Often in rural areas where it is not really economical for the postie to drive down every road you can see a small collection of mail boxes at the end of small roads on a main road or sometimes just where its safe for the postie to pull off the road and not be cleaned up in the process. This cache is dedicated to the owner of one of these rural mail boxes and gives a bit of a quick history of how his family came be living in this beautiful area.
It is not uncommon to see tourists pulled up on the side of the road here on a clear day taking pictures of this string of mail boxes with the open paddock of to the left and the huge pine tree behind which could tell a decent yarn of its own, if only it had a means of communicating it to us. As you see this is also a school bus stop which is pretty busy on school days around 8:30am and again at 3:45pm in the afternoon when the school bus stops here, if you are caching on a school day please be careful of being muggled, although half the kids who use this stop are pretty active cachers in their own right so they will probably help you out.
Now on with the story.
The O’Cacher family emigrated from the old country during the Gold Rush hoping to dig up their fortune. After disembarking from the ship at Geelong and making their way to the Ballarat Goldfields where they took to this mining caper with a vengeance. While they were passionate it can be said they were fairly unsuccessful miners and were involved in the excavation of some really deep holes. Unfortunatley the total lack of any gold prevented them being called mines.
The bitter experience of a years digging for nothing other than the production of several world class callouses led them to the conclusion they needed to find another get rich quick scheme. Predating the advent of reality tv shows like Masterchef by about 160 years forced them to invest the remaining capital in a card game at the now infamous gambling den run after hours at the crown warehouse.
The tale of the night the O’Cacher brothers won a majority share in a hat company supplying headwear to the gentlemen of the diggings has become something of legend. A hat company being slowly run into the ground by a couple of severely calloused miners is not the most profitable or sale-able business on a goldfield and it took some time to find a buyer with any qualifications let alone money. The brothers eventually used the proceeds of this sale to buy a property near where you are standing right now.
The O’Cachers used this new beginning to turn the newly acquired digging skills into a living and became spud farmers. As the family grew they were forced to diversify the empire and some of the sons moved into logging and milling the huge forest to the east of the family farm. As with most large farming family’s after a couple of generations in the area they had some minor roads named after them and had married into the other farming families of the district, all the while becoming presidents and treasurers of various sporting groups and even a volunteer emergency service or two. However the O’Cachers of Wheatsheaf were blessed with an entire generation of daughters and this once proud name all but disappeared . Gary O’cacher is the last of the line to bear the proud name.
The family farm and saw mills have long since either been sold or closed down when the small scale of the operations became unprofitable and the trees had all been cut down, Gary has managed to retain a small chunk of the land his proud ancestors cleared with not much more than a pick and shovel combined with the raw power of a bushy mustache topped off with a really cute waistcoat. The trees may have grown back but Gary has neither a bushy mustache nor a really cute waistcoat but he does have a couple of cozy cottages rented out as air BnBs.
Gary’s Box is a standard sized cache filled with swaps and a log, there is a pen but who trusts that it hasn’t been nicked or even works so best to bring your own. The hide should be pretty obvious to anyone who pulls up here looking for a cache. Please don’t mess with the other letterboxes as they unlike Gary’s box are legitimate letter boxes. If you open the box and find bills you are probably in the wrong one.
In all seriousness be careful of the road here its a 100kmh zone and cars appear around the bend on one side or over the hill on the other travelling very fast. There is good parking next to the bus shelter or just around the corner in Griffiths lane.
The combination to the padlock is all in the name.