Andrew Scully from ABC Newcastle 1233 stumbled across geocaching while taking a lunch break. The result was an interview with some visiting geocachers and local geocacher Michael Cashman.

A worldwide phenomenon described as a cross between orienteering and easter egg hunting is 'exploding' in popularity as GPS-enabled mobile phones become more common.

Read more at ABC Newcastle 1233 website.

At our 2012 North Sydney Get Together event, we were told that myrtle rust has now spread to the Sydney region. We have also been informed by geocachers in Queensland that it is now a problem in that state too. If you come across myrtle rust, please stand away from the affected tree, take a photo and mark the approximate coordinates with your GPS receiver. When you return home contact the council or land manager to alert them.

The following information is from fellow geocacher Meredith Stewart.

You may have heard over the last few months of an outbreak of Myrtle Rust on the Central Coast. While containment in the nurseries has been largely successful, in recent weeks the situation has worsened with it's detection in bushland in several reserves on the Central Coast. These reserves have been closed down and extensive control works are under way as we speak.

There is a risk that anyone moving through bushland could potentially be spreading the disease via spores on clothing, including hats, within a reserve or from one reserve to another.

After last year’s fantastic Bathurst invasion, this year we’re looking forward to a great double-event weekend of caching and camaraderie, on February 18 and 19, in historic Goulburn.

Goulburn is less than three hours drive south of Sydney and just over an hour from Canberra. It's not just home to the Big Merino; as Australia's first inland city, Goulburn is brimming with historic sites, museums, heritage homes and geocaches.

We kick off the weekend at 6pm on the Saturday night with A Dinner @ Diggers, our dinner event at the Goulburn Soldiers Club. The late start allows plenty of time to travel, but why not come earlier, or even the night before. There are plenty of geocaching opportunities to fill your day, with well over 100 within 10km of the city. There are mysteries, multis, plenty of traditionals, an earthcache and, of course, our two events.

On Sunday morning, we'll have a Meet’n’Greet event, a Rally by the River, commencing at 10:30am in the Goulburn Historic Waterworks, a parkland and museum set on the banks of the picturesque Wollondilly River. The area has parking, picnic shelters, free electric BBQs, a children’s playground and toilet facilities. As a bonus, we’ll be there on one of the 5 “steaming” days for 2017 so the cafe will be open and one of steam engines will be huffing and puffing.

These events are open to all geocachers. You don’t need to be a GCNSW member. Full details are on the event listings A Dinner @ Diggers and Rally by the River so why not jump across and post a “Will Attend” log now.

Penrose State Forest has become the latest target for high-tech geocache hunters.

Geocaching is a game in which people use GPS devices to find hidden containers, called geocaches.

Read more at Southern Highlands News website.

After the great success of our Regional Invasion to the Mid-North Coast in 2015, Geocaching NSW is delighted to invite all geocachers to Bathurst in the beautiful Central Tablelands for our 2016 invasion. The Bathurst region is the gateway to former gold rush towns and home to the annual Bathurst 1000 motor race. Just two and a half hours’ drive from Sydney, it’s a major events hub of Country NSW. The region has a lot to offer with natural attractions, hundreds of caches to find and many local activities.

On the weekend of February 27 & 28, you'll get not one, but two great events where local and visiting cachers can get together for double the fun! Come for either, come for both. They're listed on geocaching.com now. The invasion starts on Saturday evening with Food, Glorious Food!, and then restarts on the Sunday morning at Peace Park where we'll Give Peace A Chance. 

Click the links, read all the details and post your "Will Attend" now.

Tronador (Linda Broschofsky) and The Spindoctors (Darren Osborne) spoke with Sydney Morning Herald's Kelsey Munro.

Linda also took Kelsey along for the hunt.

Treasure hunts go high-tech with the aid of the internet and GPS gadgets, writes Kelsey Munro.

Read more at Sydney Morning Herald website.

What a great day!

Well over 50 attendees came out to Prospect for the 2015 GCNSW Christmas Party last week. The sun shone, the teams chatted, we played games and The Aussie Geoocacher even found time to make this awesome video of the event (GOTY Spoiler Warning! :P).  

Tronador took home the annual "Closest Mint-Tin to the Ammo-Can" competition and is the owner of a GCNSW 50cal cache container we hope to see out soon. We couldnt split the effort of 3 junior cachers in the tower building comp so they were all rewarded with a GCNSW pathtag. 

A big thanks to all who made it out and made the event a success. Here is goodbye to 2015 and time to start to calculate those yearly stats to see what goals you can hit by December 31st. Hopefully your 2016 geocaching addiction leads you on many more adventures, great new discoveries, new geo-friends and those golden moments of finding clever, tricky, exhilerating and trophy caches. See you in Bathurst for the Invasion event in February next year and stay tuned for the official GOTY announcement soon! 

On May 17th 2015 Geocaching NSW held the biggest event in our history. With 95 teams and close to 150 people in attendance over the day "Let's Party - Come Celebrate Australia's First" (GC5Q189) broke all records as cachers from far and wide descended on Lane Cove National Park to sing happy 15th birthday to Australia's first geocache GC3E - Lane Cove... albeit one day early.

Many local, interstate and even a couple of internationals came on what turned out to be a glorious day by foot, car and canoe to the Commandment Rock Picnic area. We celebrated some milestones, including Sol de Lunes 20,000th cache find and 100th event, ate cake and played croquet. It was a great honour to have Paul Edwards, hider of the original cache present to tell the first hand story of how the cache came to be just a few days after the original stash was hidden in America and of how it was lost when the rangers had to remove it to protect some endangered plants at GZ. What Paul and the others present didn’t know was the GCNSW committee had some tantalising (if somewhat anticlimactic) news. The original cache has been found!

So it turns out that the ranger who removed the container back in 2001 has recently retired and moved up the north coast of NSW. It also happened that he decided to visit Middle Brother the other month completely coincidentally on the day GCNSW hosted their Invasion Event up there. He recognised the banner and walked over the Calypso62 for a chat whereby we learnt of the possible existence of the bucket, complete with all the contents, hidden somewhere in his garage. Sadly, after many attempts and due to a serious illness in the rangers family, we are yet to lay hands on the box... but we will continue to persevere until we are able to arrange something. 
 

--- A good number of the attendees present for the official photo!

With the formalities out of the way it was back to socialising and logging that all important first Oz Cache with the CO for those who hadn’t yet done so. Massive thanks to Calypso62 and the other committee members for organising the day and to all who were able to attend, especially Paul and those who travelled many miles to be there. We'll see you in 5 years’ time for the 20th!  

--- The Original Hide back in May 2000! - It is now a virtual.            

--- Marcus Vitruvius (VP GCNSW), Paul Edwards (CO Original Hide) and Zal (Pres. GCNSW)

Geocaching NSW invites all geocachers to the picturesque Mid-North Coast region for our 2015 Regional Invasion on the weekend of February 14 & 15.

At Port Macquarie and Laurieton, you'll get not one, but two great events where local and visiting cachers can get together for double the fun! Both events are listed on geocaching.com now so jump across, read all the details and post your "Will Attend". The invasion starts on Saturday evening with It's Tucker Time!, and continues on the Sunday morning at Oh Brother!!

An enthusiastic group of geocachers enjoyed coming together at Putney for the 6th annual Geocaching NSW Christmas Party. As usual, there was lots of great chat about many aspects of the game we all really enjoy playing. We welcomed familiar faces and it was fabulous to see some new players joining us for their first geocaching event.

The first game of the day was a “nearest to the ammo can” mint tin throw. Each player had three goes to try to be the closest. Competition was fierce with Kid Ron Satan taking out this year’s title. For his efforts he received a 50 cal. ammo can. Hopefully, there’s a new cache coming out soon. Congratulations KRS.

The second competition was to see how tall mint tins could be stacked in 30 seconds. Again, this was highly competitive with junior Team MavEtJu coming up the winner. Well done!

The Geocache of the Year was announce by President Zalgariath. The voting was very close with “GCHFT2 Earthcache 1 – A simple Geology Tour of Wasp Head” being crowned this year’s winner. This is very fitting as this earthcache was the first one published anywhere in the world and celebrated 10 years of finds back in January this year. Congratulations to the cache owner, Geoaware.