2025-07-03 -37 144

Location

In a business park in Dallas, northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Participants

Stevage

Expedition

I had plans for the day. A big, meandering bike ride to the northern suburbs, to collect a number of squadratinhos to add to my burgeoning backyardinho in hopes of future expansion of my yardinho. Don't ask.

Then a geohash arrives, just slightly further north again. Could I make these plans work together? Piece of cake.

The real question: is the geohash even accessible? It's complicated. It lies in the middle of a large logistics-focused business park that has been underdoing redevelopment and construction over the last few years. Streetview is a couple of years old, and shows temporary fencing around a pile of rubble. One set of aerial imagery shows a carpark next to a building, another shows...rubble. It's impossible to get a clear answer so off I head.

Collecting squadratinhos is a strange game, involving carefully constructing an optimal, winding route, and then trying to follow it. To save phone battery (the ever-present risk with my phone) I glance at the phone and try to memorise the next few turns.

I come up with a scheme: you find a word that has the right combination of L (left) and R (right) in it, with other letters representing streets you ride past. So "Rattle" means turn right, then the fourth street on the left. "Lara" is left, then first right. "Rurally"...you get the idea.

As I get close, I find the "Maygar Barracks". It's on the map, but somehow I suspected it was just a historic site. Turns out it's real, but...shabby? I'm a little bit disappointed there's no security at the front gate. They just expect people to read a sign and not venture further in. Which, alas, dear readers, is what I do. So I don't get to visit the (sigh) Immigritation Detention Centre further up the same road.

Instead, I find a secret (well, missing from OpenStreetMap) path into the vast Northcorp Industry Park. Unexpectedly there is a cute little dam with cute little jetties around it.

I'm riding around this when I notice I am being very slowly tailgated by a large truck. It's weird. The road is very weird, and there's no other traffic. There's no reason for it not to pass. Eventually it passes. The reason is: the truck belongs to a company that teaches people how to drive trucks. It's a learner.

I make my way through the gleaming new warehouses and incongruous new landscaping, waiting to see what's at the geohash. Best case scenario would be a carpark, or some grassy area next to a new building. If it's still undeveloped there'll probably be a serious fence around it.

The answer is immediately obvious: it's a giant warehouse, the biggest in the whole park. The centrepiece, if you will. I go through motions of getting as close as possible, but snuggled up against a Very Serious Fence with a keypad, I'm still over 50 metres away. The point is inside the warehouse, proper.

And thus ends an incredible streak of 75 successes in a row, spanning 2 and a half years. My last failure was in January 2023, when trampling a farmer's field in Wanaka, New Zealand didn't seem like a good idea.

So I ride around and collect a few more squadratinhos, making a random worker at a smallgoods (salami) factory wary enough to ask me "All good?" Sorry, guy.

I also stop and take a look at the greyhound racing track at the entrance to the park. Signs for a sportsbetting company say to "gamble responsibly", somewhat of an oxymoron for greyhound racing.

My journey home is another long meandering affair. I witness strangely topiaried silver birches. A tram that is part of an arts community thing. I am chased by a Scottish terrier.

And I unwittingly connect my backyardinho to my yardinho, expanding it by more than a hundred squadratinhos, and gaining a few hundred places in the global rankings.