Leura Old-Fashioned Purple Welcome Traditional Cache
Leura Old-Fashioned Purple Welcome
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Leura is the unofficial 'Garden Village' of the Blue Mountains, and each year welcomes many thousands of visitors from all over the world. The well-known web site www.australiantraveller.com rated Leura 28th in its 2009 list of '100 Best Towns in Australia' -- which was quite an honour! So I thought that my adopted home town deserved a geocache right at the very entrance (the first exit), one that would welcome world-wide cachers to town.
But I didn't want to make the cache too easy . . . After all, we want our beautiful Leura to be memorable! Some people think that the name 'Leura' means 'flower.' Others contend that it was originally a women's healing site, or part of special 'women's business' and that the name reflects this underlying spiritual nature of the site. On the other hand, a recent Blue Mountains tourist brochure states definitively that "the name Leura itself is Aboriginal for 'lava,' such as is emitted from a volcano. Many volcanic stones have been found in the Leura area." Your GPSr will show you the likely bushy area, and it's not far from several convenient parking places. Do not under any circumstances park on the Great Western Highway! If you park on Scott Avenue, pull right off the road, as far as possible. The curb is rounded here, so you can drive right up on the grass quite easily. That's what I do, when I do cache maintenance. From there it's about 75 metres to the turn off down to GZ. Watch your step on the steep slope, especially if you try to locate this one after dark. This is the reason for the 2.5 terrain rating. But it really shouldn't be too difficult in the daylight, when you can see where you're going. No need to bush-bash. There's a nice, clear slope down to GZ if you're patient. And there are some sharp blackberry bushes around. Beware. (I tried to remove those right near the geocache.) However, you will not need to worry about volcanoes. :)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Checyr cbfgf . . . Fgneg qbja fybcr sebz 'arj' fvta.