Rocky Creek Multi-Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Located at Rocky Creek War Memorial Park. Minimal walking, short drive, and quite a bit of thinking required.
During WW2, the Atherton Tablelands was Australia’s frontline for jungle training for troops going to New Guinea, and for hospital treatment for troops coming the other direction.
The waypoint takes you to the main plaque at the Rocky Creek War Memorial Park.
Below the main plaque are a series of plaques dedicated to various army units.
You will need to visit these plaques in order to get the 22 characters necessary to decipher the final coordinates:
VS4º5V.9V9’ H4VYº7Y.U81’ D9GX3
The selected plaques have one thing in common – the bloodiest battle in New Guinea during WW2 (see diggerhistory website by clicking 'users website' link above). This battle was not the famous Australian fighting retreat across the Kokoda trail, nor the first defeat of a Japanese landing in the Pacific War at Milne Bay at the eastern tip of New Guinea. This was the bloody battle that defeated the heavily dug-in Japanese from the Gona-Buna-Sanananda beachheads on the eastern coast of New Guinea, and was the first real battle defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific War. The battle would likely not have been so bloody, however, if the American general Douglas Macarthur had been a little less obsessed with instant results and a little more aware of the battlefield conditions. Macarthur’s global impatience and local ignorance led to a succession of frontal assaults by Australians into Japanese machinegun fire, when a couple of day’s reconnaisance in the end, which was requested by the Aussies at the start, found a way in behind the Japanese at Gona. But not before many Australians lost their lives in the most tragic of circumstances.
The first step in solving the puzzle is to find the following plaques and record their row numbers (eg. A3, C10, A14):
A. The plaque dedicated to the 154 Australian soldiers from the 2/12 Battalion who gave their lives at Gona, Buna and Sanananda.
B. 10th Australian Field Company RAE 2nd AIF, which built the hospital and army camp at Rocky Creek and then went on to active service in New Guinea, including Buna.
C. 49th Australian Infantry Battalion
D. 39th Australian Infantry Battalion
E. 21st Australian Infantry Brigade 2nd AIF
F. 2/1st Australian Infantry Battalion
G. 14/32nd Australian Infantry Battalion
H. 2/9th Australian Infantry Battalion
Write the plaque numbers in the order of ABCDEFGHA. You should now have a string of 22 letters and digits lined up which will make no sense at all. This string is in fact your key to break the code. By creating a Vigenere Cypher from a-z and 0-9 (a 36 x 36 character matrix), you will be able now to decipher the final coordinates.
The final cache site is at a tangible though humble reminder of the role of Rocky Creek in supporting the New Guinea campaign.
The cache is a 900ml black-painted snap-lock container. 1 Kina Toy Soldier TB was only content when placed, though there is space for small swaps.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
[1:] orgjrra przrag naq oevpx
[2:] qba’g sbetrg gb punatr n frggvat ba lbhe TCF