2012-11-15 -16 145

Thu 15 Nov 2012 in -16,145: -16.9115158, 145.7640643 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

RIGHT in the centre of town, just inside an old band hall.

Who went

• Felix Dance

Expedition

Felix Dance

I and many of my friends, including Stevage had been up in Cairns for a few days to watch the total eclipse there (spoiler: great experience, but the actual eclipse was blocked by cloud). The next day I checked the geohash page for any nearby as I do every day. Usually up here the geohashes have been in the middle of the Daintree Rainforest or out to sea or somewhere crap like that, but when I checked THIS time I found it... 3kms away in the centre of town. Weird.

Conveniently, Stevage had hired a bike which I had inherited after he left to go back to Melbourne. I jumped on this machine after a lazy morning by the pool reading Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, and pretty quickly made my way over to the hash.

Unfortunately, it turned out that I'd left my trusty old GPS back at home, so I had to borrow my dad's phone (he'd been here also for the eclipse) upon which I'd installed the Geohash Droid App.

Arriving at the scene I found it to be an amateur brass band hall, apt since most of my friends here all met in an amateur band group. I got around the back and found myself about 5-6m from the actual hashpoint. I tried to get in from the front but a large dog seemed ill-disposed to the idea, so I jumped over the fence at the back, skulked over the 4-5m to get within a metre or so of the actual hash (come on, good enough), and ran back to take photos.

From here I joined the others at a fish restaurant on the Esplanade before getting thoroughly lost on the way home.

Here is the Google Maps route I took. Note the getting lostness.

Hash reached: 1:45pm

Photos

• 

  GPS proof

• 

  Bike at hash

• 

  Felix at hash

• 

  Squashed Cane Toad

• File:P1070173.JPG

  Yesterday's obscured total eclipse

Achievement

Felix Dance earned the Bicycle geohash achievement by cycling 7.7kms to the (-16, 145) geohash on 2012-11-15.