CAVES

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After the Lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin, I worked my way up the Southern half of Caves Road which is very scenic 120 kms drive in all, with amazingly varied landscapes and fauna. The vegetaion changes every few kms. Heathland here, massive trees trees creating sun dappled avenues there, and then the many vinyards. All delightful on a glorious sunny day as it was.

But my main focus was on the caves. There are 120 in all along this coast but I managed two of the larger more popular examples.

Jewel cave first with a series of the massive chambers, each with many marvellous calcite foramtions. I'll spare you a geology lesson, but the limestones is very young in geological terms (1.5 million years). That's still enough time for the caves to be created by water dissoving the limestone and for magnificent formations of calcite to form. Please try to see the pictures I have laoded which I'm quite pleased with.

The lake cave with and entrance via a collpsed cave, and 360 steps. Perhaps less spectacular but with water in it and some very unusal formations , including a "suspended table" formation. (All vists are with a guide to ensure protection. On our tour there was a delighful 3 year old girl who reminded me of Solli. During one spectaular lightshow, the group was quiet but this toddler exclaimed "WOW" at one point. She was right!

By 4:00 pm I had climbed and descended well over a thousand steps and was in need of refreshment... So I headed off in search of more wineries....

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Photos

Jewel cave
Stunning formations everywhere

Jewel cave
Beautifully lit too

Lake cave entrance
Itself a collapsed cave. 360 steps here!

Thousands of "straws"
All hollow and dripping very slowly

Comments

[Cathy]

WOW indeed!
These look fantastic - how big were they? (tens of feet long, or just a few inches?).