Abbey Caves

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Abbey Caves are a series of undeveloped limestone caves just outside town. We’re not sure how many caves there actually are, but there are three signposted that you can enter. The plan of the caves we got from the library only shows the three caves, but they all have various passages and entry/exit points.

The first is Organ Cave, the largest, and then there are Middle Cave and Ivy Cave. You are meant to be able to walk through the latter two, or at least, exit at a different place than where you go in; we’re sure you don’t get to walk through the whole cave. The plan is a little vague to our untrained eyes. All the caves have stalactites, stalagmites and glow worms. There is also a “Rock Forest” around the caves with some pretty funky rock formations.

The caves were supposedly named by Nathaniel and Amelia Clotworthy, early pioneers from Ireland. Organ Caves has stalactites which are meant to resemble church organ pipes, Middle Cave is the middle one of the three, and we don’t know why Ivy Cave is so named. (We guessed the reason for naming Middle Cave!!) There is a small grave site fenced off in the rock garden with a new memorial stone to the Clotworthy family.

We teamed up with Matt and Muriel, two couch surfers from France, and headed out equipped with boots and torches. We went down Organ Cave first, but didnt get too far. We waded through the first wet patch but stopped at the second as we couldnt see the bottom. The first got to about knee deep and we could see the bottom there, so figured the next place to be much deeper! We saw some neat rock formations, but nothing we'd describe as church organ pipes, maybe we didnt get far enough, or maybe they've been hacked off at some point.

Climbing back out the way we went in, we walked along the track to Middle Cave. This one we did manage to get all the way through, with some squeezing round boulders at the end. We saw heaps of glow worms up on the ceiling, and plenty of smallish stalactites and stalagmites. The colouring seemed pretty monotonous, but it was pretty neat.

The last cave, Ivy Cave, was also full of boulders and glow worms, but we couldnt find a way out. We might have taken a wrong turn at some point, not that there was really many options, we took the biggest and most likely each time.

We'll leave you with some photos and some info on caves and glow worms.

Cave Formations
Most New Zealand caves are formed from limestone and marble sediment. Enormous amounts of calcium rich mollusk shells and skeletons of marine life form a thick layer, which over millions of years compresses and solidifies. Over time, this sediment cements together to become rock beds. As rainwater leaches through the soil, a mild carbonic acid solution is released through cracks in the limestone, enlarging them. The drips also create other cave formations like stalactites. Over the years (millennia even!), some passages erode to a large enough extent to become underground streams or rivers. These then form the passages we walked through. As a result of all this compressing, leaching and dripping, a “hidden world” is created, full of caves, sinkholes and shafts, stalactites, stalagmites, waterfalls and glow worms.

Stalactites and stalagmites are mineral forms often found in limestone caves.

A stalactite (from the Greek stalasso, (“σταλάσσω”), "to drip" and meaning "that which drips") is an icicle-shaped mass of calcium carbonate (aka calcite) attached to the roof of a limestone cave. Groundwater trickling through cracks in the roofs of these caverns contains dissolved calcium bicarbonate. When a drop of water comes in contact with the air of the cavern, some of the calcium bicarbonate is transformed into calcium carbonate, which precipitates out of the water solution and forms a ring of calcite on the roof of the cavern. By repetition of this process the length and thickness of the stalactite is increased.

A stalagmite (from the Greek stalagma ("Σταλαγμίτης") meaning "drop" or "drip") is a cone of calcium carbonate rising from the floor of a cave. Stalagmites and stalactites are often found in pairs, the stalagmite being formed as a result of further evaporation and precipitation from solution after the trickle of water falls from the stalactite. Stalactites and stalagmites often meet each other to form solid pillars or columns.

Curtains of “dripstone” sometimes form when water drips from the ceiling of a cave along a joint. Since stalactites, stalagmites, and curtains of “dripstone” form only in the presence of air, their existence in a cave indicates that the cave was above the water table while the dripstone was forming. The many colours often seen in these formations are caused by the presence of impurities. Onyx marble (Mexican onyx, Egyptian or Oriental alabaster), used as a decorative stone, is derived from stalagmites and stalactites as well as from similar deposits.



Glow Worms
New Zealand’s caves, riverbanks and other shady crevices provide a home for one of our most famous flies - the glow worm. Yup, you read correctly, fly. Glow worms are not worms at all. At their glowing stage, they are larvae.

The name glow worm is a misnomer. Early settlers from the British Isles probably applied the common name "glow worm" as a substitute for the English glow worm “Lampyris noctiluca” ( which is actually a beetle larvae, so someone got it wrong there too - isn’t the internet wonderful for finding “useful” information!)

The life cycle of a glow worm involves four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult fly, and from larvae to fly (its glowing stage) takes about a year.

Eggs are laid in large numbers directly onto the walls of the cave. A couple of weeks later the eggs hatch into tiny larvae that immediately start glowing from their tails. The light is often an eerie blue-green and is stronger when the “worm” is hungry.

(For those interested, here’s some more exciting internet info that we hope is right! The blue-green glow of the larvae is the result of a reaction between body products and oxygen in the enlarged tips of the larvae’s excretory tubes. The light is the result of a chemical reaction involving several components: luciferin (a waste product), luciferase (the enzyme that acts upon luciferin), adenosine triphosphate (the energy molecule) and oxygen. All these combined make an electronically excited product capable of emitting a blue-green light.)

From the ceiling of a cave, glow-worms suspend lines of sticky beads to trap its prey, which are attracted to the light. Once the prey is caught, the glow-worm pulls in the line to feed. A mature adult “glow-worm fly” has to be careful not to get trapped in a glow-worm line itself, and be eaten!

So, that’s one of our flies, what would our other famous (or infamous) ones be? Possibly sand flies and mosquitoes?!?!

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Photos

Organ Cave
This is as far as we could go, the water below this rock got just too deep

Is this the exit?
No, it wasnt! We had to squeeze round the rocks and get out nearby.

Karen climbing out of Middle Cave
Thanks to Matt for the picture

Glow worms
Honest! See those little bits of light?!

Rock Garden
Colin, Karen and Muriel inside a "rick castle"

Comments

[Cherry Daly]

Naming of Abbey Caves
Read with interest your blog on the Abbey Caves. I am a descendant of Nathaniel & Amelia Clotworthy who settled there in 1859. The caves were names after their home in Northern Ireland as the rock formations reminded them oif the Abbey. Nathaniel came from the area around Antrim Castle. I have 2 photos taken in 1906 by Winklemann, a noted phoitographer of the time at the entrance to the Ivy Cave and there was ivy growing everywhere - hence the name I guess. I have Amelia's diary of 1896 and she refers to "the Caves" hardly a Sunday went by without there being visitors to the caves. I love your photos - am I able to print some off ? I'm very new to this blogging business. Cherry Daly