Day 7 - Perth (100 posts on our blog!!!!!)

Is their driving really that bad??

 Friday 30th July 2010

So let me get this straight so far on our geocaching adventures this year we have been to Melbourne, Botany Bay and now Perth and yet sadly we have yet to put one foot on the land of Australia. Today we arrived in Perth, one day before the Mega event kicks off (a mega event is when at least 500 geocachers attend an event). Today team Shiltonpig aimed to go to 1 side event, but somehow ended up going to 2! The first was a teddy bears picnic. Josh likes his Winnie the Pooh bear and has been with him in his cot for many a month now. So it seemed

The new member of team Shiltonpig

 right that team Shiltonpig had an extra member for the day. We arrived several hours early and decided to complete some of the caches in the area beforehand. We ended up bumping into Caledale Duo, a couple of cachers from the Orkney Islands and we completed a multi cache together. Its always funny to swap stories and find ideas for good places to cache. By the time the event was ready to go ahead the weather had turned sour. The event was held at Quarry Mill Country Park and the entrance holds a charity shop and cafe, I am sure that the local staff were overwhelmed with how many visitors they had that day! There were some clues

Spot anything out of the ordinary?

 that you had to collect around the park before finding what a teddy bear had left behind. Sadly team Shiltonpigs gps failed for the second (and thankfully last) time and so we were unable to do anymore. The rain came down a bit heavier so we moved on to another part of Perth. This time we went to Kinnoull Woodland Park. This part of Perth is brill an amazing woodland park that is a lot bigger than you first think. What makes it stand out for a lot of woodlands across the UK are 3 things...first up is the excellent wooden carving dotted around the whole place. A nice touch which leads to some great caching treats especially for families. Second

Cool.....

 are the views which really have to be seen to be believed and third is wildlife for example we came the closest yet to some bird of prey (red kites?) than we ever have before. When I say closest I mean nearly attacked lol. We were walking around finding blue fungus and wooden hedgehogs when we stumbled across a second event which was designed for dogs. Loads of doggie travel bugs in tow at this one...one local who we got talking to couldn't believe how many geocachers there were and again the local shop was overwhelmed...business was up that day! One of the things we liked about this event was you had to  find and collect wooden bits which when collected

Josh wanted to take it home...

 together made a wooden badger. A very different and clever idea for a caching event. Finally there was a sitting still competition for dogs, we entered Josh for a laugh and he came last...while we have our doubts about the winner which features in the photo at the bottom. For the second day running we found a large amount of caches (well for us anyway) which always has a good feel to it. We went home still with loads and loads of caches to do in the Perth area in eager anticipation of the Mega event which was now just a few hours away!!

The winner...