First New Zealand

The First New Zealand geocache (GC45) was placed on 12 May 2000 beside State Highway 5: a red bucket with a white lid, filled with a few CDs, beer, tools and a Moro chocolate bar. Nine days earlier, Dave Ulmer had hidden the very first bucket in Oregon. Peter McKellar, a GPS enthusiast, took geocaching out of the United States and out of the northern hemisphere.

Geocaching had only just become possible: on 2 May 2000, Washington had switched off the deliberate jamming that degraded the civilian GPS signal, and the news was still circulating only on a Usenet satellite navigation forum. The cache description ended on an invitation that has stayed famous: "Lets get some more stashes going out there..." Chile followed three days later, Australia six.

Nobody ever recorded a find on this listing: the bucket eventually disappeared and McKellar himself removed the last remains. The cache is archived, but a bronze plaque was set in place in 2020 not far from the original site.