2014-08-19 -12 130

Location

Next to a sedimentation pond at the Darwin Sewage Treatment Plant.

Participants

Felix Dance

Expedition

Every day I check the geohashes and every day they're way off in some croc-infested swamp, 100's of kms from the nearest road, or out to sea, or deep in some 4WDy National Park. But today the hash was just out of town, near my friend Kirstyn's place, next to the Darwin Sewage Treatment Plant.

So after work I chaperoned Kirstyn and her bike to her place in Alawa and then headed off into the void. My first impediment was a spiked gate advertising the danger of recent crocodile activity in the area, which proved to be not particularly impenetrable. There was a security guardhouse just outside this gate, and I could see a light on inside and someone's computer screen illuminated, but after ditching my bike, scaling the fence and leaping inside the perimeter of the treatment plant without limiting my audibility I concluded that either no one was there or they weren't paying attention.

Stopping briefly to phone chat with an old friend in Melbourne named Deon I continued on foot the 850m towards the hash. The smell of the vast sediment ponds swirling with effluent was not as overpowering as I'd imagined. Black kites circled and dived overhead, no doubt feeding off insects and lizards swimming in the poo.

Suddenly I was within 10m of the hash, right up against a barbed wire fence. It took me another 15 minutes or so to find an opening under the fence back along my path. I crawled through, getting eaten to the bone by mozzies in the process, and hurried over under the glow of my bike light to the hash point. I quickly arrived there - it was just under the bund wall in amongst some muddy mangroves. I did the geohashing dance to get the right coordinates, took some photos, and skedaddled. Hungry Jacks fed me on my way out.

I rode 31kms and reached the hash at 9:45pm.

Here is the route of my trip.