parked up and started following the path down towards the Caves.
Walking along the path I saw a smal trail leading of track after following the first one trying to find a different cache without thinking, this time I looked at the GPS first before heading of track and following the geotrail. Turned out this time it was the correct way. It lead me right to GZ where I encounterd the problem of finding the cache with a lot of possible hiding spots. I set the GPS asside and started looking at the different possibilities until I finally saw the Cache hidden in a nice little spot. The Cache is in good condition and rehiden as found. TFTC

With Lemmer in New Zealand at amazing caches. Thank you for showing all that beautiful places. flatrate

Great cave walk. Thx

#6441. I am staying in Auckland with the extended family. I need to find just two more caches to complete the NZ Jasmer challenge. Both of them are near Whangarei so a day trip was planned to drive north and pick up the target caches plus grab a few other old ones and any nearby caches while I still had enough time before driving back to Auckland in the evening. It was a stinking hot and fine summer's day in the north. With my two jasmer caches under the belt (Piroa Falls and Hugh Crawford) it was time to grab a few more local caches.

This cache: Back into the big smoke and off down this side road to locate a few older caches. I was keen to find the old 2002 cache here but having visited the area I would like to come back again for a proper explore. A fascinating reserve and lots of other caches still to find. For this one I followed a small side track past a grave and down through the limestone outcrops until I reached the GZ. When I saw the size of the outcrop I thought I was in for a long search. But must have fluked it as the first place I looked in had the cache. Pleased about that. Signed the logbook and returned the cache as found. Thanks Hairy Little Dwarf for hiding the cache here. Took a more direct route back through the rank grass to reach the track.

Abby caves was on my wish list - so here we are. Thoroughly enjoying my time walking around this amazing place. A great story on your cache page. This one was remaining elusive so the hunt was on. The Seagnoid finally pulls this one off. Fav from me. Cheers
Sunday - day sixteen -Wandering Whangarei today in Toby. Zara gets another rest. So lets go exploring!!

Its another epic 3+ week geocaching adventure with The Seagnoid, Zara, Toby and William to the Far North. What an amazing place to explore. Lots of walks, gravel roads and sand. Lots of amazing trees, beaches and interesting POIs. Lots of kilometers traveled by vehicle and foot. Vehicle breakdowns, making new friends and catching up with old friends and family. Snagged a couple of FTF's, lots of lonely caches and the odd event along the way. Lots of cache maintenance and replaced caches on this trip. But what an incredible adventure!!. Thanks to all the CO's who have made this trip so memorable..

This cache led us on a merry dance for a while. till i stood up, walked away, ignored the GPS and said "where would I put it? What's the most awesome thing here? That!" And there it was. Love the area, both above and below ground, decent sized cache, all dry inside. Definately worthy. Gets a favourite (and a path tag and an emerald!).

Day sixteen of an awesome, tiring, long, three week holiday geocaching with Taybeedragon in the upper north. Today: Whangarei and Dargaville. The whole trip comprised of hours of walking on sand, sliding down sand dunes, hundreds of kilometres of unsealed roads, car breakdowns, paddling out to islands, lighthouses, dolphins, goats, events, FTFs, weird boulders. You name it, we saw it. Lots of bisons, lots of cache maintenance, lots of sunscreen. A month is enough. I am glad to be back home. Except that now I have to write up my trip. We averaged just 20 caches per day, but that is still a lot of logging!

Happy new Planetary Orbit from the Seagnoid!

The area is definitely worth more than a quick rush in to get this one - however, there were signs of someone's car having been broken into recently, and with a similar recent experience elsewhere, i was not keen to hang around! So we rushed to gz, spent a bit of time dancing around, falling into holes of all sorts, located the cache, signed the logbook, and rushed back to the car. We may be back at some stage to explore the rest of the area. Thanks for placing and maintaining!

After being in town on a little cache tour we had a look at the caves. Before we went into the cave we had a look for this cache.
It took is 40 minutes to locate the container. The GPS led us 35 meter in the wrong direction. We were really glad to find this one. We didn't expect to take so long for this one so we had just time for one cave. Anyway nice cache and cool cave.
Thanks for keeping this old cache alive! Thanks for showing! Tftc

We were down today to get the caches in this area. We met up with thegreatauck near gz. My GPS wasn't very good around here. Oliver who'd previously found it called out "you're in totally the wrong area". No wonder, when I'd explored many doors, they were all empty. An easy find once the correct area was pointed out to me. A great place to explore, TFTC

Found in our holidays to New Zealand.
Greetings from Germany and

TFTC,

JuStMeMi

A huge bit of climbing and searching and voilà the cache was detected. Nice place
TFTC

My third find while traveling in NZ. Great area! T- nothing L- Walt Disney World keychain

As we were in the area decided to take a short walk to see one of the caves even though we were tired from our earlier adventures. Mrs B said to Mr B need to grab a cache so he went on ahead while she and Tinytree investigated a near by grave and all the wonderful rock sculptures. I got to this cache after a bit of bush bashing and just as my GPS batteries died unexpectedly early. Luckily found the cache in the place where I thought it might be after surveying the area. cache is in very good condition - thanks for the little extra adventure, we will have to do the rest around here some day.

Not the nicest day to be down here. So by the time i got through the long grass my jeans were pretty wet. Lol. Easy find. Left some swaps. Tftc

Not to hard to find. Dwarf wasn't home today tftc

It was after reading an article in the Herald about the Abbey Caves that we decided to travel up here from Hamilton for our annual spring holiday, despite having to negotiate the roadblock that is Auckland.
We were pleasantly surprised to see the new magical additions to the area, which added up to a fun day out.
We weren't sure what to expect here, as unfortunately, although my caching backpack is pretty comprehensively stocked, it doesn't include a six yr old.
We needn't have worried however, as this 62yr old had no trouble grabbing it. We do wonder if it has suffered from cache creep.
A good traditional sized cache. We dropped a bit of swag and replaced it where it was.
Thanks for adding to our enjoyable day out.

16/07/17 11:50 I too backtracked past the grave site. RIP sweetie. Over the fence. Unsure if on private property or not. Was expecting something unexpected, but no. Straight forward find but phone was 9m closer to fence line. Walked back along fence line to gate to Organ Cave. Then walked the loop & stuck my nose in the caves. This is an area crying out for more caches with the caves and interesting limestone formations... Us tourists love that sort of stuff! Thanks for this, Cheers, GC

Clearing the needs maint flag, Cache is fine.

Didn't find the first time i looked but came back to find it. nice spot. tftc

Found with Rapidkhan
Love big caches

Big box

Stumbled across this unexpectedly- whoops!! This ended up being just what we needed to start geocaching

I am going to visit a lot of different countries on my travel tour around the world! At the moment I am staying in New Zealand. Of course I also try to find some geocaches on my tour. So I have visited this Cache as well. It was a beautiful place which I reached by a nice walk!
Thank you for hiding and best regards from somewhere in the world!!!
15ost

Nipped over fences and scrambled over the rocks. Lots of possibilities but process of elimination got the desired results. My sister in law told us about these caves and once I saw there were caches we had to go. Thanks for the placement Hairy Little Dwarf.

This was a great little adventure ....following the GPS climbing fences ...crawling under electric fences ....then arriving at GZ ...well where to look a multiple of choices ....but the geo nose soon sniffed it out great hide great area ...loved the rock formation and all round great cache thanks Grobyc for an awesome cache

Out to keep the 2017 streak going and get some more at the back of Parahaki. Stopped off in the Caves parking area and made my way down the hill.

Took the path straight down the hill and then had to detour past the childs grave and down through the big rocks, which eventually lead me to the gnome's back yard. Despite knocking on every door, there was no reply, so made my way around to the front of his property and soon got an answer there.

Avoided the electric fence on my way out and headed back past the old homestead site. I would definitely recommend taking the right hand fork by the big puriri on the way down to future cachers.

TFTC

Today I has to leave the fantastic "Little Earth Lodge"!!![8)] But before I was going for a small cache tour in that area!The coords was perfect and so I did a point landing!!!T4T$ gatschi004 from AUSTRIA

--\\\\\\ AYAMALIN´´´´ S GEOCACHING KIWITRIP 2016-2017 ///--

The Story of the New Zealand´ s Caches

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Thanks a lot for the next New Zealand´´ s cache! I must say that this country is one of the best for the geocaching and geocachers in the world! Definitely YES! Beautiful hills, mountains, views, landscape, waterfalls, lakes, rivers, rocks, forests, ocean, villages, cities, farms, orchards etc. AyAmalin loves this country!
Greetings from the Czech Republic! I would like to invite all geocachers to Czechia, we have got many excellent caches on amazing places too!

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2228
(OUT-TB)

AyAmalin

384 Another great day caching with Ruth. First time she has been to Abbey Caves area

Hi. My trackable "Islander's 10 Years Together Event Tag - On to Europe! #5" was dropped here 3 years ago and never logged out. I'm guessing it's muggled, but would the next cacher be able to check if it might still there and let me know? Thanks! Happy caching.

#2089, Relatively Quick Find. Dropped TB.TFTC

Returning home with rustynz, this spot was on her bucket list. Caving is not really my thing but loved the rock formations. Had a bit of trouble with this one and the gps, got to visit the nearby grave while looking. Walking around the track rusty found a likely spot so off we went, an electric fence was no hinderance she rolled under, but I was able to provide an easier exit for her with the use of a nearby branch. Glad I made the visit.

Travelling with urbangypsynz - although I had a map, I had left the torch in the car, and really did not want to climb those stairs again

The GPS was sending us into the bush, so we crossed a style and walked up to the grave of the young child that died so long ago. GZ was still a good distance away, and so we headed down, until to crossed back into the fenced forested area, which took us eventually to the 3 cave entrances. The area is definately undeveloped, with tree roots, and mud patches along its path.

Eventually the track looped around, and took us almost to GZ, with a short walk over to the corner and an electric fence. Not wanting to check if it was "live" the first time it was a crawl under, and after the cache find, UGNZ lifted it with a stick.

Thanks for the hide, for the next visitors, come down the main track, you will see a side track on your right, take it, it leads to the cache and the original homesteads location.

We visited two of the Abbey caves. After that we wondered the magnificient rock formations by the path.
No problems finding the cache.
TFTC, greetings from Finland!

Don't found it. I search for one hour and my GPS say 1 Meter around but I find only undergrowth

Loads of fun looking for this! TFTC.

Did take us awhile, but with Grandson Jamie's help we got it. Great rocks. TFTC

OMG! Talk about a mission! Phone simply didn't want to co-operate with me at all. After literally an hour of climbing over who knows how many rocks and back tracking so many times the closest I got was 49m! Gave up for a while and went and explored the games. Started heading back to the car feeling rather disheartened before deciding to have one more try. AND SUCCESS! So happy! TFTC and the adventure

Great caves! Tftc!

This was the main goal of they day as it is a nice old cache. Interesting area that is well worth the visit. TFTC

Very cool GZ. Lots of goodies. GPS was a bit out. TFTC

After exploring the caves we visited the dwarf ...
TFTC!

Today we explored all 3 caves. It was amazing.
After the third we got out near the cache. So I went to the cache and found it.
This is day 4 in New Zealand.

TFTC

In: chicken bug, sailboat race
Out:/

Found it during my trip from south of South Island to north of South Island.
Thanks for this cache!:)
Greetings from Czech

Really enjoyed exploring the Abbey caves ,,,and all the amazing stones ...they look like sculptures !
Great to learn a bit of the history here thanks ...
Was up here with a Walking Group from Auckland . Luckily Ric and I managed to fit in a little caching as well !!!!

Came at this from the wrong direction but managed OK. Found the correct path later. Tftc.

Took a while of searching to find this. Some water has gotten in, things are a bit damp inside.

Found

After doing a GeoHash on Owhiwa Rd, we drove over here for a spot of caving. The GPS directed us to we figured was a geotrail, so we followed it down over the fence and straight to a large pile of rocks. Miss Jacksonz was just preparing to shimmy in for a look for it, when Mrs Jacksonz said, isn't that it right there, sitting out in the open. We're pretty sure that was not where it was supposed to be so shifted it back a little and stood a rock in front so that it is no longer immediately obvious on approach (but can still be seen from the right angle). Cache owner may wish to check on this one. Cache a bit damp inside as well. Thanks for getting us off the beaten track.

Together with Silli1310 I have been on the road for almost half a year now and have been travelling in beautiful New Zealand for almost 2 months. We started on the South Island and meanwhile we arrived in the North Island and drive north to Cap Reinga. Today morning we started near Ruakaka and followed the route SH1 till Whangarei, where we made a longer stop for visiting the famouse "Hunderwasser"-House and to get an tasty ice-cream. Here we made a longer stop too, because we read that there were some "free" glow worm caves, which we want to visit. After finding some of the caves, we found the old cache. In order not only to sit in the car we use the possibility to search a cache every now and then and to stretch our legs a little. Thanks a lot for the cache. (Sorry for the very late log)

We could find it on our way to Cape Reinga. Thanks for the adventure!

After quite a bit of searching we looked harder at the GPS and just went for it even though it felt a little like trespassing. Quick find after that. Cool area will be back for more caving!

Two of us looked for a while but had to go before we could find it. Will have to come back.

Found that nice place on a wonderful sunny morning. Good place for a picknick.
TFTC tonionov
#2799

#357 Three caves with my brother and his first spotted cache. TFTC(in the rain)

First find! Found with kanoeboy. GPS was acting funny, so we best guessed the location and trudged around in the rain.
TFTC

Wow that was something! Thanks

Magical spot. TFTC!

Out and about in the north this weekend to change some of the boxes on our maps into smilies. This has been on our to do list for quite some time, finally we were in the area today. Enjoyable walk in the sunshine then a rock scramble to Gz, surprised to find a grave on our way. Expected to be here searching for a while but luck was with us and was an easy find TFTC.

Co-ords took us this way and took us that way but finally found the cache. Need to re-visit the area when we have more time. Rock formations are great. Only one TB there so took one and replaced it with another just in case someone was on the same adventure today.

Great location for the cache.

Enjoyed visiting the area.
SL TFTC

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

Visiting Abbey Caves with tikitour and Tiki tour and went off track to have a look for this cache while we were there. Took a bit of searching, but we eventually came up with the cache. TFTC!

Dropped off 2 TBs.

Caching in the area with my sister tikitour and phasevisitor. The hunt for this cache had us well off the beaten track, we loved all the rock formations - fantastic area. TFTC

Teamed up with tiki tour and phasevisitor to find a few local caches. After exploring the area and completing the earthcache we headed off to find this one.....a bit of a challenge, plenty of doors to look behind, one GPS that had us 9m out and thankfully one that was more accurate !!! Cache was then soon in hand. Great area. Thanks for bringing us here. TFTC

Visiting Abbey Caves with tikitour and Tiki tour and went off track to have a look for this cache while we were there. Took a bit of searching, but we eventually came up with the cache. TFTC!

Dropped off 2 TBs.

Our second day in NZ and we visited the Abbey Caves. The Caves are very interesting and we visited all of them. At the parking space we saw this Cache on our GPS and decided to search it. The environment was very nice and almost no tourists. We found the Cache very quickly without good GPS Position.

Thanks for the experience.

After a short time of searching (the right way to the cache and the cache itself) we found this one. And after caching we made a visit to the caves. Thanks for hiding the box.

We decided to do this traditional before visiting the Cannes and collecting the info for the earth cache. We fought our way through the high grass, around rocks and finally arrived at the place with many doors. After carefully making our way around it, exploring the different doors we eventually found the right one.
Tftc

The earth cache was on Corinna's radar and of course we grabbed this cache.
There is no need to climb over any fence you can walk the fence part that is on the ground. After some searching the cache was found.
TFTC

together with egika

Nice place off the track. Now heading for the caves

After exploring all three caves we made a bit of a detour on our walk back to grab this one. Had to hop over the electric fence but this wasn't too difficult. We were staying at the backpacker's adjacent to this place - highly recommend it - and enjoyed being able to just go for a walk out the back and do some caving and some caching at the same time!

Nice hide, took a bit of time to find this one but when we did find the correct door it all made sence. No need to jump any electric fence but we were close to it.

We searched this little cache after a visit to the glow worms.
Nice place and cache is very visible.
There is no TB inside.
Thanks for the cache!
Greetings from France!
(S)

back to show mrs alligators around the amazing area - last time mr alligators was here he had neglected to load this cache .. and nearly put his own in... such a neat area it was... phew.. had a second look. stunning rocks! do we know how they are formed? TB in

Got the correct door. Great spot. TFTC

Found it while on a LandSAR training

TFTC! Our first one on our trip in New Zealand. Really enjoyed the caves, great place! Cache is easier to be found on the way back.... we noticed a little too late

Went a bit in a circle but found it eventually. TFTC

Found it while in the area. Great spot for a cache.

Had to hop over the electric fence but that was not too difficult.
The cache lay pretty open but who should come across it coincidentally?

Thanks for the cache!

Our GPS worked great, so it was an easy find. Cache is in good condition.

TFTC!!

Found on the way in, but should have found on the way out! (That would have been a much easier way to do it).

Wow that was a difficult found....

Also we have found a dead cow and informed the man of the hostel.

TFTC
GR+GR
*2963*

found together with aeffchen166. tftc

found together with tWalters93.
Travelbug in.
tftc

The third cave is the most impressive. Be sure you don't miss it. On our way back we got off-road and found the cache in a dry and safe place. Not sure if it deserves a terrain 4 and difficulty 3. Sure, it requires rock climbing and it's far away from the track. But the coordinates are almost perfect. Thanks for the exclusive hide.

went back twice but found it in the end , great place tftc

Found on our Roadtrip through New Zealand!! Thanks for die hide!! What a nice area.
Greets Matzelli

We have met here nice local family. Without them we may haven´t found this cache at all. We helped each other to look for a cache and our cooperation was successful. Thanks for cache and lots of trackables.