CENTRAL WEST, NSW – 26 October 2025
We were out in the Lithgow/Oberon area for the MSS 60th Anniversary Celebration for the weekend. On Saturday we checked out the Lost City ½ day walk, so I thought “why waste a Sunday” and decided that we’d do a short walk to check out another ½ day walk, Slavens Cave. As most of you know, I rarely get out of bed for a day walk, so driving that far for a ½ day walk was just not even conceivable. But, we were only 30 minutes away so, the trip was ON.
A visit to this cave had been on the MSS calendar twice, both times I was doing something else, and was a bit disappointed that I’d missed out, so it was definitely on the “if I’m in the area wish list”. John & Kathy, Onni, Rod OB, Cath H-H, Jim, Trish and Jeff were to join me. I hadn’t done any research (after all both John and Jim had been there before), but then John & Kathy had to return home and that left Jim. Before leaving we studied John’s topo map and then set off.
Our first stop was to be a gate that was reportedly unlocked and leading us to the State Forest. When we arrived there, whilst the gate was still not locked there was a big sign “Closed – Keep Out” because of some biosecurity problem. Well, that stopped us!
Luckily Rod OB said that we could still access the cave, we just had to “go around the Forest to the access area of a big Dam”. So, off we went.
2k down the road we were stopped by some cattle mustering from one paddock to the home paddock, they calmly walked around the cars not even brushing up against them.
Once the cattle had moved off the road it was a short walk to the road to the dam, we parked in the public parking lot and then headed off on the dam maintenance road, which eventually turned into the dam wall. It was very impressive!
Once across the dam we moved onto a fire trail which might (or might not) be access to some big arse power lines. The instructions were, go to where the big arse powerlines cross over the small ones (what you can see) and there will be the doline for the cave.
And there it was.
It wasn’t what I was expecting LOL, I was told it was a sandstone cave, so I was expecting a sandstone overhang (wrong).
Trish on the way down. Some of those dead branches were a bit daunting, I made sure I didn’t move any.
Onni accessing the cave by a second entrance (which was a bit dodgy looking).
Jeff negotiating his way down the entrance Trish took.
Slavens Cave, is reported to be one of the largest sandstone caves of its type in NSW (possibly Australia, one report apparently claims it’s the 10th biggest in the world!).
As I said, I was expecting sandstone on the roof, but Cathi assured us that it was sandstone covered by some sort of volcanic “stuff”, I only took in half of which she explained to us.
Onni and Trish checking out the roof.
We were told to look for the graffiti and particularly the note from the first visitor recorded “Reg Core – 12/4/30. It was difficult to see the date, it sort of looked like 80 rather than 30, but once I used the photo “Rock Art Enhancer” App that John G uses, it was definitely “30” – I’m assuming that it’s 1930, it’s possible that it was 1830 but given that Blaxland Lawson & Wentworth didn’t visit the area until 1813, and another exploration in late 1813 didn’t reach the area now known as Bathurst, I’m not sure that there were settlers in the area in 1820 – but, maybe Reg Core was one of them.
Gives you an idea of the size of the cave. There are no side passages, or there is one spot that looks like someone started a dig.
Nice shot with the cave lights.
The route out.
We were in the cave for about an hour, had a quick lunch on the surface sitting on a convenient log, and then we all set a b-line back to the cars, arriving around 2.30pm. It was definitely worth a visit, but only if you were already in the area. The route we took in was ok, but a little boring, the original route, through a state forest would have been more appealing. So, another trip off the wish list.
Thanks to Jeff, Trish, Onni, Jim, Cathi and Rod for joining me on this mini adventure!