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| 3 Sisters at Katoomba |
It had been a while since our last family outing so it was time.
Having grown up in Australia, I had engaging memories of the stalagmites and stalactites that adorn the caves at Jenolan. As the kids have mostly lived overseas I thought a little Aussie culture was due.
In addition, Patrick needed driving hours, (both night and day) to complete his Learner Driving requirements and as it was a 2.5 - 3 hour drive each way, that settled it. (Even though they were a little freaked because they had recently watch the scary movie "The Descent" which involved caves and horrible ugly cave dwellers and lots of blood).
The new freeway makes this quite a quick trip now so we had time to stop in Katoomba, grab a coffee, admire the gorgeous blue winter sky, mountain range and change drivers before heading on to the Caves.
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| Caves House view from the hike from the Car Park. |
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| The Jenolan Village |
When the giant steel door slammed behind me in the tunnel to the caves, the same thing happened. However, this time I was moved along with the crowd and had no choice but to continue. As long as the people got out of my way and I could see the end, I was OK.
I distracted myself with the surrounding beauty, taking photos and listening to stories and I am proud to say I made it through perfectly well. The caves are actually airy and quite large. I think the tunnel was the most difficult part.
There are a great many to caves to choose from but we agreed that The Temple of Baal sounded best and I'm really glad we did. It was spectacular!
I'm not going to pretend I know anything about Geology but I can tell you what we learnt from our Guide. The caves are made from Limestone. It was one of the first rocks to appear on earth and is composed of skeletons and marine organisms that were solidified by Volcanic ash. You can read more here. Oh and she was super excited about Calcium Carbonate!
The Caves have been recently dated by Dr Armstrong Osborne from Sydney University as being 340 million years old. For you science buffs, you can read more in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences. Or a summarised article can be found in ABC's Science News.
We couldn't all decide on a second cave so we opted instead for a walk around the lake and a game of "Spot The Platypus"!
YES the lake is blue. Apparently minerals that have run off from the caves make it this colour and YES we found the Platypus!
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| View Back to The Grand Arch from The Blue Lake |
NOTE: There is nothing worse than seeing photographs of a place that looks great, then you go to this place and find that the photos were completely enhanced and it looks nothing like it did in the photo at all. Therefore I decided that for these images you would get to see them right out of the camera. You will probably see sensor dirt and all sorts so apologies but at least you know that if you go to Jenolan, what you see will be similar, if not better!
Oh and for you camera buffs, this image of the original cave entrance was taken at 51 000 ISO. Love my Canon 1D X.Nina Beilby is a professional photographer based in Chatswood, Sydney, Australia. You can see more of her work at www.ninabeilby.com.au.
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