We explored bush shortcuts quite a bit before we found a secret home for this little cache. Part of the reason is that apart from nearby reserves, such as Mount Billy Conservation Park up the road, a lot of the areas that have been cleared of native vegetation (and its hiding spots) are now home to a growing army of weeds!
When you locate the cache, you’ll notice that some of the plants nearby are doing better than others. Unfortunately, many of these are not indigenous (local native) plants. One of the least welcome of these visitors is Bridal Creeper (you’ll probably see it growing near the hiding spot).
This fast-growing climbing plant is a member of the asparagus family and native to southern Africa. It is known as a ‘declared plant’, meaning it is a major threat to our local native plants and we need to do all we can to prevent it spreading into our scrub from trails and roadsides (so don’t take any with you!). Learn more about our pest plants here (and how they can ‘escape’ our gardens and infest our native scrub).
That’s the bad news. The good news is that hundreds of environmental volunteers get outdoors every week to tackle the weedy menace and there are plenty of people working in natural resource management doing their bit, too.
When you have returned the cache to its hiding spot, see if you can find the nearby Ringtales cache at Myponga Dam and learn about our precious water resources.. you might even be able to make it there along the backroads of the Hindmarsh Tiers. We just hope you don’t see too many weeds on the way!
Find more geocaches in the Ringtails series:
Ringtales #1: Off the rails… and walking on water
Ringtales #2: Weeding ceremony
Ringtales #3: Dam if you do
Ringtales #4: Finding meaning in the trees
Ringtales #5: Growth industries
Ringtales #6: Between a drain and a creek