Difficulty and Terrain Ratings:

The Difficulty and Terrain (D/T) ratings often cause confusion for hiders. There is some guidance which covers common cases found here in the Help Centre. We provide further guidance here to help in some areas not addressed therein. The Australian Reviewers offer this guidance to try to get uniformity across the country. The actual values are chosen by the Cache Owner but they should provide a fair indication of the effort required to log a find.

DIFFICULTY (D rating)    

This represents the effort to determine the coordinates (Mystery/Multicache), and once at the cache location, to finally access the cache once you’ve stopped moving (open it, find log, replace), solve field puzzle, manipulation with string, poles, and/or magnets.

TERRAIN (T rating)

This represents the physical effort to get to where you stop using to grab the geocache container and extract the log. Walking, hiking, swimming, and climbing.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

These are things requiring training to use, safety equipment such as helmets or life jackets, and are not part of the caching tool kit you can carry easily, or the tool kit the average geocacher would carry most of the time. Boats, large ladders, and rope climbing or abseiling equipment are examples. For example, a technical tree climb requiring ropes etc. would be a T5. But a free climb without the need for special equipment would be 4.5 or lower (often much lower). Once you’re up there if it’s hard to open or find the cache then that would be reflected in the D rating. A pole cache (tree fishing) on the other hand, would be generally be low Terrain in most cases if it’s easy to get to the position you need to be at, but higher Difficulty to reflect a tricky manipulation.

Caches are not typically published on any of the following:

• Power Poles, Transmission Lines and Power Boxes  - or in the vicinity of live overhead power lines.

• Airport property, Fence lines or adjacent surrounds

• Military bases, Fence lines or adjacent surrounds

• Motorway verges, Roundabouts, Traffic Islands and Median Strips

• Schools, Kindergartens, Child Care Centres and the like.

• Post boxes, Stamp Vending Machines or other Australia Post property. See The Crimes Act.

Fastening of Caches:

• No screws, nails or other fastening devices into trees. If a cache is to be secured to a tree to prevent muggling use a strap or wire that is significantly larger than the tree and can expand as the tree grows.

Regional differences to Global Policies:

• Railways - Caches can be placed close to railway lines if they are fenced or outside the easement/corridor - generally 25m.

• Highway Bridges - Caches are typically allowed under bridges so long as their placement will not cause alarm.

Event Stacking Guidelines

The Event Stacking guidelines say that events intended for the same people, a sequence of events or near the same time or location should be a single event. To help clarify the "Same Time Or Location" We have built the following guidance.

Note: Event hosts are still expected to demonstrate that their event meets all other parts of the event stacking guidelines. The guidance above is specifically for the Same Time or Location point only.

Checking Locations and Work in Progress Geocaches

 We understand that many geocachers may need a little while to fully develop a geocache and not want to go to a large effort to design and build a cache and listing only to find someone has beaten them to the location. To assist with this process we offer a checking process.

 Location Check

Create a listing and submit it with the cache name and reviewer notes clearly showing "DO NOT PUBLISH - CHECKING LOCATION" or similar. Make sure you include all physical waypoints for this cache in the listing. Your reviewer will then check the location for you and disable the listing for you to work on or find a different location. 

If you feel you know where all the local geocaches are then please feel free to continue without submitting the geocache for checking but create the listing, please understand that there may be an unpublished geocache in the area that may block your cache from being published. If you have doubts, it would be wise to submit a Location Check.

 Work in Progress Caches

Where an unpublished geocache is found during review that would cause a proximity issue,  the reviewer will check the other listing to confirm that it is being actively worked on. Some of the things we consider are, is the other listing older, is the listing being actively worked on, has the geocache owner posted notes to the cache recently to give updates as to their progress, could the other listing be published, etc.

If the other listing doesn't meet these checks then the geocache being submitted will likely be published without warning to the other geocache.

IF YOU ARE NOT SURE REGARDING THE ABOVE, NEED CLARIFICATION, OR BELIEVE YOU HAVE AN EXCEPTION, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL REVIEWER BY EMAIL - see top RH corner of this page for Australian Reviewers.