Letterboxing

I'm a letterboxer with a collection of 6000+ to date, mostly from Dartmoor UK. I have Googled all information available concerning letterboxes in New Zealand, but there seems to have been little activity over the last few years.
I will be in NZ from mid January until mid April and would love to add a few Kiwi boxes to my collection.
Is there anyone out there with updated information?
Note: I mean real letterboxing, not geocaching.

Thanks in advance.....

6000 letterboxes - where do you store them all - in a hangar?

Maybe Aphro engages in fisticuffs with letters.

I had to look this up - the reference to geocaching convinced me it was not just stealing people's letterboxes, or knocking them to the ground (which is what happens here) or stuffing people into letter boxes or doing the trainspotter thing and taking a photo. It is a regular activity, one I have never heard of, and I suspect few Kiwi's have, well described here.

I'm more perplexed now mysh - how does that differ from geocaching?

Cool hey!, been going since 1854 too, a whole new life of travelling possibilities
Good site myshkin but haven't read much past the intro.

#OP, so do they have like Letterbox conventions or Gymkhanas and that sort of stuff, maybe nudist colony boxes for nudists, and is there a rating system to give you more kudos for finding the more difficult ones, like say on the side of a mountain or for sailors, on some more remote islands?

Sounds like fun actually, and maybe even potential to have a cyber version - bury a box in a thread and have a register and clues branch, hmmm, PM to Andreas on way.

ATTTS.

Geocaching uses GPS, letterboxing doesnt as far as I can see.
Looks fun, but I cant find any reference to it happening in Australia (try 'letterboxing Australia' in google and you get some nice addresses of letterbox manufacturers....)

Googliing in NZ doesn't even do that - you come up with a site for signs to avoid junk mail in your letterbox (not even what we call our mailbox anyway, as a rule) and a few sites about aspect ratios and the like for TV's.

<blockquote>Quote<br><hr>a collection of 6000+ to date, mostly from Dartmoor<hr></blockquote>Maybe it's a prison thing.

They've been digging up parts of Pentridge lately so you could head on over and get a head start Ian.

BTW, for Cyberboxing Andreas says look out for TT4 and I thought if we need something like a registrations/clues branch, there's only one Aapt title for it, and you guessed right>>>> next entry if you didn't get the clue, but what else could it be, but >>>>>>>>>>>>>

SSammmi's Mailbag

See #6, and stop the drivel.

At the risk of attracting ian's ire, what is the difference between #11's drivel and Daycat's? I find daycat's TT habits far worse.

Anyway, back to the OP. I'd never heard of letterboxing like the rest of you, but it sounds wonderfully eccentric, and just like something the poms would invent. A shame it doesn't happen here, although with the size of Australia, you'd be unlikely to get many stamps in some logs!

er....ATTTS??

Daycat is less incoherent by far, he doesn't hold grudges against or attack other regular posters, he admits when he is wrong, and accepts corrections graciously, he doesn't insist on the last word, he doesn't make snide attacks on the OP, and he does have a sense of humour. I trust that is enough difference to make a difference, W3. No ire here either, just a white blood cell trying to doing its work.

Hey OP here is a link to letterboxing in NZ and also one site in Australia!

Gosh! How exciting!

Here in Tasmania we have moved with the times and embraced a slightly more hands on and varied approach to Letterboxing. It's called - Dunnyboxing. Scattered around the state in national parks and other sundry scenic pitstops are designated Dunnyboxing muckhuts. The idea is to park a grogan in as many of these colonic citadels as possible during your stay. And the bonus is that there isn't the fuss and bother of getting a stamp as all the bog rolls have their own unique motif printed on them. Just tear off a sheet and whack it into the Dunnyboxing album available from all BP service stations. Ask for it by name.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>Daycat is less incoherent<hr></blockquote>

I have to disagree, but that's only my opinion, of course.

And while we're on irritating habits ... oh, no, forget it. I'll go back to my burrow.

Bazza could set up a letterbox trail and make lots of contacts.

To be honest I have never heard of it before today.

You're not alone there nqapali, and yes with a commercial twist we could have Bazza employed but he would be wanting his Plumbers $70/h rate.

Thankyou all for your interest!
To clarify: letterboxing did indeed start in England in the nineteenth century at Cranmere Pool on Dartmoor.
The activity only began to proliferate in the 1970's and until quite recently was confined to Dartmoor, although a few boxes were sited on the Falkland Islands.
Letterboxing in North America started when a couple from Connecticut went on holiday to England and spent the entire time combing the moor for boxes. There are now letterboxes scattered all over the world.
No, you don't use a GPS. You locate the boxes using your brains, a compass and a map. Many clues are based on triangular bearings, but many others are cryptic and require detailed knowledge of the area.
In England boxes are not sited near roads and rarely near trails. The original Cranmere box is 7 miles from the nearest road and reaching it involves a lot of climbing, bashing through heather and bog hopping.
And yes, most of my boxes were collected on mountain sides or tops.

Boxing is great fun and highly addictive. It's something that appeals to people of all ages. It's something families can enjoy together. It's a great way to get exercise. You get to visit areas of outstanding natural beauty where you may otherwise never dream of going. It can also be extremely frustrating......

There is a web site for New Zealand. I just posted my question in the vague hope that there might be a letterboxer among you Thorntrees.
Google letterboxing+New Zealand.

I wish I'd seen this thread earlier - it would have been far more interesting than the day I've had...

Um, not sure how far from Dartmoor it's travelled - certainly hasn't made it to Yorkshire. Coming from a mining village as I do, if someone at school had mentioned letterboxing as a hobby they wouldn't have even got to the stage of describing it. It also has some strange sexual connotation - or is that just me??!?

I guess it's just another name for orienteering, with a twist. Well done for making the top thread though.

I don't reckon it'd work too well in Oz. Few reasons.

1. There are no 'rights of way', so you can't walk across farmland....walking is pretty much done on tracks, even if some of them are quite remote.
2. You can't drop plastic boxes in National Parks and expect them to stay there.
3. Families aren't going to be 'bush bashing' - Australian bush is pretty dense and the National Parks don't generally have farms and settlements in them like Dartmoor does (UK Nat Pks are very different beasts to Australian)
4. Vandalism would see most of them disappear.

However, bog roll collection does have a certain je ne sais quo about it....but Drover more often than not in the more remote muck huts its BYO gum leaf, or cafe serviette, no?

PS Say "letterboxing' to an Aussie and they'll think you have a paid job stuffing junk mail in people's letter boxes, or an enthusiastic political partisan during election time.

Yes, I had been wondering on the vandalism impact and so
# Aphrodite - is that a big issue with letterboxing in the UK or USA that you know of.

#23 ryb - there is a lot of farmland that does have ROWs, not all fenced off though and then you have the long paddock in more remote places and plenty of state forests with trails.
So we would have limitations but there is always ingenuity.

Not very appealing prospect to me; has more of the sense of a 1960s style "car tial" than a ramble across gentle countryside. Or even bog-hopping on Dartmoor (different bogs, Drover)
Most farmland in Australia is fenced and gated. And you don't hop across styles and tromp across neatly ploughed fields (carfully avoiding actual crops) without thoughts of encountering Farmer Bruce with a shoddie.
Where the hell are the farmland Rights of Way in farming Australia, pray tell?

I must disagree with ryb(23) -
- so long as you are discreet you can wander over many farms here, especially if the paddocks are several square ks and the farmhouse is 10km away! (besides there are lots of out of the way places in forests, roadsides etc to drop letterboxes)
- so long as a letterbox is well hidden (as the ones overseas are) I'd bet it would stay indefinitely in any NP or state forest (until the next bushfire, anyway)
- 'bushbashing' - every week hundreds of people all over Australia go orienteering and rogaining in bush areas in every state..
-'vandalism' - do we have more than Europe or the US? they don't seem to have a problem. A letterbox is a pretty insignificant feature...

It's a 'sport' that seems to be ideal for Australia IMO - I can't believe it hasn't taken off more (would be ideal on a mountain bike..)

ROW register re national parks - first link checked and <blockquote>Quote
<hr>there is a lot of farmland that does have ROWs, not all fenced off though <hr></blockquote> though they are not all physically delineated, lands departments and councils will have similar registrations/info to that in the national parks link.

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>so long as you are discreet you can wander over many farms here<hr></blockquote> Fences are not only for keeping livestock in but also for keeping the public out. Cockies take a dim view of trespassers disturbing both their cows and canola.

sammmmi - that's NPWS rights of way. I'm talking about across privately owned farmland, as in the UK.

retsbew - well, getting ONTO the farmland often involves negotiating an electric fence. :-)

Noone has yet provided me with a list of rights of way - what you describe sounds like "discreet trespassing" to me! As to rogaining, did you mean rogering? Another new term along with rogering!

Orienteering? Mountain biking? Bush bashing? Yuck. What about gentle rambling??? Pub to pub, village to village walks? LOL.

Rogaining - a great sport, and an Australian invention!

Sounds like you need to get out a little more, ryb!

There is some vandalism on Dartmoor, but this is generally confined to boxes that are sited within half a mile of a road. You have to be a pretty determined vandal to walk 10 miles over rugged terrain to destroy or steal a little plastic box.
Letterboxes are not just dropped in a National Park. They are extremely well hidden, and the clues are never easy. On Dartmoor now, lots of aficionados are using larger screw top pill containers begged from pharmacies. Roll up a little visitors' book, stuff the stamp down the middle and bury the thing in a six foot high peat bank. Unlikely to be found easily, let alone vandalised.
And ginner, there are boxes in North Yorkshire, and Cumbria, and the Lake District and Cornwall, just to name a few areas....

<blockquote>Quote
<hr>On Dartmoor now, lots of aficionados are using larger screw top pill containers begged from pharmacies.<hr></blockquote> I'm beginning to visualise some great steps forward in therapuetical treatments and lowering of health costs here.
We've employed or deployed Bazza above and now his charter is being extended to include a regular halfway house and rehab centres run to show off all these pill containers and what brightly coloured contents they will have, the orange one being the biggie bonus!, and only so many of them, and of course to hand out the clue sheets.

By the time the competitors/combatants have been scouring the locales, worked through the clues and all, they will have become more mentally alert, super fit, and perhaps just become addicted to the chocolate centres of Smarties and addicted for sure if thay found the Jaffas.

Thanks Aphrodite (BTW ignore sammmi's drivel...).
Sounds a great sport - as a one-time orienteer and regular rogainer, I'm going to sign up and put a few around here!

Good for you retsbew, and may even get around to doing something myself, and do lighten up, a little humour never hurts anyone.

Big drivel and little humour.<BR>

#32 Aphrodite - are stalkers an issue with letterboxing?, creeping about behind you to see what you're on to?, so as they can attempt getting an upper hand.
It does seem to be a prevalent trait, and worse still they are more than likely some sort of weirdo.

37 - takes one to know one....

Thanks retsbew and the others who took my simple little question seriously, even though they've never heard of letterboxing before.
I think it's appropriate to mention that I got my first 100 boxes on Dartmoor in the winter of 1983-1984. The weather was hellish. For three months the wind howled, the fog made bearings impossible, the cold was excruciating and some boxes had to be dug up from under the snow. I helped to push two dead sheep off boxes that year. There were no published clues at that time. You simply went from box to box, picking up clues to new boxes from the back of the visitors' book in the box you had found.
That's when I got hooked.
And once hooked, it's always there.
I left England in 1999 with my entire letterbox collection stored in 58 stamp journals with indices, 7 shoeboxes full of stamps on postcards, 5 big albums full of prints of special hand-carved stamps and a sad heart.
Now, although I live on a weird island on the West coast of Canada, I am trying to return to letterboxing, both here and away.

Sounds fascinating - you didnt hear the Hound of the Baskervilles howling in the distance?

I'm going to put out my first box tomorrow - registered with lbNA and in the Yahoo group but couldnt get through to Atlas Quest - should I do both?

A great extension to orienteering and rogaining!

maybe PM me if you're in my area (NE Vic)

Thanks Aphrodite (BTW ignore sammmi's drivel...).<blockquote>Quote<br><hr>Now, although I live on a weird island on the West coast of Canada,<hr></blockquote>Tell us more - I've only been to Vancouver Island - quaint and sort of 19thC, but didn't strike me as 'weird'!

Cant some of you answer a post without bringing personal agendas into it?? Seems not.