2024-03-12 -37 144

Location

In a garden bed in Royal Botanic Gardens, just outside Melbourne's CBD.

Participants

Expedition 1 (11:30am):

John

Expedition 2 (12:15pm):

Stevage
KT

Expedition 3 (4:05pm):

Felix
Gretel

Expedition 4 (5:45pm):

Wizdude

Expedition 5 (6:15pm):

Pwc

Expedition 6 (7:12pm):

BarbaraTables

Expeditions

Expedition 1 (John)

I woke up, I saw that the hash was excellent. After a bit of morning faff, I headed in to uni, except I decided to go to the hash on my way. Except it wasn't really on my way. I went out of my way. I got quite close to uni (Courtney st), before plunging southwards across the CBD and beyond.

I reached the gate to the gardens, and dismounted, walking my bike alongside. I passed a magpie looking magnificent perched upon the stump of a mighty oak that made headlines when it came down in a storm few years ago.

I followed the path, and soon my phone told me that the hash was just a few metres off the path to my right. I duly went a few metres in that direction, but my GPS dot didn't budge. The heavily overcast skies combined with the tree I was going under seemed to pose a challenge for accurate navigation. I returned to the path to try approaching for a slightly different angle. But now it told me I was there while I was still on the path. I didn't believe this. The satellite image had it in the garden. I went back in again the same way I had already tried and this time I got it to say I was at the hash. I took a pic in amongst the flowers that had the painful sounding name of cockspur.

I then continued on my way, got out of the gardens, remounted my bike and headed north to uni.

Magpie
Success
Cockspurs

Expedition 2 (Steve and KT)

I definitely couldn't turn down a geohash in one of my favourite places, the Botanic Gardens, a pretty amazing wonderland of plants great and small. The weather had dropped about 600 degrees from the sweltering weekend, although it was traded for a very sticky humidity.

KT was on a train from Ballarat, so I waited a bit to sync up, falling down a weird YouTube hole of blackjack card-counting videos. Eventually I launched and steamrolled the direct route south into the city. A slight strategic error to ride through Birrarung Marr, the rather pleasant banks of the Yarra River, which was undergoing a massive Moomba (festival) hangover. I dodged trucks and carnival rides for a bit until I made it up to St Kilda Road, which was surprisingly peaceful.

KT duly emerged from a tram, disguised as a train driver. She suggested cutting across and up the grassy slope, I suggested continuing to the footpath marked on the map, she pointed out that it was actually steps, I didn't listen, and was surprised to discover that it was actually steps, whereupon we decided that walking up the grassy slope was a great idea after all.

I locked up my bike at the visitor centre and we strode boldly in, with NaviKT taking charge and leading us to the point. Somewhat anti-climactically the app suddenly told me I had reached the point while we still on the footpath, but I chose to ignore it, so we could experience the illicit thrill of trying to stealthily enter a forbidden garden bed while wearing an eye-searingly bright orange backpack. It was worth it.

We strode back out, collected my bike, and bid each other a fond farewell.

Then I attempted an overambitious manoeuver in which I tried to reposition the pannier that was slung around my neck back onto the rear rack while cycling in a bike lane and cocked it up completely, leaving the pannier in the path and me looking like a dill. No one seemed to notice, or at least they were too polite to say anything.

Moments later I arrived at Flinders Street Station, and ordered a piece of pizza, whereupon surprise KT arrived again upon the scene. I filled her in on all the drama she had missed in the 4 minutes since we had last seen each other, then we went through the whole fond farewell process again. We must have done it better this time, because, at the time of this writing, I haven't seen her since.

Photos

Expedition 3

I'd neglected to check the geohashes today. Probably because it was just after a public holiday and I'd assumed that I'd already looked and they were rubbish. But no - Labour Day is a Victorian public holiday only: Americans were at work and opening their stock exchanges just like normal.

Seeing as the hash was in the Royal Melbourne Botanical Gardens there was no way I was going to miss this one. It's one of the great Melbourne locations. Initially, I thought I could ride down while my daughter's Nan was looking after her in the morning. But then I realised that it would be way better to take her with me (the daughter, not the Nan). Even better, there was a very convenient tram that went directly from near our place to right on the hash-side of the Gardens. Perfect!

I woke up Gretel from her second nap slightly early in order to catch the wheelchair-accessible tram going past (although, without wheelchair-accessible stops, this is still a challenge). I had to run for the tram but it was late for its TramTracker time anyway, getting me all sweaty in the humid air for nothing.

And we were away! The tram was quite empty. That is, until we went past my old school, Uni High, and then it became briefly packed with tiny high school students until they all got off at the Flagstaff Station stop. A couple of non-high school people made little interactions with Gretel that she greatly enjoyed. She loves attention.

I half-heartedly fed her afternoon tea on the tram - some dal curry, a squeeze packet and a sliced cucumber, among other things. She made a bit of a mess and when it was time to get off I realised from the platform that she'd thrown her cucumber on the floor. I was about to go and get it but realised I'd be holding the tram up, so I waved the driver on.

We walked around the annoying Melbourne Metro works that had taken up a few local roads. I had to walk the pram along the tram tracks for a bit to avoid crossing three roads in quick succession. And then I realised I was going the wrong way by Google Maps. Oh well.

In a few minutes we were through Alexandra Gardens and into the Bot proper. I remember going there as a kid a lot - such beautiful and varied gardens! Sadly, I haven't been back much since I've been living on the non-Botanical Gardens side of town.

In absolutely no time we were at the hash. Like Stevage before us, my GPS put me sub-1m on the app before I'd left the path, but I dutifully bashed around in the garden bed until I felt like I was really there and had the GPS recalibrate itself. Gretel enjoyed the experience and didn't seem to mind we had branches all up in our business. It was 4:05pm.

After hashing, we found a nice spot above the lake to have G dinner. She had some egg and tried to share it with the river birds (not sure what they are) [Ed. Stevage informs me they are Eurasion Moorheads [ [Ed. Ed. John more convincingly informs me that they are in fact Australasian swamphens] ] ]. I shooed them off with a newspaper. I remembered having a picnic at this spot with my extended family about 30 years ago.

I had a specific tram I was aiming for on the way home, so this time I took the Google Maps route to get there on time. But all the roadworks for Melbourne Metro had me going along a footpath next to Melbourne Grammar for a couple of hundred metres and then terminated it on me. It turned out that this footpath was just for Melbourne Grammar and their gate was locked.

So we missed our tram and had to go all the way around the school. The route forced us to watch Melbourne's snobbiest kids playing cricket in their silly clothes and making dumb little comments to each other.

But we eventually got to the tram stop. We waited 10 minutes for the next tram, then another 4 minutes for an accessible one after that. We got on and sat in the same seat as on the way to the hash, but mapped onto this tram.

But wait! No - it was not just the same seat placement within the tram, but the same seat itself! The tram had reached Toorak in our absence and returned. I knew because right under my foot was the missing slice of cucumber I'd failed to pick up earlier. I put it in a side pocket of the nappy bag to dispose of later.

Gretel had another great time on the tram, exclaiming 'Gah gah gah' to everyone she met. I fed her some more puree and some biscuits. She got wriggly so I took her out of the pram and sat on my knee, where she could see out the windows better.

We got off at our stop and to celebrate I took Gretel to our local swing, which she loved as she always does.

Photos

On the tram
GPS proof
At the hash :)
Picnic dinner in the Bot
Dinnerscape

Expedition 5 (Patrick)

A geohash in the Royal Botanic Gardens, easily accessible from the path? An excellent idea.

Unfortunately, I was too busy: I needed to go to work, do work, then get home strictly by 6.30pm to meet someone for an exchange of furniture. It seemed too tight to squeeze in between work and home, and with the Gardens closing at 7.30pm it didn’t seem feasible to break in afterwards. But... I haven’t done a March hash at all, and it’s almost sorta halfway through the month. And I would feel ridiculous if I failed to hash and this one was available—it’s one thing to have a month of dud luck, but it’s another to fail to hash because of laziness/insufficient commitment.

A plan was formed.

First: a 4pm tactical pint with co-workers. This would have to do for the at-hash beer, and also meant that I could slip out before 5pm.

Second: an adjustment of my ride home so that it passed the vicinity of the Gardens. Thankfully this wasn’t too far off route and, all things considered, has the potential to be much nicer due to significantly fewer roads.

Third: a detour to the Gardens, and then a return to the route, and pushing hard to make it home by 6.30pm. Not ideal (I had a lot of stuff to do) but I would at least make my 6.30pm hard deadline.

There were some issues that arose with this plan. The single tactical pint became a strategic double-pint, delaying departure until after 5pm, right through peak traffic. Despite mocking from co-workers as to my hash plan, I made it, without any difficulties, to the Gardens boundary.

The next problem related to my bike. Technically, according to the so-called “rules”, bicycles are not allowed. I didn’t have a lock with me (too heavy on a work day). However, careful perusal of the RBG website technically only prohibited riding bikes through; there’s nothing about walking one. So I did that.

I soon reached the vicinity of the hashpoint. Careful examination of the area showed evidence of other geohasher activity, meaning I had got to the right place. I awkwardly laid my bike on the pathway, sweating slightly under the gaze of perplexed tourists, and attempted to get to the exact hashpoint, carefully avoiding the embarrassment of trampling an exotic specimen, or worse, trampling a plant capable of defending itself. My phone assisted me by studiously avoiding picking up a GPS signal, but I was eventually able to convince it I was in the zone.

I returned to the path, gave a greasy look to someone who clearly thought I had just undertaken a natural break in the undergrowth, walked back to the perimeter of the Gardens, got on my bike and headed for home. Did I make it back for 6.30pm? Maybe. Maybe I did.