The park has undergone extensive redevelopment, and the monument has been relocated to the RSL grounds at S27 45.994 E153 06.976 and you are welcome to view the cache there.
This is an EarthCache and has special requirements for logging it. You cannot log a Found It without responding to the logging requirements set out below.
Only one find claim per Message. Each Geocacher claiming a find must submit an individual response. One team can not lodge a response on behalf of a group of people.
Hopefully, after visiting this site, you will have an expanded appreciation of the wonders of our natural environment, and recognise that the environment here has a rather rare geological feature.
Monuments, memorials and artworks around the country more often than not are built from Sandstone. Its supply is reasonably plentiful. Other suitable rock-based materials are marble and granite.
Granite is a natural stone that is formed together when its molten substances cool and solidify slowly in the depths of the Earth. Granite for monuments, etc, comes from quarries, which are open-pit mines from which rocks or minerals are extracted. To extract the granite out of the ground, it is quarried into blocks.
Slabs of granite are polished by automated machines that often use either large metal discs or abrasive bricks made of silicon carbide. Polishing the granite produces a gloss finish with almost a mirror-like appearance. The polished slab of granite is then run through a guillotine that splits the slab into the desired size. The rough edges are finished and trimmed by trained craftsmen using traditional hammers and chisels. The monument may now be polished on the edges or left rough, also known as rock pitched, depending on what is required by the particular order.
The Flanders poppy has long been a part of Remembrance Day, the ritual that marks the Armistice of 11 November 1918, and is also increasingly being used as part of Anzac Day observances. During the First World War, red poppies were among the first plants to spring up in the devastated battlefields of northern France and Belgium. In soldiers' folklore, the vivid red of the poppy came from the blood of their comrades soaking the ground. In the literature of the First World War, the symbolism was attached to the poppy – the sacrifice of shed blood.
The Australian Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League (the forerunner to the RSL) first sold poppies for Armistice Day in 1921. For this drive, the league imported one million silk poppies, made in French orphanages. Each poppy was sold for a shilling: five pence was donated to a charity for French children, six pence went to the League's own welfare work, and one penny went to the League's national coffers. Today the RSL continues to sell poppies for Remembrance Day to raise funds for its welfare work.
At the Village Green, there are the usual sandstone slab monuments, but atop the central slab there is a Poppy carved from Granite – but just not any granite.
Let’s explore a little further.
Granite is a special mix of minerals and rocks, primarily quartz, potassium feldspar, mica, amphiboles, and trace other minerals, and these in various combinations give granite the unique colours we can see.
Two examples: an abundance of potassium feldspar turns it a salmon pink colour: quartz and minerals that make up amphibole turn it a black and white speckled granite.
Here are SIX common colouring minerals:
- Quartz - typically milky white colour
- Feldspar - typically off-white colour
- Potassium Feldspar - typically salmon pink colour
- Biotite - typically black or dark brown colour
- Muscovite - typically metallic gold or yellow colour
- Amphibole - typically a dark green colour
The most common colours of granite are pink, white, black, and a black/white speckled.
Red granite is a variation of pink granite, where the potassium feldspar takes on a redder than pinker colour and it could have some colouring from iron oxide in hematite grains (that is, iron oxide with a chemical composition of Fe2O3) - the same materials found in the red bands in sandstone.
So red granite is what makes the Poppy atop the sandstone part of the monument so remarkable.
To claim a smiley on this EarthCache, you are required to respond to the following:
- Using your sense of touch, tell us which parts of the poppy are polished and which are rock-pitched.
- Describe in detail ALL the colours you can see in the poppy - it's more than just the red.
- Based on your answers to the above, which of the SIX minerals listed above are NOT likely to be found in this granite?
- Take of photo of yourself OR your GPS to show a view of GZ. Include it in your message, but please do not post it in your log, it might give too much away.
When you have your response to the above questions, please, if possible, MESSAGE us, using the link at the top of the page underneath the name of the Cache. We prefer the MESSAGE method, as apparently, we don't respond to emails very well, but messages we do. We will contact you by MESSAGE once your MESSAGE has been received. But you can log your find in the meantime, and just say that you have MESSAGED your answers to the COs.
Happy Earthcaching!