TASMANIA – 30 April 2024
So, we’re all COVID-free now, and have taken a lot of time to rest and recover, it’s about time we got into some caving! We decided to explore a little by ourselves, see if I could find Sassafras, take a look at Cyclops and maybe find a new cave, Water Trap. We planned an early start but then faffed around and before you know it, it was 11am!
The day didn’t start out all that well. I’ve been to Sassafras three times over the years and was pretty sure I could walk straight to the cave. So, we started out, and we’d been walking for about half an hour when we saw a hole and figured it was the one. Although, I have to say it just didn’t look “right”, nevertheless Jim was keen to check it out so I thought “what the heck, it’s been a while, maybe I have it wrong”.
So, in Jim went, Rod and I sat outsaid waiting for positive feedback from Jim. Eventually he came back and reported that he didn’t think it was right either, so, we soldiered on. There was a tag, MC102, we’ll find out what that one is from the gurus.
We walked for another 3 or 500m and at this point I’m really questioning whether or not I had gone too far. “We’ve gone too far” says Jim, who’s been there once. Whilst I wasn’t 100% sure that it was still ahead of us, I thought it’d give it another 100m and in half that distance I could see up ahead and what looked “right” as far as vegetation was concerned.
And, what do you know, it was exactly as I remembered it.
Once inside it was exactly as I remembered it, huge and a lovely streamway.
Rod admiring a side passage and what looked like a sack of Tasmanian Cave Spider eggs, we found a lot of them in this cave.
I remembered these rocks from the first time I came to this cave, a photographer had a bunch of us lay on the ledges for a photoshoot.
Beautiful reflections of the flow stone in the pool of water, not much water in the cave this time compared to the other time I’d entered it.
The passageway just kept on giving, and the cave was much better than I remembered.
Memory is such a funny thing. This cave was much bigger than I remember it being, and far more decorated than I remembered. I am really pleased that we decided to visit it again.
There were LOTS of the Tasmanian Cave Spider, here’s a close up of one of them. They are really big, about the size of a small child’s hand. We could see a lot of egg sacks and Jim said that he could see thousands of juvenile hatchlings in the vicinity of this spider (I couldn’t see them though).
This shot gives you an idea of the size of the streamway passage.
After we’d had our fill of Sassafras, we started back towards the car (for lunch), stopping at every hole that we came across to check out if there were any other caves worth exploring, there were about 4 of them tagged but when Jim went in to check them out, not much to see.
We’re back at the car now and the horses in the paddock came down to check us out. 4 or 5 of them had these coats on, very spiffy coats for horses. This property had changed hands about 12 months ago and it’s obvious the new owner is cashed up, lots of new fencing and gates and top of the range blankets for the horses!
After lunch Jim and I headed up towards Cyclops (Rod stayed with the horses lol). This was going to be a new cave for me so I was looking forward to it.
The entry to the cave.
The entrance, down a slope.
It was bigger than I expected, and much more decorated that I expected too.
Nice to be able to walk upright through a cave. It was just after this that we got to a “boot washing station”, and I realised that I had been here before! Four years ago Heather, Marcia and I had joined some local cavers to service this boot washing station. So, not a new cave for me after all.
We took a side passage (that I hadn’t been able to access last time due to a big pool of water), and found much more decoration.
Plus this really nice wall of caramel coloured formation. Once we’d had our fill, we turned around and headed back to meet up with Rod and do our third cave for the day.
We’d been given a grid reference for Water Trap, so headed over to where we thought it was with Rod’s GPS. When we were close, the GPS batteries died so we were on our own. Rod said “it should be right here”, and Jim looked to the left and low and behold there was a hole, not a nice one but a hole with a tag nevertheless.
Jim went down, and then Rod started negotiating his way down then decided that it wasn’t going to be pretty coming out once he was in the cave, so turned round and side-lined himself. I’d been umming and aahing as to whether I’d go in or not, then decided that if I started not going into nasty little caves that would be the beginning of the end, so I slid on in.
There wasn’t much to see once in there, a lot of crawly spaces and some side-ways rift (like this one), so I decided that going into the cave was enough and I’d not bother with exploring it … maybe I’ve been spoiled by “good caves”. So, I exited out of that small hole. Good thing that Rod didn’t come down, it wasn’t easy for me to get out LOL.
Once out of the cave, we high-tailed it back to the car, we’d spent a good 5 hours roaming around the area, so we were all ready for a hot shower and dinner.
This day was a first for me, going out to an area that I was only marginally familiar with and finding some caves to explore, so I was pretty happy with out efforts. Thanks Jim & Rod for coming on the adventure with me.