About 100km from Cradle Mountain is a place called Mole Creek. It’s known by many as Australia’s best Adventure caving region, and while I can’t dispute that, I’m happy just to go do some Spelunking.

I’d prearranged to do a full day adventure caving session, which takes us through only 2 of there many different cave systems. The group I organised through is Wild Cave Tours and can be found at: www.wildcavetours.com

The difference between Show Caving and Adventure Caving is how the caves have been set up for tours. In Show Caves, tourists wander through pre lit caves, often with steps carved into the floor and just have to walk or perhaps stoop a little. In Adventure Caving you don the overalls, clip on a helmet with a head torch and crawl, scramble, wiggle and slide around the caves. It can be dirty but fun…

As it was raining and cold outside the three of us Spelunkers chose Honeycomb Cave and Sassafras Cave. If the weather had been better we’d have likely chosen caves that were more challenging, but rain makes cave entrances slippery and river caves very cold.

Honeycomb Cave
As the name would suggest, there is a honeycomb of tunnels on multiple levels with various different limestone formations…

…some that needed to be squeezed through…

…some with interesting coloration…

… scolloping…

and the occasional daylight holes contain relict rain forests.

Sassafras Cave
This was a different style of cave than the honeycomb. It was a long and low ceilinged with many glow worms along its length, most of them with their tell tail hanging strings.

At one stage, in a grand cathedral cave, we turned off our lights for quite some time, and sat in the dark as our cave leader played the flute. Not only are the acoustics great, but glow worms seems to respond to the sound. Very meditative.

The tour comes with morning and afternoon tea and a great lunch. Well worth the money if you’re in the area and not too claustrophobic.

Next I’m off to do Australia’s most famous hike…The Overland Track.

The Cave Wanderer