Tip for young players: don’t place your cache near a building in the city with CCTV cameras.
I’ve just spent 90 minutes with the police explaining geocaching, convincing them it’s not a problem, and viewing CCTV footage to confirm the guy was holding a GPS.
I’ve logged the cache as “Needs Maintenance“.
Update: The New Zealand police have issued a press release:
New Zealand Police Alert 6:00pm 13 Feb 2008 Auckland City
Location of incident: MAYORAL DRIVE, AUCKLAND CITY
Incident type: SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE
At approximately 6pm this evening the Defence Force revealed the suspicious package located in Mayoral Drive was not explosive nor a danger to any member of the public.
All cordons have been lifted from the area and Police and Defence staff have dispersed. The package is believed to be a ‘Geocache’. A ‘Geocache’ is apparently an electronic package used by computer buffs that can be tracked electronically around the world. The computer buffs use them as a form of entertainment.
Issued By: Inspector Gary Hill
The didn’t seem to understand when I explained what a geocache was!
Update 2: And now Stuff.co.nz is saying “Computer game causes Auckland bomb scare“
Update 3: Engadget makes a good point: the actual cache container looks pretty scary. The photo below is from under the handrail that you see behind the police bike in the photo above. The container had a magnet glued to the top, so it could hang there under the hand rail.
Update 4: And here’s me on the radio explaining what was going on.
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I work for Radio New Zealand's Morning Report programme, and we're very interested in talking to you about this cache - both because of your observations of this specific incident, and to discuss geocaching in general - as a relatively unusual sport. If you'd mind emailing me at emily.muller@radionz.co.nz, or calling me on 04 474 1908 I'd really appreciate it.
If anyone is reading this and knows how I can get hold of pivotal - please get in touch with me too!
Cheers,
Emily
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Geocaching is an outdoor treasure-hunting game in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook and "treasure," usually toys or trinkets of little value. Today, well over 480,000 geocaches are registered on various websites devoted to the sport. Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.
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Listened to the radio interview and sounded good :) came across clear and the interviewer, as someone said, was just trying to get an understanding of what the game is :)
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http://www.geocreed.info/#lnt4
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