Home Guard Camp Hidden 366 Challenge (Dndn, Otago) Mystery Cache
Hidden : 1/21/2020
Difficulty:
4.5 out of 5
Terrain:
3.5 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:


This challenge cache is all about hiding!

At the given coordinates you will find a hidden campsite, once used by a Dunedin Home Guard Guide Platoon during World War Two.

To qualify for this challenge you must find a cache hidden each day of the calendar year, all 366 of them.

Check that you qualify for this challenge here: Project-GC Challenge checker.

Your "Finds by hidden date" are displayed on your Project-GC Profile Stats (and there is also a tool to find geocaches for your missing hidden dates): https://project-gc.com/Profile/ProfileStats

To claim this cache as a find, you must both qualify for this challenge AND sign the logbook in the cache. If you sign the logbook before you fulfil the challenge, then log your visit online as a "note". Once you have found a cache placed on each of the 366 calendar days, then log your "find" on the date you completed the challenge.



It's a bit over an hour's walk to where this cache is hidden, and it's a decent climb back up Raingauge Spur. Boots are recommended - the track is steep and rough in places. Take warm and waterproof clothing, map, spare GPS batteries, snacks and a drink. There is no cellphone coverage in the Silverstream valley, so make sure you tell a friend where you are going and when you are expected back. Links to maps and the Silverstream Tracks brochure are at the bottom of the cache page.

Park at the locked gate on Rollinsons Road. Walk half an hour up the road to the "Elbow" and along to the junction with Rollinsons Track. Then walk another 40 minutes down the Raingauge Spur track, through the tussock and scrub and into the bush. This track is lightly marked and can get overgrown at times – if you’re uncertain, stop and check your route. At the Greengage track junction, keep following the Raingauge track down to a bump in the spur. When the track goes over the top of the bump among larger trees, keep a lookout to your left.

It’s invisible as you go past, but there is a flat area only 20 feet off the track. Nothing to see there now (except a black 2 litre screwtop container) … but this hidden spot was a campsite used by the Guide Platoon of the Home Guard Flagstaff Battalion during World War Two.


Somes Platoon of Bush Guides (Wellington Fortress Area) on their first reconnaissance of the upper Orongorongo River 27 Sept 1942
I was told how to find this campsite by the late Arnold Hubbard, who was a high school student during the war years. He was active in the Otago Tramping Club so knew what was going on in these hills and knew some of the men involved.

Like Arnold, the Guide Platoon went out tramping the Dunedin hills every weekend. Apparently, during exercises they remained undetected here, collapsing their tents and keeping quiet until the searchers went past them.



Sounds like fun… but this was deadly serious. If New Zealand had been invaded, these men would have disappeared into hideouts in the bush to harass the enemy with guerrilla raids.

The so-called Guide Platoons were formed in March 1942, when Japanese forces were advancing towards Australasia and had just bombed Darwin. Guide Platoons were administratively part of the Home Guard battalions, but received orders directly from the District Headquarters and their activities were kept totally secret. To account for their time spent in the bush it was given out that they were training to guide troops through difficult country.

By mid-1943, 102 Guide Platoons of about 17 men each had been formed around the country. Fit men with outdoors experience (e.g. farmers, deer cullers, timber workers, trampers) were selected. Because the Guides and their families were not protected under the Geneva Convention, Guides were promised that their families would be evacuated to safe areas in case of invasion.

In the Dunedin Home Guard (Group 11) during 1943 there were two Guide platoons attached to the Mosgiel Battalion, one attached to the Cargill Battalion and one attached to the Flagstaff Battalion.

The Platoons’ tasks were: to familiarise themselves with the country; to secure hideouts and caches for ammunition and supplies; and to be trained in all aspects of raiding and unarmed combat. Each Guide was armed with a rifle (with grenade discharger), Tommy gun or light machine gun, dagger, and explosives.

The hideout huts were stocked with a month’s provisions, radios and morse communications equipment, ammunition and explosives, plus .22 rifles so the platoon could supply themselves with fresh meat. The real hideouts and equipment caches were unused, to keep their locations secret from trampers, and other hideouts were used for training.

Somes Platoon Home Guard hut Gollans Valley, Eastbourne 1943
According to the late Ken Mason (OTMC) the hideout for the Flagstaff Platoon was in very thick bush below Trig Q, almost impossible to find because it was not on a ridgeline and not by a stream. From there, a fit person could walk over Swampy and Flagstaff to Dunedin in only a couple of hours. In the 1950’s tramping club trips would search for the hut and occasionally find it.

I think the Platoon's training hut may have been on McKenzies Creek, near Rollinsons Rd, upstream of the Possum Hunters Track. Arnold and his friends used this hut as a weekend crib during the late 1940’s.

One of the Mosgiel Guide Platoons was led by Ray Tourell (Otago middleweight champion from 1936-1950) who trained them in wrestling and (after Army instruction) unarmed combat. During one war game exercise the platoon infiltrated into the middle of the Taieri Battalion headquarters, placing a few small detonators with short fuses in the cooking stoves. These blew up, announcing the start of the platoon's attack and showering the cooks and H.Q. officers with stew.

Ray Williams, of the Mosgiel Guide Platoon, recounted with a smirk:
We used to go around and raid the odd little places. The signallers had a place at Tirohanga and we went and raided them one night with quarter plugs of jelly [gelignite] and made big bangs and things like that, and woke them up at one o'clock or two o'clock in the morning ... Army signallers, and they reckoned we'd never be able to get up there, but we sneaked past the guard and got there around where the huts were, and a few bangs and disappeared back into the bush. We walked back down the road, away along the hills and we got our transport, got home.

Ray also recalled that his platoon had constructed a well hidden lair up by Lee Stream, containing some spades, tarpaulins and equipment. He tried unsuccessfully to find it after the war and commented that the gear was never picked up by the unit and was probably still there.

Home Guard 1943, Orongorongos, view of Palliser Bay
During WW2, Mrs Daywalk’s father had Hutt Valley Tramping Club friends in the local Guide Platoon. He said his mates thoroughly enjoyed taking their rifles and going hunting in the Orongorongos every weekend…! He had been called up for the army, but classed A3 due to his short sight (fit, but only suited to camp duties). He was given a card saying he was on “permanent leave without pay” from the army. Therefore he was exempt from service in the Home Guard… This led to some friction in the family, because Mrs D’s grandfather still had to join the Home Guard even though he’d served and been wounded in WW1.

Do you have a family story about Home Guard service? We’d love to be told about it in your log.

Thankfully, by early 1943 the Kokoda Trail campaign and the sea battles of Coral Sea and Midway had halted the Japanese advance. All Guide Platoon personnel were demobilised or transferred to other duties in August 1943.

If you continue down Raingauge Spur (the track is very steep at the bottom), you will come out at the top weir on the Silverstream water race, by Walkways of Otago: Racemans Track cache. You could walk out the Racemans track to the Silverstream carpark (if you have left a second car there) or, to make a round trip, walk up North Coal Creek track to Trig Q and back down Rollinsons Road to your car.

Maps:

This interactive map shows you the location of tracks around Dunedin: https://www.dunedin.govt.nz/do-it-online/maps-and-photos/tracks-and-trails-around-dunedin

Topographic map showing the Raingauge Spur track (but not the Greengage track): https://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap?v=2&ll=-45.793083,170.450306&z=14

Silverstream Tracks brochure: https://www.dunedin.govt.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/272052/Silver-Stream-Track-Brochure.pdf

Information from:

• Defending New Zealand: Ramparts on the Sea 1840-1950s Part 2 by Peter Cook, 2000

• The Home Front Volume I by Nancy Taylor. Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945 Historical Publications Branch, 1986, Wellington http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-1Hom-c12.html

• All quiet on the home front? : the impact of the Second World War on the township of Mosgiel
A Manley MA thesis 1999 http://hdl.handle.net/10523/9508

A thesis about the equivalent UK units: The Auxiliary Units: Britain's Last Line of Defense During World War II by Cassy Rice

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Onfr bs gerr. Vs lbh svaq ynjlre, lbh'er ng gur jebat gerr.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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