WOMBEYAN CAVES – 7-9 August 2026
I probably shouldn’t have gone on this trip, but with only four of us registered, I didn’t want to let the team down by dropping out. Heather and I had rented a cabin for the weekend (it’s cold at Wombeyan this time of year), for some reason I had visions of an electric blanket on the bed … I probably should have read the fine print on the booking confirmation. 
In my defense, I’d had a bad week with a problem tooth and the prospect of an impending root canal. I was supposed to bring my own blanket, sheets and pillow, and hadn’t brought down any of that, I did have a towel – not sure why I threw that in. Heather saved the day with a spare sleeping bag in her car. On the positive side, the cabin had a heater in it and so it was toasty warm inside!
Rod ran the trip, joined by his nephew Connor, plus Heather R and me. Heather and I drove down after Heather finished work, doing the last 50k of driving, barely missing hitting a couple of wombats – always a challenge driving in the country at night.
The photograph for the weekend goes to Heather, who wandered out in the middle of the night (while I was already asleep) and captured this great shot – well done Heather.
Our main aim was to find and GPS caves at Wombeyan, so our first stop was an old quarry, it was a nice walk on an old road, there were lots of survey markers on the road which was very eroded, apparently the road is eventually going to be repaired. Lovely country here.
The quarry with Rod in the distance, not much limestone here, I think this was just a “let’s see what’s here” dig.
A small cave that we found on the site.
Another hold found – both of these holes had “tags” on them.
Looking down from the top of the quarry to the flat area for trucks and equipment.
We walked around to another area, Rod recording grid references for this cave.
Blocks that had been removed, but not taken away, just left in place.
The actual quarry in the same vicinity – you can just see Heather on one of the blocks.
We did find one cave that we checked out, Heather on the crawl to get out.
Rod went back to the cabins to wake up Conner (his nephew) and Heather and I followed the old road up to where there was a waterfall, after half an hour of walking up to a saddle, we looked across to where the waterfall was supposed to be and figured it was too far for a half day walk so gave up, saving it for another day.
After lunch we headed off to another area and found a cave that Conner checked out (went nowhere – he was disappointed).
I thought this was really cool, high on a hill was this mossy area, very pretty.
We spent the afternoon looking for more caves, found a few but none that we had permits for, then headed over to the old marble quarry which I documented in the post What If …
We called it a day then and spent the night playing Splendor … with Connor trying unsuccessfully to stop us from getting points (the cost of having a 15 yr old along)!
We headed over to another area to look for a cave that we had a permit for.
Cow Pit Cave was on our permit and we eventually found it on Saturday afternoon, so Rod headed down.
Heather descending the very slippery slope down to the cave, looked harder then it was, I thought it would be hard to climb up, but ended up being a piece of cake.
The slope continued with lots of loose rocks.
Lots of old stals along the wall, indicating that in years gone by, there was a roof on the hole which had eventually fallen down.
Sadly, the cave was just a big hole with no passages leading off, at least now we know what’s here (pretty much nothing LOL).
We looked for other caves in the area but didn’t find much. We then parted company with Rod and Connor and Heather and I headed over to Figtree Cave that we’d bought tokens for (to get through the locked gate). I had been in Figtree once, but a long time ago, couldn’t remember it.
There’s a path through the cave with lighting and interpretive signs (and some audio recordings).
It’s quite big (about 400m of passageway) and highly decorated.
Here they had lit a shawl (the orange part at the top), that was impressive.
Lots of nice formations.
Looking down into the creek below that flows through the cave. There’s evidence of the cave flooding at times (large logs suspended high above the ground).
Figtree Cave is definitely worth the $20 for the visit, would highly recommend it.
So, that was the end of our Wombeyan trip, very relaxing and nice to be warm inside the cabin. Thanks for the trip Rod!
banner: The quarry has been closed for many years, cool to see the mosses growing on the blocks of limestone hanging around.