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We met at the Mount Compass tavern car park and left 9.45 a.m. for the park. Our program for the day included GPS navigation ‘training’, removal of some tyres and a BBQ. Some members of our club have become interested in Geocaching - an international pastime where you locate a cache that has been hidden by the 'owner.' This requires obtaining cache coordinates from the internet, entering them into a GPS, then locating them. There is one in the park about 800 metres from the easternmost car park (also about 700 sites in SA). Caches contain small items of trivia, e.g. toys, key rings, badges, small hand tools, etc. The idea is you take an item and leave something else. The activity is useful in helping people become familiar with the use of a GPS. Anyway, before the clean up got started, most trip members set out to find a cache in the park. They were successful. When they returned to the car park they were already warmed up ready to get started on recovering tyres. We essentially continued the clean up from where we left off 12 months ago. Therefore, as both are aligned, this report airs a similar account of the task as last year. I have therefore chosen not to recycle the tiring comments that were used last year. The tyres that were left were largely embedded in the mud terrain of the dry creek bed and took some digging/levering/coaxing out. The steep banks of the creek and the scrubby environment make the park an interesting place, albeit these features are not conducive to making tyre recovery an easy task. We had two main patches to stick to. One patch was near an area of the creek that had high sidewalls. Those working here were bonded as a team; at one stage they were challenged with a metal object shaped somewhat like a small punt; they advised me it was part of a fridge. Gerry was in this team and you could just imagine he was scheming to refloat this thing in some waters elsewhere. Though they got close to recovery their efforts were thwarted by the need to meet up with the other party of workers. The other patch was attacked with gusto by a gutsy lot of workers. After working for a short while the call went out to slow down the digging of tyres as time was running out and we had to load the ones we had already recovered. Both work parties assembled in a clearing and photos were taken of loaded trailers and workers and supervisors. Those with loaded trailers set off for the Goolwa landfill site. Everyone else headed for Ian and Jenny’s beach house in Goolwa for lunch. The BBQ lunch topped off a good day. We had some extras in the form of a Lumberjack, Bee sting and a Plum cake for dessert. We witnessed a short squabble during the afternoon and a couple of members squared off and were taking each other’s measure. The dispute was settled and we now have a Gnome and an Elf in the club. Statistics for the day: Team numbers 21 Tyres to landfill site 53 Bags of litter to landfill site 1 Vehicles 11 Trailers 2 Punctures Nil Injuries Nil Snake sightings Nil Geocaches found 1 P.S. The Ranger has e-mailed us thanking the Club and everyone involved in the clean up. Written by Greg Young |
