The Cache
This cache is a simple multi-cache that initially takes you to a sculpture of an amazing man and then to the actual cache only a short distance away.
The cache is a 200ml Sistema container that has been heavily camouflaged. It contains small swaps a log book, a stash note with the names of the original finders and a pen.
About the man
Sir Hubert Opperman was Australia’s most famous cyclist and in the same league as Sir Donald Bradman capturing the hearts and aspirations of millions of Australians struggling through life in the Depression. A champion racing cyclist, Flight Lieutenant in the R.A.A.F, successful state and federal politician and a diplomat, being Australia’s first High Commissioner to Malta.
“Oppy” won hundreds of track events throughout Australia and England and was voted Europe’s most popular sportsman in 1928. Oppy believed his greatest triumph was the 1928 Bol d’Or 24 hour classic, raced on a 500m velodrome in Paris.
Oppy was ready for his foreign rivals but as he later acknowledged, quite ill prepared for the saboteurs determined to stop the talented young Australian. He had two racing bicycles and the chains on both had been filed down to within a fraction of breaking. He was, for the first hour, effectively out of the race, standing about with nothing to do, while his manager sweated on getting his young star back into the race. In the end Oppy had to make do with a machine borrowed from his interpreter – heavy wheels, mudguards and wrongly upturned handlebars. He rode 17 hours without dismounting, telling his friends afterwards that the puddles on the velodrome boards were not entirely due to his sweat. He won by 30 minutes, crossing the finishing line with 50,000 Frenchmen screaming: “allez Oppy”.
Oppy lived his later years in Wantirna not too far from the co-ordinates given and was regularly seen around the bike paths until his 90th birthday in 1994, when his wife Mavys, fearing for his health, finally forced him off the road. When he died in 1996 of a heart attack, he was riding his exercise bike.
Now for the cache:
1. At the given co-ordinates, there is a tribute plaque with an inscription relating to one of Oppy’s most famous races in Paris.
ABB = the number of yards mentioned in the tribute.
YYY = ABB + 426
CDDE = the year that the sculpture was erected
ZZZ = (CDDE/2) - 6
The plaque has been vandalised and removed, so in the meantime, the information you require is as follows: ABB = 300 & CDDE = 1998
2. The cache is located just a short distance away at:
37° 52.YYY
145° 12.ZZZ