Well, that's it for my last full day in Australia. Tomorrow morning at 7 I head to the airport, and expect to be back in Halifax some 30 hours later. Woot! It's been a fun and educational experience. What really surprises me is how quickly new things become familiar. I have to actually pay attention to really see the tropical trees, for example. While at first all the vegetation here looked cool and different, now the trees all just look like, well, trees. I wonder if Nova Scotia will look foreign to me for the first few days?
I can hear my big comfy bed calling to me - I imagine it will seem so much nicer after short cramped little hostel beds! But I will certainly miss the nice warm weather, still getting highs around 25 or so here...
Ciao faithful readers. Until the next adventure that is! :)
Monday, April 18, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Chilling out
Not much to report since the Jenolan caves. I'm back in Sydney, just chilling out and nursing a cold (dammit, that makes 2 colds in 4 months). Spent a couple of days at Bondi Beach and went swimming with some cool fish (just with goggles). No other adventures to report on, just reading and walking a lot! Was going to go diving once more but of course that is not going to happen since I'm all stuffed up...
Four more days, then it's time to go home...
Four more days, then it's time to go home...
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Jenolan Caves - Orient and Lucas Caves
Went on a tour of two of the caves at Jenolan yesterday. The price of $82 includes the 1 hour drive from Katoomba to the caves and back as well as admission to two of the caves. Only some of the caves are "show caves". A lot of the other caves are not open to the public or access is restricted. This is primarily because even just bringing people in causes some damage, even if the people are respectful and don't touch stuff or, even worse, break off pieces and take them home. They actually go and clean the caves on a regular basis, vacuuming up hair and skin and sometimes washing the limestone formations. The formations grow quite slowly, and of course can stop growing entirely if no water happens to be flowing in that particular area...
The caves themselves were pretty awesome. An entirely different world, with an unbelievable variety of shapes. Not just the standard stalagmites and stalactites, but things like ribbons (literally a wavy ribbon of limestone growing down from the ceiling) or even stranger shapes. I took a few pictures (see below) but much better pictures are available online. And again I got that same thought I had when I first went diving, that people who create movie sets get inspiration from places like this.
Each tour lasted 1.5 hours. The guide also talked about some of the early tours a century or so ago. People went in with nothing but candles. In one of the caves, there is a long slope. In times past, the tour guide would set the visitor on a potato sack and send them sliding down the slope with their candle. weeeee.... Then you had to climb back up along a rope. It is certainly a lot easier and less adventurous now. The routes are fitted with concrete steps and railings, totally safe (and also to keep the cave safe from the visitors).
The first picture is a little hole about half a meter across, with all these crystals growing inside.
The second picture is just plain cool...
The third picture shows some of the more random, interesting shapes. There was one area in particular which had a lot of these white sculpted shapes.
The fourth picture is a good example of how large some of these formations are.
The caves themselves were pretty awesome. An entirely different world, with an unbelievable variety of shapes. Not just the standard stalagmites and stalactites, but things like ribbons (literally a wavy ribbon of limestone growing down from the ceiling) or even stranger shapes. I took a few pictures (see below) but much better pictures are available online. And again I got that same thought I had when I first went diving, that people who create movie sets get inspiration from places like this.
Each tour lasted 1.5 hours. The guide also talked about some of the early tours a century or so ago. People went in with nothing but candles. In one of the caves, there is a long slope. In times past, the tour guide would set the visitor on a potato sack and send them sliding down the slope with their candle. weeeee.... Then you had to climb back up along a rope. It is certainly a lot easier and less adventurous now. The routes are fitted with concrete steps and railings, totally safe (and also to keep the cave safe from the visitors).
The first picture is a little hole about half a meter across, with all these crystals growing inside.
The second picture is just plain cool...
The third picture shows some of the more random, interesting shapes. There was one area in particular which had a lot of these white sculpted shapes.
The fourth picture is a good example of how large some of these formations are.
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