DEUA NATIONAL PARK – WYANBENE CAVE MAY 2015
I had missed out on this trip 12 months ago and was determined to go this time, even if I had to drive all the way there myself. I actually left the Central Coast at the crack of dawn on Friday morning and met up with Julie to do a run through North Bowen Canyon (what were we thinking!).
After I warmed up, I drove from 
Mt Wilson down to Pheasant’s Nest, left my car there and hitched a ride the rest of the way with Rod. We arrived fairly late and set up camp in the dark near Nat and Ray (in their Taj Mahal) they still had a fire going so we warmed up a bit then I went to bed, too big a day!
We were all up bright and early next morning and ready to go, Nat, Rod S, Beth L, Josh and Catherine O. It’s a cruisy 300m walk from the camp 
ground to the cave entrance just a little bit of up-hill on a track. You go down a ladder as soon as you enter and then the first 200m of the cave is for tourists you pretty much can’t get lost in it, there is a ladder (or maybe 2) you then basically walk for about 200m in water (a little over ankle deep) in an old river passage, it’s very pretty and you pass a lot of formations. Finally you get to a formation (see left) and you have to climb up that to the locked metal gate.
Rod went up and unlocked the gate, then we all made our way up the very, very slippery slope to the Keyhole. This opening (where the gate is), is shaped just like an old fashioned key hole and you have to do a lot 
of manoeuvring to get yourself through and to the other side, once through there is a small drop and a ladder awaits. Rod and Beth set up a caving ladder and a belay because the ladder’s got a big drop under it, so we were each belayed down the ladder safely.
You walk through a bit of passage and then you have to do the Triangular Squeeze, easy if you’re smaller! After that it was a case of making our way along to what some pe
ople call the Infinite Crawl, that is, you are on your stomach crawling through a passage that is only high enough for you to rest on your elbows but sometimes not even that 
high, AND it’s got water on the bottom of it, so you are basically crawling through a stream. Everyone else had on waterproof overalls but I had on cotton ones so I was drenched!
Once out of the “river” we continued along passages visiting a couple of large chambers, we went as far as we could, then turned around and retraced our steps. I don’t know how long we were underground but when we came out it was really dark. I was one of the first out and I was frozen. I made my way down to the camp site and Ray had hot water going for us and had rigged up a shower, it was magic.
He’d also cooked a camp oven roast so we had roast dinner that night, talk about spoiled! Good fun around the camp fire but it was getting cold so we retreated to the warmth of our sleeping bags. Great trip!