Totally Findable Tourist Caches
Welcome to Sydney
This series of geocaches is designed primarily with visitors to Sydney in mind who may have limited time and transport options and want a quick and easy find while out enjoying some sightseeing around this beautiful city.
All cache containers will be one of three types; a flat magnetic key case (MKC), a round film canister (FC or MFC for magnetic) or a fake rock (FR).
The hint will indicate the type of container used and will be very specific to help you find the cache easily. If you want a challenge to find this cache and don't wish to know exactly where it's hidden, do not look at the hint.
At each location you’ll be given some information about the site you are visiting.
Enjoy!
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To Find This Cache:
1. Go to the published coordinates and find the information boards on the grey painted wall, approximately 12m to the right of the Shore Studio's 2/3 doorway.
2. Look for a photograph of a tall ship berthed at a dock.
3. This c1873 photograph shows Parbury's Wharf and Bond store looking east with the clipper ship ???? ????? at Parbury's Wharf.
4. Click on the Certitude Icon below and enter the two-word name of the ship as one long string of letters, no spaces, to receive the cache GZ coordinates and hint.
You can validate your puzzle solution with
certitude.
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Crash! Bang! Boom!
Artwork: Still Life with Stone and Car (2004)
Please Note - There is no need to go onto the roundabout to complete this cache.
The published coordinates take you near to a traffic roundabout with an unusual art installation.
A boulder from the New South Wales Central Coast with a painted face, resting on a red 1999 Ford Festiva has now been permanently installed on this roundabout. The artwork was created when the boulder was ceremoniously dropped on the car parked on the Sydney Opera House forecourt, as part of the 2004 Sydney Biennale, an international festival of contemporary art.
Like generations of Sydney couples in search of a used car, Jimmie Durham and wife Maria-Thereza began their trawl along Parramatta Road (a used car sales area in western sydney) with a mental checklist and a budget.
Small sedan - or possibly a hatchback, preferably Australian-made, and definitely red; somewhere between $5000 and $10,000, and capable of supporting a two-tonne stone dropped on its roof. Not even used car salesmen were keen to offer unsolicited advice on this last point, leaving Durham to rely upon his own experience of dropping rocks on cars.
The Arkansas-born and Berlin-based artist was in Sydney to create three major works for the 2004 Biennale art exhibition, among them Still Life with Stone and Car (2004) - a stationery car with a big rock on its roof, seen here.
Durham, a Cherokee active in the American Indian movement of the 1970s, "delivers witty and ironic assaults on the nature of Western culture and colonialism", according to Biennale organisers.
The Biennale spent $7800 buying him a 1999 Ford Festiva hatch. Before the stone was lowered from a crane and hammered into place, Durham painted a face on it. Biennale organisers describe the 64-year-old's work as "often humorous and subversive" and the rock-on-car as "both a performance and an installation".
Artist Jimmie Durham inspecting his work.
Durham put it this way: "Like most of my recent work, this piece is concerned with monuments and monumentality, but also with nature. "In the first instance, I am using the stone as a tool - to change the shape of an object. "But I also, as usual, want to make stone more light, more moveable, even if it is in a fairly horrible way - like a road accident. I do not think the piece is humorous, even though it turns out to be." As to the painted face: "To my way of thinking, if the stone is simply a stone without a face it becomes a gesture, but with the face painted on it, the work develops a strange narrative."
There was a strange narrative on Parramatta Road as Durham and his wife toured of the car yards. The Biennale finance manager, Brian Wilson acted as Durham's guide, telling salespeople he needed a vehicle for an unspecified "artistic performance". "What sort of role does it have to play?" asked the saleswoman at Homebush Auto Wholesalers. "Is it a getaway car? Is it for gangsters? We have a Fairmont, a beautiful Fairmont. It'll be here this afternoon." After several false starts, including spotting a suitable hatchback unsuitably parked on a side street and not for sale, Durham settled on a Ford Festiva during his second visit to the Quality Yard at Homebush. "This is nice," he said to Maria-Thereza as he held his hands apart above the roof. "The stone fits right on top." As for choosing the colour, "Most art should be red, shouldn't it," he said.That approval was enough for Wilson to begin negotiating the $8995 asking price with the manager, Peter Graham, who was not particularly interested in the vehicle's fate. Over recent years Graham had sold a Suzuki to a man who intended driving it into a brick wall, and offloaded another little car bought just to be destroyed. "I can't remember what he did with that one but it was something stupid, too." While Wilson put down a deposit on the $7800 deal, Durham circled the Festiva, still without so much as opening a door. "Maybe I should kick the tyres," he said. "Why do they do that? Why do they kick the tyres?"
Jimmie Durham
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
This geocache was part of GC Project: It's Raining Caches 2025.
The project's aim was to create a rain of new geocaches to fall from the sky across the state of NSW at 9am on 19th January 2025 - 1 week before Sydney Geoquest, the first Block Party in the Southern Hemisphere.
Many legendary hiders came together to generously contribute their finest geocaches to build excitement and connection amongst the community and for all finders to enjoy years after the event.
This geocache helped make it rain.