We woke early today in the hope we could visit a fire tower about an hour away from Coonabarabran. It was dark, and aside from trees looming over the road all we saw were endless clouds of bugs as we drove through them. Day dawned and we were forced to turn back due to a closed (dirt) road and once we got a chance to inspect the car bumper we saw this:
I think they’re mosquitoes!
We stopped at a few antique and op-shops along the way, but today’s goal was Wellington Caves which we reached about noon. Neither of us had done much research to preserve the surprise, and didn’t even know there were two caves. We bought tickets for one tour, and will do the other tomorrow.
The caves have been known for about 150 years, and in the late 19th century bones of megafauna were discovered inside. This included a diprotodon skull, which was a mammal about as big as a hippo and distantly related to a koala. The skeleton in the on-site gallery is shown next to a wombat for scale.
The cave entrance is about a half kilometer’s walk from the visitors center, and we got the usual safety spiel in advance from our guide ‘Westy’. Notable was the mention of snakes, including if we saw a brown snake (a man-killer) on the path to the cave the tour would be canceled and we’d receive a refund! Luckily, none were seen, although we did see a shed snakeskin.
The cave we toured today – Gaden cave – was incredibly abundant with ‘cave coral’. It was just Sue and I on the tour, and our guide was personably and knowledgeable and we spent almost an hour viewing the cave and hearing his stories.
Unlike every other cave I’ve visited this is a dry cave – which means no water or humidity – with a constant temperature of about 17 C. It was extremely pleasant inside, and you could probably comfortably live there!
Almost every wall was covered with stalactites and coral-like growths and they filled the vaulted roof high above us as well. Since there’s no water the cave is no longer ‘growing’ and these formations are as they were hundreds of millions of years ago.
It was beautiful and awe-inspiring and exceeded both of our expectations. This is apparently the lesser of their two caves, so we can’t wait to see the other one tomorrow!