Reef Island Too Traditional Cache
Gonefishen07: Time for this to go as I dont have time to fix it.
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Reef Island is tidal, so time your visit around low tide.
BEWARE – at least one person has drowned attempting to cross the causeway after it had been inundated by the in-coming tide.
A funny thing happened on the way to listing this cache …
We first had the idea of hiding a cache here about a year ago, but synchronising tidal time & range with shift rosters, school holidays and family commitments isn’t an easy thing. Finally all the variables were aligned and we had our chance, after the Cape Paterson New Year's party. We were triumphantly heading back to the carpark when we encountered a couple of cachers who were racing for a FTF on a cache here which had been published only a couple of hours earlier! We returned with them for the search, relieved to discover that the spot we’d chosen was sufficiently far away.
It’s a bit of a hike, so here’s some information for you to ponder on the way.
Western Port (sometimes called "Western Port Bay") is the second largest bay in Victoria. It is an old river drainage system which was inundated by the rising sea in the Holocene period. Now covering nearly 700km², over a third of it consists of mud flats which are exposed at low tide.
Western Port provides a range of habitat types including underwater seagrass beds, intertidal rock platforms, sandy beaches, intertidal mudflats, tidal channels, saltmarshes and mangroves. It is listed under the Ramsar Convention for its wetlands migratory water bird habitat. Western Port is criss-crossed by seven fault lines and experiences numerous minor earthquakes every year.
Reef Island is the 10th largest of nearly 20 diverse islands in Western Port. It is an important high tide roost for waterbirds including the Red-necked Stint, Curlew Sandpiper, Red-capped Plover, Ruddy Turnstone and Double-banded Plover. The Orange-bellied Parrot has been observed in the saltmarshes opposite Reef Island.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
pnvea haqre fnygohfu