The Wreck of the Gairloch (Taranaki) Tataraimaka, North Island, New Zealand
By smoking gun on 29-Jan-06. Waypoint GCT7RC

Hadn't been found for a while so took time to check up on it between the rain was a bit over grown but sorted now

Tftf

Found, TFTC

Nice little find took a bit but got there in the end

Thanks for find, eventually found it!

With Tokerau. Not a good day to be geocaching in these conditions

A dark stormy day, as it must have been for the sinking of the "Gairlock", once my eyes adjusted, the cache was soon in hand as well as a drop of blood from those thorns. A couple of decoys there got examined thoroughly first. Not a difficult trek along the beach, you never know what you may find washed up. For me it was an interesting piece of driftwood. Thanks to Nicholasebmunds doing a recent maintenance trip, otherwise we may easily have been stumped.

Did a quick site visit still there algood and dry

Can't find

Looked with XR falcon and angeldevilcat and couldn't find after long search. Found ponga but not there or in surrounding area

Thanks for the easy find

TFTF

Had a quick look for it while waiting for the sun to come up for some photography, but didn't find it.....had another look after taking some photos and found it.

We promised the kids a beach day this week and I suggested this beach as Id promised the CO Id come find this cache over summer. We had fun at the little water crossing but the walk to gz was a bit tough as the sand was soooo hot and the sand too unstable for jandals. Plus lots of blue bottles to dodge too! Eventually we made it and spent some time looking at the wreck before making a find. Found in the second place we looked. Almost didnt look there! All good here TFTC We ended up at 3 different beaches today. This one for the shipwreck + cache, the beach at the end of Pitone Rd for a picnic then back to Fitzroy beach for a swim. A good day! Streak day #223 plus a trad dot day.

Found on a family day out with trayc.g.cool to see the ship wreck! Funnily enough my sister and I was expecting something much larger. TFTC

later

Tftc. Fun Sunday evening walk

Yetinz has sent me a message to say piece of box thorn is not marking site but the cache still in place

It's December, and to help me achieve one of my Geocaching goals I need to log 300+ caches this month, which means an average of ten a day. As I meander my way north to Oakura tonight I took the opportunity to collect a few more from this region.I had tried for this one last summer when I was up this way, but my access had been blocked by a mob of cow. All clear today for an easy walk to what's left of the shipwreck, and the cache was found in the second place checked (ie, not under the first lot of hint objects found).---Thanks to Smoking Gun and NIcholas Edmunds for placing and maintaining this cache. I enjoy each and every cache I find, and it is only with Geocachers like this creating them and placing them out in the world that this wonderful game continues.[DGSc-Bulk] tagging to help me generate a list for GC30AD8 - DGSc Challenge

All good here as the wreck emerges from the water

After seeing three dnf went for a look walked to site looked down under bark and there it was so new log replaced have any trouble let me know have put a small piece of box thorn on-top to mark site

Found the spot no cache though which is sad

Found the punga, looked underneath both hunks but found nothing.

Found the punga but could not see the pill bottle

Been out to site this evening cache is there exactly where it was put under piece of punga

Such a blustery walk but a nice quick find for us. TFTC

Found the punga, no cache

Did a onsite visit followed the navigation was exactly where its meant to be

Thanks

The Wreck of the Gairloch (Taranaki) was transferred from smoking gun to user Nicholasedmunds

Pretty sure we were in the right spot, however nothing was there. Watch out for the thorns

Watch out for the hedge

I have wanted to photograph this wreck for a couple of years now, but everytime I have made some effort to try the weather has been against me. This weekend I am back in the area for the NZ Tattoo Festival. The weather looked accommodating, the tide times were looking good plus I am carrying a pirate TB. It all seemed like the perfect time for a visit to the GZ. As I was relying on my phone, the search took a bit longer than it should have but I JUST managed to sign the log and replace the cache before a muggle couple wandered down the beach to join me. The TB was slightly too big to be dropped off and the sunset was mostly a non-event, but glad to finally get here and grab a smiley. TFTC

Tftc!

Definitely check the tides before coming out! What a cool wreck, TFTH

Thanks for the awesome information, we loved it! We love Geocaching (Ariana, 5); we loved the ship (Rumi).

What is a boiler? Rumi, age 8.

Watch out for prickles

Interesting spot and thanks for bringing me here.
I've found this cache during my third day of the Queen memorial weekend in Taranaki.
TFTC

Very cool ship wreck!!

Nice view of the ship wreck

What’s the record for accidentally walking into boxtorn, cause I may have broken that record haha! At least I didn’t touch the electric fence! Cache is in good nick and a good little spot, tftc

Lovely spot and learnt some local history

Not quite where they said

Looking hard for this one

Thames gals

Well this has been a popular cache judging by the list of signatures. Tide was in so we could only see a bit of the ironwork above the waves. Farmer came down and had a chat to us about the history, when we told him what we were doing. Had to duck under an electric wire and disconnect the gate, but that wasn't too difficult. Cache is all good. TFTC

#12,756. Enjoyed the walk from Timaru Road in Tataraimaka. Several other people also went to check out the actual rusting remains of the SS Gairloch, but GZ itself was all quiet at the time of our visit. Found after a short search. Good hide. The cache was in good condition, all nice and dry inside. Took nothing, left nothing, signed log.

Thanks for the history write-up and placement, and for bringing us to this site, and …

.T h a n k s. .f o r. .t h e. .c a c h e.
.M a u r u u r u. .k o e. .n u i. .a t u. .h o k i. .t e. .k e t e r o k i.

Found it after hunting around in the prickles.
One of our favourite spots.Gairloch is breaking away fast now.
Thank you for a fun search.

Really great! Not too hard but also quite a challenge

Easy

Today, we are exploring surf highway. First stop at the shipwreck. Tide is going down, we can see the bow. A bit hard to find the cache, we finally crossed the fence and found it. We replaced it so it is accessible from public land. Great location, thanks for placing and maintaining this cache.

Took a trip around the coast today to get a few geocaches, interesting story about the ship that sunk and awesome to be able to get up close to it,
All good at GZ
TFTC

Great find wonderful place to spend sometime great views many thanks

AAST

AAST FOUND FIRST

Great spot, easy find.

Easy find, but little cacher got zapped!

Out on a very windy walk n found this cool cache. Tftc

On a road trip on the Coast Road. Have been meaning to do this cache for a while. A busy spot with surfers, whitebaiters snd surfcasters.

Enjoyed the walk to GZ where the cache was quickly found, signed log and left as found.

Thanks for the placement smoking gun. Gets a FP for the history and the walk on a cracker day.

Always wanted to visit never got around to it, awesome spot with a great piece of history, thanks

Rick-a-mortis was here OZR3RZ

TFTC

On a road trip around the mountain
What a bit of history

I used to be a sea scout in the early 2000s and we once came to the Lower Weld Road for a weekend on camping. Sad to see you can no longer do that! Really good memories of a king low tide and seeing the pink rocks! Thanks for the cache!

Been here before nice to come get the cache

Thank you! Nice history lesson

I always find it more enjoyable when cache sites have an interesting historical connection. I had actually printed out the description for this cache back in December 2009 in the expectation that I may have been able to travel to the site over that Christmas/New Year period. I finally managed it today. There was a wood collecting muggle close by but I was able to make a quick find despite the presence of boxthorn.

Beautiful walk to find this️

As I was in the area collecting another geocache and could see the wreck from where I was parked I decided to take the opportunity to find this cache as who knows when I would be back. Made my way to the gz and realised I know who owns the land nearby as a friend got married here and I recognised the view. Cache was quickly located after dealing to the box thorn, punga appears to be getting quite wet. Lovely spot and nice to pick up a month found I didn't have thanks to this cache, wow 14 years old. Fav point awarded

Tftc

Quick find on a beautiful autumn day. Great to be caching again. Tftc

Beautiful spot. Easy find. Worth a look.

Dub

Found on 8th did not get to sign as had no pen

A quick easy find, with no fear of being prickled. There doesn't look to be a great deal of the wreck left. TFTC

Great little treasure we found today on our day out

easy as

What a great spot to visit! Cache was a little difficult to retrieve from the prickly hide, but I guess that would keep it safer from muggles. Not that there were any at this end of the beach! TFTC!!

We spend 2 days at the great Ahuahu beach villa. From there we took a walk at the beach to get to this wreck and to find the 2 caches.
Looks nice to see the rest of it after such a long time. The cache we could find well with the hint.
Thank you for showing this place.
TFTC saying Sverabe and greetings from Germany
(#1337 @17:00)

The box thorn is very sharp!

nice walk today along the tracks and beach quick find in a lovely spot. tftc

Enjoyed the walk here from Hippocamp. Not much of the wreck left. Got this one snagged and tagged. Cheers.

Day 9 - Sunday 22 December. New Plymouth back to Okato today.

The Seagnoid, Zara, Toby and I are spending Christmas exploring Taranaki via geocaching. Its been an amazing 3 week adventure. Rattls BBQ was a great event, meeting many other cachers. But also managed to fit in a few more events, especially New Years Day celebrating the start of 2020. Lots of caches - over 500. Lots of cache maintenance. Lots and lots of kilometers. And lots of amazing places visited along our journey. Mt Taranaki remained elusive for much of our travels and the caches on it at the top. Loved Pukekura Park Night Lights Show and the the Wooden Mechanical toy exhibition at NP Info centre.

Taybeedragon and I walked over from Hippocamp. Not sure if it was any quicker or not but alease we got in a decent walk. Not much of the wreck left. (photo)


Day ten of Taybeedragon's and my big 3 week circumnavicaching trip around Mt Taranaki, starting from Palmerston North. Earlier we did most of the coast road up from Hawera, Today we start from New Plymouth and head west to finish it off.
Highlights:
* 3 weeks, 536 caches
* Mt Taranaki had been removed for washing, which was a bit of a shame. Even after it had been returned we were only allowed to see it for it was less than half an hour a day.
* High percentage of caches with crappy coordinates
* Amazing Pukekura Park
* AMAZING Pukekura Park light show!
* Pukeiti Gardens
* Lots of cache maintenance!

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Planning for the [NZ Mega 2020](http://nzmega.com) event is well underway. It will be held in Auckland over Labour Weekend, 23 to 26 October 2020. It's going to be a massive celebration of geocaching:

* 20 years of geocaching worldwide.
* 20 years since New Zealand had the very first geocache hidden outside of USA.
* And it's 2020 - all the 20s!

Talk to your geo-friends and start planning to be part of [this event](https://coord.info/GC87777) - you won't want to miss it!

TFTC, easy find, but most of all, Thank you for the bit of history!

Made a little walk on the beach, nice place. TFTC

Found with the family! Paper was very wet and no new space so didn't leave details. TFTC

Beautiful day for a walk on the beach, TFTC

Just finishing up some of the local caches. Find #1 of #2

We parked up near the bridge and wandered down to this one. Great to see it still sticking out of the sand, not much of it left now thuugh.

Up here for an awesome weekend jaunt with Karma Reprint, Team Gators and TheWanglers and to do a loop of the mountain in 48 hours grabbing as many caches as we could while having a good laugh. Logs signed as some derivative of (KT)^2

Cheers smoking gun for the cache

A planned geocaching trip to the USA was shelved (but is all go for this time next year!) so we came up with a weekends Plan B. Taranaki with TheWanglers, KarmaReprint and KiwiMoose - logs signed (TK)^2 or a variation of. A really fun trip with the forecast rain and thunder seemingly always in the distance but never hindering us. A really fun weekend.
Day 2 dawned with a bit of drizzle but that soon cleared (whilst eating breakfast) and we had a lovely trip missing all the bad weather again. Harwea to New Plymouth the long way. Heaps of history; cool scenery and lots of laughs. Cheers all!
Way cool wreckage...I think I get the take home message of this coast, with all it's shipwrecks, that it isn't a great place for boating! LOL. Cheers, great spot.

Day two Hawera to New Plymouth via Opunake

Great to be out and about, find quickly made. Fun fact, cell phone coverage here so got notification of check in for tomorrows homeward flight, and checked all in as we walked! Cheers

A long weekend cache raid to Taranaki. The weather didn't stop us doing anything, and we had fun times. Logs were signed with a combination of KT and 2 depending one which of did the signing. Thanks Kiwi Moose, Team_Gaters and TheWanglers for a choice time.

Thanks to all CO's for placing and maintaining their caches. Cheers

A plan was hatched for a few of us to head to America for a Mad Mission. With life getting a bit crazy a downsized trip was organised as I had sorted childcare for the cachelets. The big America trip is now set for next year. We asked a member of our crew if we could go to Nelson, Dunedin, Auckland, Wellington, Hastings the answer all came back "I don't have many to find there". We left it to that member to suggest an area. He came up with New Plymouth and a loop around the mountain. That's a go from the rest of us. We sorted puzzles, gpxs, motels and a car and hit the ground running. The forecast was doom, gloom, rain, hail and lightning. Oh well, sounds exciting. We had very little of any of the weather that affected our caching and found we had all overpacked (thank God!).
Day 2: Today was a long day in the car 14 hours or so to our home for the night and then an hour or two after dinner before having a beer at the campground. We started in Hawera and went the long way around the coast with many detours. The history was amazing and the the lack of irrigation was very noticable to us Cantabrians. We once again missed the horrible weather!
More wreckage. Very interesting.

Thanks for the cache smoking gun.
#6168
Find 34 of 80 for today.
Find 114 of 224 for the trip.

Remember to bring your pencil

Was cool to see the remains of the wreck, I wouldnt have known it was here if not for the cache. Thanks for bringing me here. TFTC. Sorry about the late log

Very cool spot. Had to wade through water to get to spot. Which was blimmin cold

#6464. I flew up to Taranaki this week to do some field work out on the Sugarloaf Islands. After the trip ended I hired a rental car so I could do a bit of caching in the Taranaki area. This afternoon I headed SW to pick up caches on the road to Cape Egmont. Continuing my exploration of side roads along the Taranaki coast. Well if I had studied the map more carefully I could have accessed this cache easily from my last cache find. Instead went back to highway and down another side road only to end up not far from where I parked last time! Headed through the campground and out to the beach. Checked out what remains of the wreck. Interesting rocky beach here at low tide and some great views back to the north. Headed to GZ and went around the big nasty plant twice before spying where the cache was hidden. I was glad the cache was accessible without taking on the thorns. Signed the logbook and replaced the cache as found. Great to see that the cache was placed in 2006 and is still present here. Thanks for the cache smoking gun.

Thanks to the accurate coords and helpful hint, I was able to log this one without much delay. Afterwards studied the wreck remains - astonishing that anything remains after more than 120 years. A good cache!

Heading out in the company of HKCB for a quick 24 hours down to Taranaki collecting caches around the mountain to try to tidy up the area.
We departed Hamilton at 7pm Friday and made it back home 7pm on Saturday with a haul of 70 caches and 820kms traveled. A great drive through the night, clear sky's and a fantastic day on Saturday to view the mountain in all its glory, a calm sea along the coast. Together these factors made the trip memorable as we could not have asked for better conditions to cache in.
A big thank you to all the CO's whom have placed these caches for us and continued their maintenance.
Continuing our journey around the mountain it was time to get moving and make up some distance between all those caches. Nice to be back near the seaside, plenty of people in the area but none too close to what we were after

Thank you for the placement, thank you for the cache.

In the company of Cats&Dragons for a quick 24 hour blast around Mt Taranaki, with the aim to tidy up as much of the area as possible. Leaving 7pm Friday night and returning 7pm Saturday we managed the loop and found about 70 caches along the way, with a couple of hours sleep thrown in as well. The weather also played its part with fantastic vistas throughout the day of the mountain.

With some well hidden and maintain caches found throughout the day a big thanks must go to all the CO's for the placements.

A cool spot, thanks for showing us this wreak.

awesome spot, lovely beach, and seeing the wreck sticking up from the sand was cool a FP from me, cache was a easy find but it was more about the location TFTC

Great find while having fun day at beach. No pen this time. Beautiful location.