Jenolan Caves

Friday, July 12, 2013

The funny sign

The hotel in the middle
of the mountain.

The road went through
this part of the cave.

The five of us in the first chamber.

The ladder shows on tall
cave was.

The stairs used on
the early tours.

Some of the formations

This shows on steep the
stairs were.

After spending the night in Blackheath, we headed towards Jenolan Caves.  It was a beautiful drive.  We went down into the valley, and then back into the mountains.  At one point, we saw a logged field. The sign in front of it stated it was a state forest and the forest was in good hands.  It was funny.  The last part of the drive was interesting.  The road was really narrow, next to the side of the mountain, and very curvy.  Gabbie could look over the edge on the way down.  I realized how steep it was when I was next to the edge on the way back up.  There was no room for error. When we were closer to the bottom, we came to the cave.  You drove through it to get to the parking lot.  On the other side of the cave, all six of us went "Ohh" because there was a hotel and restaurant.  It looked like a little village.  It was strange to see.  We signed up for the Lucas tour.  There were over a dozen tours to choose from.  The Lucas is the biggest and on of the guides thought it would provide us with the best overall cave tour.  It was really interesting.  We climbed up a lot of stairs to get into the cave.  Then went up and down a few more to get into the cave.  The cave was huge and had lots of formations.  The crystals sparkled.  In one chamber in the cave, they hold concerts and weddings.  She played part of a Metallica song which totally made Adam's day.  The acoustics were great.  We learned that the caves are over 350 million years old and the rocks in the them are over 400 million years old.  These are some of the oldest caves in the world.  She also told us stories of people adventuring into the cave in the early 1900's in their Sunday best.  It was a three day trip round trip.  They had to climb on rock steps, use candles for light, and slide down rock walls on a potato sack where if the guide didn't catch you, you would smash into full stop rock at the end of the slide.  Crazy!  Adam and I both said we had never been in a cave like this one before.  We were really glad we came here.

Dagan thought this looked
like a rhino.

More formations

The formations were
beautiful above them.

Another view of the stairs.

A view of Nettle Cave.

Sydney & Dagan
heading up the
stairs to the top.

Adam & Kristin with
a view of the cave
in the background.

 Once our tour was finished, we wandered through Nettle Cave and Devil's Coach House.  The Nettle Cave was huge.    It really was amazing to see.  The Devil's Coach House had stairs that wound to the top of the cave.  It provided beautiful views.  We were all ready to get back in the car after visiting the caves.  We had gone up and down over 900 steps.  On our way back to Wollongong, we stopped at Govetts Leap and Harry de Wheels hotdog stand.  It was a fun couple of days.

Climbing the stairs
to the Devil's Coach
House.

Adam & Dale

View from Govetts Leap