Devonport is a city on the north coast of Tasmania, where the Mersey River meets Bass Strait. On the waterfront, the Bass Strait Maritime Centre has exhibits about early explorers, shipwrecks and steamers. Housed in an old church, the Devonport Regional Gallery is dedicated to Tasmanian art. Now a museum, Home Hill was the residence of former Australian prime minister Joseph Lyons in the early 1900s. Devonport is regarded as the Gateway to the Overland Trail from Cradle Mountain to Lake St. Clair and it is that relationship that leads this old man to begin reminiscing.
The cache is not located at the above coordinates but it is at S42 ab.cde and E147 fg.hij where the values for a – j can be found be solving the puzzle below.
Old man Reminiscing.
Retirement is a wonderful time of life when we can do all the things we want (such as Geocaching), when we want. It is also a time in our lives when we begin to reminisce.
One of the periods I turn back to with pleasure is my first years in South Australia, when I lived in Elizabeth (with all the other poms) and began to develop my life in Australia. The new town and “new Australians” nature of the town was ideal for the formation of a close-knit group of friends who shared their spare time together. The really memorable people in the group were Andy (the demon bowler with one arm), Nick (who had this knack of rolling home with little treasures from second-hand stores), Don (the hippie bee-keeper), Serg (the big Russian Chiropractor) and Patrick (known to everyone as Paddy) who had the habit of whacking you on the back of the head when he greeted you. However, the whole group revolved around Kelly who had a saying for every occasion. When we only made a low score in cricket he would always come up with “well we’ve got them and they still have to get them”; at the football when scores were level it would always be “if they both score a point, scores will be level” and when anyone was talking non-stop it was always “give the dog a bone”!
The most memorable expedition of this group was our trip to Tasmania just after Christmas 1963. We flew from Adelaide to Melbourne, Melbourne to Devonport and then took a bus to Waldheim for our long haul along the Overland Track. A week of hard slog, beginning in glorious sunshine, led us south through Marion’s Lookout, and Pelion (where the snow set in). Then on to Du Cane, Mt Ossa, and finally Lake St Clair. After the long walk, we returned to more sedate means of transport (mainly bus) travelling east to Ouse, and Hobart. After a stop, we continued east through Coles Bay (very primitive in the early ‘60s), Bicheno and St Helens. We completed the circle through Launceston and back to Devonport before the flights back to South Australia.
It was in the mid 1960s when we (as a group) began to enjoy wines for the first time in our lives. Unfortunately, despite the comparative cheapness of wines at that time, we still found it difficult to afford good wines, as young people beginning our adult lives in a new country. To overcome this problem, we invented a number of ways to get wine at a cheaper price. Here is a quick summary of 2 of our enjoyable wine producing methods.
Method 1.
Grab breakfast of toast with honey from Don’s hive then on with the running shoes to race to the nearest cellar. After buying the best barrel, taste until it sends shivers down your spine but be careful not to sting your thumb on bees from Don's hive.
Method 2.
Put on your running shoes and lift your knees to get to the greengrocer to grab his left-over fruit. Place fruit in a drum to ferment, clean bottles near the door then cork and stack the bottles before a regular trip to Serg for spine correction.
Unfortunately, the wines were often drunk very young and rarely were of any notable quality (particularly the home brews). Those days seem so long ago and we now buy our wine through on-line auction (with screw-tops), through a wine club and even in a carton. Ironically, we lived for many years near a number of “wine streets” where Champagne, Sherry, Moselle, Riesling, Frontignac, Vermouth and Marsala met with each other. Even more ironically, we now live in Tasmania, overlooking the Derwent where I can sit, sipping my wine and reminiscing about the past.
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Well done to AINSTAR for FTF and congratulations to whitewebbs for being the first team to complete "The Map of Tassie".
If you have solved this before 14/01/2020 then you will have to resolve it to get the new coords as the location has been moved.