Jenolan Caves

Part of the International Congress of Speleology is the Wednesday field trips, these could be geology field trips, general site seeing, recreation or I was happy to see for this year a trip to a wonderful cave system not to far from where the congress was being held. Part of signing up was choosing which cave outings we wanted to participate in. My first choice was easy enough since they list a photography trip, but what to put for my second? Options include bush walk, history walk, fossil tour, and whats this music tour?

Hmm OK, lets see what a cave music tour is. So I put myself down for that. I’m so glad I did. It turned out to be a cello performance in one of the cave chambers that had fantastic acoustics. A really unique experience.

The trip to the cave though was a fascinating one. We stopped at a lookout spot and witnessed a beautiful rainbow among some wonderful mountains.

Then as we drove down into the area where the cave is located we came across a kangaroo in the road. We were in a fairly wide road and there were cliffs on both sides of the road so the poor critter took off down the road to get away from us. As it came around a corner it spotted a way off the road but got a little excited perhaps and combined with the road being wet from recent rain, whoops down it went. Never thought of kangaroos being clumsy but the bus stopped and we waited while it got up and headed off the side of the road finally.

The cave has an unusual entrance in that you actually pass through the entrance on the road(the larger buses barely fit the narrower part) in order to get to the parking area.

We had some great tours through the caves. I got to take some pictures, really enjoyed the cello concert. He played a piece he wrote where he made the cello sound like a didgeridoo as well as the more usual classical pieces. Lunch was great and it really was a fun outing.