This cache is part of a series of Doctor Who caches - placed because Doctor Who is the best TV show ever!
The cache locations have been chosen because they are great places to visit and they correspond to something in the Doctor Who episode. Originally, there were 9 caches in the series. At 8 of the caches you collected a clue that helped lead you to the final cache in the series. This cache contained Clue #4. However, since 6 of the caches in the series - including the final cache - have been archived, there is no longer a puzzle to be solved.
Easy free two hour parking is available at any of the four Council Car Parks in Manly.
The Wishing Well Publisher's Summary (Doctor Who novel by Trevor Baxendale)
The old village well is just a curiosity - something to attract tourists intrigued by stories of lost treasure, or visitors just making a wish. Unless something alien and terrifying could be lurking inside the well. Something utterly monstrous that causes nothing but death and destruction! But who knows the real truth about the well? Who wishes to unleash the hideous force it contains? What terrible consequences will follow the search for a legendary treasure hidden at the bottom? No one wants to believe the Doctor's warnings about the deadly horror lying in wait - but soon they'll wish they had...
Cache Information
The Wishing Well is a traditional cache located near the (now decommissioned) Manly District Hospital Wishing Pool on the Ocean Beach Promenade beside South Steyne, Manly.
This is often a high muggle area, so some stealth will be required! There is so much interesting stuff to examine at the GZ, so it shouldn't be hard to fool the muggles into thinking that you're one of them!
The cache is a micro sized container. There is only room for the log book. Bring your own writing utensil.
Please Note: Not sure if the resident muggle - Graham - still lives at GZ. If so, he is aware of the cache and is happy to help cachers find the cache. Keith used to live there and also helped numerous cachers but, sadly, he passed away some time before March 2019.
IMPORTANT
- Please replace the cache exactly as you found it - noting WHICH SIDE IS THE TOP
- No spoilers please!
About the restored Wishing Well Shelter
The Wishing Well Shelter has been restored and now includes a permanent display paying tribute to the art of John Suchomlin.
From the former Manly Council web site:
John Suchomlin's distinctive art – celebrating topics as diverse as Old Testament patriarchs, to 1920s bathing beauties, to the aviator heroes Amy Johnson and Bert Hinkler, and often portraying mythological scenes and historical tableaux - became such a popular fixture in Manly during the Roaring Twenties that the Manly Council of 1929 purpose-built a dainty, open-fronted, slate-roof kiosk beside the Ocean Beach just so the artist could display his work there.
Mr Suchomlin used sand and water to make his models, carefully painting them in colour, typically with great realism - and often with satirical bite calculated to appeal to 1930s Depression-era ‘battlers'.
Being a political refugee from Tsarist Russia, Mr Suchomlin did not resile from portraying what were sometimes controversial topics, including dramatic contrasting statements about wealth and poverty, or mocking Adolph Hitler as a veritable angel of death.
His ‘Pinch of Poverty' tableau, for example, still haunts with the near photographic authority of its portrayal of working class people struggling with want, contrasting them with his ‘Lap of Luxury' image of a family of rotund toffs sinking into a plush armchairs, clutching money-bags, or quaffing brandy – and one even petting a lap-dog.
Mr Suchomlin, and his Australian-born wife Elsie, later worked in California and the United Kingdom, before moving to Queensland. He retired there in the 1970s, passing away in 1974, aged 88.
Examples of his work survived only as photographs and post cards, often preserved as keepsakes by his admirers. Fortunately for posterity, he seems to have won many such admirers.
This has allowed Manly Council to commemorate Mr Suchomlin's sculptures by transferring images of his art on to specially treated aluminium panels mounted on the restored Wishing Well Shelter.
Superbly arranged montages showing works by the artist – and the handsome, gently smiling artist himself - are prominently displayed on the exterior and interior walls of the Wishing Well Shelter, complete with carefully researched historical captions.
After John and Elsie Suchomlin moved on from Manly, the little kiosk that housed his sand-sculptures was pressed into service on behalf of Manly District Hospital, which used the kiosk to house a wishing well to raise funds for the Hospital. The kiosk's name dates from then.
Featuring a large scale-model of the Hospital's ward block set among a rockery and pool, the Wishing Well collected some three million coins over forty years.
They were regularly gathered up and deposited to the Hospital's bank account.
In the years after, the ravages of time, tide and increasing vandalism eventually led to the Wishing Well Shelter being handed back to Manly Council for upkeep.
The wishing well and rockery were dismantled, and the scale model hospital building was lost. But neither it - nor John Suchomlin - has been forgotten entirely.
Now, his little atelier by the sea has been restored with pains-taking care to look as it appeared during the Hospital Wishing Pool phase by studying old photographs and drawings.
The entire restoration and commemorative display were designed by Manly Council architectural and design staff, and the restoration implemented by Council trades staff.