In November 2025 a group of Sydney cachers headed north to explore the Northern Rivers area of NSW and all the caches it had to offer.
Team Canary and I squeezed in a parkrun in Coffs Harbour and went on to spend the next few days in Grafton. We timed it perfectly to coincide with the Jacaranda Festival. The trees, which were planted in the 1880s, are now well established and mature and cover the whole town purple. We participated in the Australian record attempt for the most people doing the Hokey Pokey (failed miserably) and took photos with Jaca Jill, the 6‑metre‑high, 6‑metre‑wide Kewpie doll dressed in purple.
Then it was on to Ballina to set up our base.
Our primary goal was the Northern Rivers Rail Trail. It repurposes the disused Murwillumbah railway line (closed in 2004) to create a cycling track of 23kms. Work began in 2021 on the first stage of the rail trail – the Tweed section – from Murwillumbah to Crabbes Creek. It was opened in 2023 and has 18 heritage railway bridges (many with caches) and two tunnels, including the Burringbar Range Tunnel, where you can collect a virtual cache (GCAJHJX).
We started in Crabbes Creek with a quick AL (GCA5A6G) and were brimming with energy to get going. This section is certainly the most scenic and offers the most distraction with potential stops for ice cream, catching up with the local Cycling Without Age chapter and plenty of toilet and water facilities available. Mostly shaded with a gradual gradient (it was made for trains after all) and with all the stopping for caches, the trip to Murwullimbah took us 4h 15min. This did include the headache of managing the big Geocaching.com outage of 2025. Some of our logs were cursing the “apparent” poor reception and it wasn’t until we stopped at The Platform Cafe for the most amazing homemade quiches for lunch, that we realised the problem was bigger than us.
The trip back took around 1hr 30min which still included a few stops for solved multis and to mop up some AL bonuses.
The second section from Lismore to Casino is a mix of sealed and compacted gravel surfaces. Much more out in the open and a little less picturesque, this is still a really important part in the bigger picture. After the mornings work of collecting caches, our group retired to the satisfyingly air conditioned Hotel Cecil for lunch and beverages.
If and when the rail trail is fully completed it will extend for 132 km across the Northern Rivers region, connecting communities and showcasing the environment all while bringing in valuable tourist dollars. A big thanks to the local caching community for placing and maintaining the variety of hides and AL locations along both routes.
Being based in Ballina meant that so many spectacular locations were only a short drive away. On one of our cycling rest days, we went for a swim with the turtles at Cook Island, and to grab the unique virtual (GC891JZ) while we were there. Only 600m from the mainland, Cook Island was declared an Aquatic Reserve in 1998 and is home to a turtle nursery. We asked the skipper of our boat to give us a moment to pose for the required photo, and then we were off for the next 90 mins discovering turtles of many breeds and sizes. It was an exhilarating experience to get up close, swim in the same rhythm as them, and unleash our inner turtle. Would we have done this if a cache hadn’t demanded it? Probably not.
Another day trip was to Byron Bay where we picked up the most eastery traditional cache on the Australian mainland (GCX0QP) and I was allowed to indulge in some lighthouse love (GA8557). The town was packed with overseas tourists, and despite feeling the urge to try the local Blue Cow Gelato and buy some Byron Bay Cookies, our recommendation to cachers is to grab your caches and then head out of town for some sanity.
While everyone else headed off to make it to various GIFF events, I stayed on with local cachers Not_Tomorrow and wayn0 in Lismore. I was given the BEST tour of the town from a local’s perspective (lunch at the Lismore Pie Cart is a must!) and was overwhelmed by the level of devastation from the 2022 floods, especially when presented with the physical reality at The Lismore Letterbox cache (GCAWR74). Don’t forget about Lismore and Casino as caching locations just because they’re away from the coast. They are well worth the stop.
The whole trip lasted between 6 and 9 days (we all had our own timelines but met for key moments) and really, who counts caches when you’ve been able to see and do so many amazing things in NSW.
— ziggiau
Photos courtesy of ziggiau and Calypso62
