On 11 October we struck out west through the
Blue Mountains to the
Jenolan Caves. The Blue Mountains are part of the
Great Dividing Range. The average elevation of Australia is
only 330 meters (1082 feet), and the highest mountain on mainland Australia is
Mount Kosciuszko in southern New South Wales, at 2,228 meters (7,310 feet). Kosciuszko is far south New South Wales, almost on the Victoria border.
On the way up, we stopped at
Katoomba for lunch (meat and custard pies) and a bit of sightseeing. Here are a couple more
links for
Katoomba. We also grabbed some groceries for our stay at the caves.
Sulfur-crested cockatoos at Lilianfels Park in Katoomba, a hundred yards/meters from the overlook at Echo Park. Claude used to have a pet cockatoo.
The Three Sisters from the Katoomba overlook.
Shortly before Hartley the dense bush gave way to grasslands on the tumbling hills, which allowed much better views of the surrounding countryside. Immediately after Hartley, Jenolan Caves Road diverged from the Great Western Highway and headed south and west, mostly keeping to the tops of ridges rather than the bottoms of valleys as is the usual mode. This afforded many wide-open panoramas of this pastoral region, with occasional clumps of cattle, sheep and goats and widely scattered farmhouses. One detail contrasting with similar scenes in the USA was the omnipresent rainwater catchment tanks. That water is used for just about everything but drinking. Also distinct from the American landscape were the ubiquitous water and electric solar panels, which blanket the cities as well.
Nearer to Jenolan, the serpentine road became positively convoluted, and in many areas was only one lane wide as the track hugged the slopes of the ravines. The long open views once again gave way to severely limited glimpses of walls of leaves and rock. Mobile phone service vanished and didn't return for the duration of the stay. Another car appeared behind and followed us for some distance before zooming ahead as I stopped at a pullout to provide passage for a bus coming the other way. Claude had pointed it out to me out a few bends ahead. Sure enough, the backing lights of that impatient auto reappeared shortly, making both of us laugh. Just as I wondered how much further it would be, we rounded a bend and saw what at first I thought to be a tunnel. That turned out not to be the case.
The Grand Arch contains the entrances to several caves as well as the road to the visitor center, Caves House and lodging. Yes, that's a real truck down there, not a toy or model.
The Grand Arch isn't much longer than it is tall, but the path makes a double curve through it and you can't see all the way through. When you come out the other side, you are greeted with the picturesque Caves House, which contains a gift shop, restaurant, cafe and hotel.
Caves House
Caves House itself is quite expensive, but the Gatehouse adjacent is reasonable for "backpacker style" accommodations, with a shared bathroom and a kitchen and dining area.
Gatehouse is attached to the Caves House with a couple of smaller buildings between, but there is no connecting passage.
That afternoon we explored the immediate environs and took a little hike down the river walk trail past Blue Lake, its dam and on down beside the Jenolan River. Blue Lake is incredibly clear, but at the same time is a brilliant turquoise colour from minerals leeched from the stone in the cave system.
After a much cooler night than we had been experiencing, we awoke to a light rain mixed with snow. Throughout the morning it varied constantly all the way between rain and huge fluffy snowflakes, but there was no accumulation. However, a few vehicles came in covered with snow. Later that day we learned that the road in had been closed because of the snow, which explained why there were only a handful of other tourists present.
The tour of the Imperial Cave at ten forty-five consisted of the guide, Claude and myself and the departure point was inside the Grand Arch, on the far side from the Caves House. It was truly nice not having to compete to ask questions and to be able to see exactly the features we wanted to see in the amount of detail we wished, to go at our own pace and still have plenty of time. In fact, our personal guide gave us a bonus tour a little further past what would have been the end of the usual tour. Of course, the caves keep a more or less constant temperature throughout the year, so the weather outside was irrelevant.
We grabbed lunch at the cafe rather than cooking for ourselves as we did the rest of our stay, and then Claude took a nap (there were many, many stair steps on the tour) while I took another tour starting at 1:30 pm, this time to the Oriental Cave. This time a younger couple joined me and the tour guide for a whopping total of four persons on the tour. It was even more fantastic than the Imperial, with amazing features everywhere. Something that seemed quite common here at Jenolan but is apparently very rare in other caves were "
speleothems" called "
helictites" that appear to defy gravity.
Helictites. See that there are some traditional stalactites in the mix, illustrating the orientation of the photo.
Once again, our little group was treated to a "special", personalized tour, with a bit of a bonus at the end. As before, we came out retracing the steps we took into the earth. We had taken a shuttle van from the tour gathering point below the lodge and opposite the visitor center to a hefty steel door in base of the precipitous hillside around and above Caves House. We were chatting on the way and I wasn't paying any attention to where we were going, so it was a complete surprise to me when we emerged from the tour only twenty yards from the door to the Gatehouse where we were bunking. The guide told us that the "easy way back" was the road, and the "scenic route" was the footpath hugging the side of the hill. The three of them took the road, and I was twenty yards down the footpath before I realized where I was and quickly reversed to rejoin Claude.
Freshly oriented, we took the scenic footpath back down the slope to the visitor center, where we obtained the electronic devices for our final cave tour, the self-guided Nettle Cave route. I had to make a quick trip back to the visitor center for a replacement after a false start caused by a malfunctioning volume control in one of the audio wands. In retrospect, it would have been better to start out with that one, because as you might expect, the unsupervised tour was drab and featureless compared with the others. It did however include some awesome views from great heights. Claude wasn't a fan of all the steps, though.
Because I took so many photos and the tours were so extensive, I'm not going to attempt to give even a pictorial overview here. Suffice to say, it was by far the most spectacular caves I've ever seen. For a complete photo album,
go to my Picasa album. Note that there is a map that shows the locations of many of the photos. The locations are fairly accurate, with most being close to the viewpoint and a few being more like the location of what's in the image. This one album is using 60% of my Picasa space, so it may not be there permanently.
Here's one teaser photo to whet your appetite and yet not reveal too much. (Go to Picasa for the whole album.)
That evening we shared the kitchen/lounge with a middle-aged couple and their teenage son from California who were exploring Australia in many modes, from auto to ambulation, hotel to sleeping bag. We had a good chat about their and our experiences so far, and some of our plans for the near future. The son had seen a platypus in Blue Lake. This was the one room that had an effective working heater (and an analog TV with reception on a whopping 4 channels), which made it desirable for spending down time. The rooms had portable oil radiator-style heaters, and ours' overheat circuit kept shutting down on all but the lowest of the three heat settings, leaving the room a bit too cool for comfortable lounging, but fine for sleeping.
The elevation in the vicinity of the
Jenolan Caves is about 840 meters (2,750 feet), although the highest point on the road to the caves is
1,290 meters (4,230 feet).
The temperature was 3 degrees Celsius (37 Fahrenheit) when we left Jenolan the following morning. Rather than head back the way we came, we continued on to Oberon. Because of our conversation with the family the previous evening, we deviated from the original plan and made our way down to the
Kanangra Walls. On the way we observed the remnants of the accumulated snow from the day before, which while not impressive from a Colorado point of view was totally unexpected for this area. According to the locals, it had been 17 years since the last snow in that area at that time of year. We also enjoyed the incongruity of a number of kangaroos foraging in the snow.
The road into the park is unsealed (AKA "dirt" for Yanks), and dead-ends at a small parking area. There were understandably few tourists present, but a group of rescue personnel had apparently been practicing and were preparing to leave when we arrived. After a short and disappointing exploratory jaunt down the rather flat and bush-lined trail, I returned to Claude and the car, but fortunately one of the guys packing up spoke to me and told me not to leave without going all the way out to the overlook. It turned out not to be all that much farther than I had gone, but much farther than the 100 meters the sign indicated. The overlooks at the
Walls emerge abruptly from the flat bushland and consist of yet more spectacular panoramas of steep and distant densely vegetated ridges and river valleys. The "walls" are vertical and nearly unbroken sandstone cliffs in the relative foreground. And the lookouts don't have railings or any other man-made modifications...
Yes, that really is the edge of a cliff on the other side of me, and I wasn't about to get any closer!
After that invigorating hike, it was back to the car to continue our adventure. Lunch was meat pies at picturesque little Oberon, with this colorful art deco building
and the ornate Ramsgate Guesthouse & Tea Rooms
just a half-block apart. Then on through the rolling hills and grassland to
Bathurst.
Just a week before, a major auto race had taken place at
Bathurst's famous Mount Panorama Speedway. As a road race, the
Bathurst 1000 is much more exciting and interesting to me than NASCAR going round and round a boring oval. Claude had told me about this track before, and the fact that you can actually go and drive around the track. It turns out that it is actually a street, with residences, farms and businesses lining the sides, so they really have no option but to keep it open to the public any time a race is not underway, but with an absurdly low speed limit of 60 kph (37.3 mph). I am told that the police infamously
love to lie in wait for those inclined to try it at more than a snail's pace, but we didn't see any while we were there. While it is famous for the "V8 Supercars" competition,
it was actually a motorcycle track much earlier.
We circled the track three times, once with me driving and twice with Claude behind the wheel, one circuit being recorded by me on HD video - or so I thought. I was much chagrined when we got home to find that I had not had the camera running. I was concentrating so hard on the framing that I didn't notice the indicator was not blinking the correct color! I guess I'll just have to make another trip up there. The other two circuits we stopped several times to watch and photograph other vehicles, and once even stopped at a farmhouse and bought some honey, strawberry jam and marmalade, of which we have not yet partaken. The grey-haired lady who waited on us responded to my obvious interest in a beautiful flowering tree with its name:
pawlownia.
The day we were there also happened to be the day that a club of kit car owners were having a "fun run" to and around the track. They were all the same kit, but were from different years and versions, and the nature of kit cars is such that no two were alike. The
Eureka is the same as the Nova in the U.K. and the Sterling in the U.S.A., so the shape was very familiar to me. There were more than a dozen cruising the track, with a photographer documenting their rides, and they eventually queued up near the starting line. Some of these examples were modified more than others, and there were lots of different engines, from the original VW Beetle engine to V6s and Mazda rotary engines.
It was literally all downhill after Bathurst. We completed the loop back to Lithgow, where we spent some time fruitlessly searching for the train depot, then pointed our wheels back to Hartley and retraced our track from there home. It was an amazing three days, and the memories will linger forever.
