Caves and Explorations

01/03/09

Church
Car
Caves
Lucas Cave
Singing
Imperial Jewels Cave
Rail Replacement Bus Service
Dave and the lift

This morning I creep out of bed as silently as possible to avoid waking my room mate… I think she snoozes through my ablutions and sneaking out the door, as tidily dressed as possible with my very limited wardrobe of black trousers and blue shirt. I have decided to go to the church Tom and Lyn suggested last night in the heart of Katoomba. To my astonishment, as I am heading down the stairs out of the YHA at 7:40 to try and find it, I spot Tom and Lyn standing chatting to the Receptionist. They have popped in on the offchance that I still wanted to go and offer to take me down to the church with them for the 8am service. I have been well and truly taken under wing! J This is a very pleasant start to the day. The service is the usual Anglican, with few variations; I know none of the hymns, sadly, but sing and mumble as best I can. They use an Australian hymnal, much of which I don’t recognise. This service is quite quiet; I imagine most of the younger people come to the 10am, but I will be heading off into the Mountains as early as possible today, so 8am seemed like the best plan. The sermon is quite long, but well-thought out and everyone is very friendly; several of the people from last night’s ceilidh are there this morning too!

While I am there, a car has miraculously been found as a solution to our problems! Tom and Lyn give me a lift back to the YHA and I am grilled by Tom for his radio show later in the day – I have evidently caught their interest! We have a cheerful farewell and set off to find the car.
Car is apparently ready and waiting for us when we pop in to see the people at the hire company (LTD, which mostly does vans, utes and lorries!) but we decide to have breakfast first. We find a lovely little café, catering for all tastes, and partake of an enormous and very tasty breakfast to see us through til lunch (and possibly beyond!).

Fed and chirpy, we head for the car hire place and are taken to find our steed… It is a little Nissan, of a breed which is unfamiliar, a Tiila. It is, however, perfect for our needs, being neat, small, clean and friendly.
I decide it looks like a Toby, so Toby it is.
The road to the Jenolan Caves is not too far from Katoomba, only a couple of hours’ drive and well-marked. We play with the radio, which flicks in and out of reception as we drive through the mountains in the warm sun. This is fun! I think it is possible to be perfectly happy; you just have to relax enough to allow yourself to realise it and enjoy it at the time instead of hoping for something more in the future…
The final section of the road is very winding. It is the last little bit before the caves, where the road takes a huge downturn and spirals for several miles down the inside of the valley, close to the edge at times, and very narrow. Not as frightening as Corsican mountain roads, which are narrower than they feel they ought to be and have no barriers, but quite unnerving all the same.
Still, we arrive safely in the sun and decide to do two caves today, which is more than we could have done had we been on the official tour.
Ner!
The first cave we head into is the Lucas cave; the biggest and best known. It holds the Cathedral Chamber, which has been used as a venue for large services – there is a natural pulpit in the stalactite formations and a set of stairs leading up to it. It has an enormously high ceiling and so many formation of so many dripping, glistening, mounded kinds that it is impossible to describe them all. Just think of the biggest, stickiest fudge iced cake you can imagine and throw a molten white chocolate bar, an excitingly dribbly candle and some organ pipes in for good measure…
It’s amazing.
And glistens and glows in the lights they have provided.
There is a sketchy son et lumiere about how the cave was discovered, and how it would have looked when the first explorers came in (we had a devil of a job getting all the kids and idiotic tourists to turn their lights out – ‘But I can’t see!’ whined one small, blonde, snotty American brat – That’s the idea, you moron! We were both sorely tempted to distract the parents and push it into a deep side cave while noone was looking… By contrast, the Oriental kids were good as gold – staring in wonder at the vaulted ceiling and taking it all in silently.) We pass over a high bridge to exit and far beneath us lies a blue pool, clear as glass but for the occasional ripple of a falling droplet. It is lit by white lights, yet is still an vivid opalescent blue, fading to turquoise in the corners. It is very pretty, and very cool, clear and clean. Apparently it is potable, and contains no bacteria or algae because of the lack of air and contaminants in these caves. In fact, the Jenolan Caves provide some of the water to the surrounding area and even as far afield as the outskirts of Sydney sometimes.
Along the way, I chat to the guide, who is already talking to one of the other visitors about music in the caves. We missed a Spanish guitar performance yesterday afternoon in the Cathedral Chamber, sadly. She was saying that she had brought her saxophone down there once and played it alone, which must have been an eerie and fantastic experience. She asks, unbidden, if I sing and I bounce at the opportunity, having missed it last time I came!
So, we come to the last chamber, the chamber of skeletons, so called because various creatures fall n occasionally and this cave contains the sad remains of a wombat and a wallaby, partly calcified due to the fall of the limestone droplets.
Our guide tells us about the cave and then slips in at the end that I want to sing here and to hang back a little afterwards if anyone wants to listen…
Unnervingly, a surprisingly large (to my mind!) number of people hang back at the end – a dozen of two…
I swallow my nervousness with an introduction, the guide has already said who and why, so I merely introduce the song – An Irish number called ‘The Voice’ by Eimear Quinn. I edit heavily in my head before singing a truncated version, and then find a slightly lower note than required, just in case I end up squeaking by accident…

I open my mouth and pour light notes into the enormous silicate void which surrounds me. The stalactites glint in the low light, phasing from blue and green to purple and red in the still-playing light show. I gather in confidence and the cave falls silent; the people on the stairs all turn to listen and I intensify and deepen the sound, feeling the depth of the cavern pull at my meagre tones; I open and feel even my more powerful sound being stolen from my lungs but finally, as I near the end, it fills the space with a delicate reverberation and sympathetic vibration. It is quite haunting. I finish, and smile bashfully, to a round of applause and a request that I do it again! I am not sure I could…
It is a profound experience, singing to so silent an audience in such a stunning and ethereal location. But they were merely humans enjoying some music…
When I sang here, in this glittering, echoing vault, the cave was listening too…

The next cave tour begins the moment we exit the first – into the warm, humid air we trot, enjoy a brief moment of sunshine, then trot back under the Grand Arch to join the next one. This one is full of pink diamante apparently! We follow our guide eagerly into this next set of caverns. He shows us the way and we see a tiny corner of the vast underground water system, which shines blue with the pale light set into it; it is cloudy with calcium carbonate – so it is good for poorly tummies! It is also potable, so we are invited to fill oir bottles should we so wish. It is stunning here – and I manage to grab some lucky nice photographs of the still, pale blue water with its dropping stalactites casting odd silhouettes.
We are shown into cavern after cavern, some low, some high and vaulted, all quite glorious. The ceiling abounds with stalactites of every hue of orange and peach, scarves of stripey complexity and oxidised beauty, little grottoes of purest, glittering, twinkling white and pillars like vast candles, one of which is known as Lot’s Wife, as it has a certain feminine air to it. In one place, we watch a drip as it forms and wait with bated breath for it to gather enough momentum to do something; there is a unanimous and good natured cheer in the dank air as it falls and splats below. Some walls look as if they have been poured over with thick white icing. Photographs can’t catch all of this though, the damp; the light, wet, fragrant scent of wet rock, aeons old; the weight of time and water pressing above, around and in the air. It seems rather undignified for millennia of hard work on the part of mother nature to create the caves that it should be merely a playground for visitors, some of whom don’t treat it with the awe and wonder that it deserves…
We exit into the warm, fern-laden air which bats us gently like a warm blanket. I head for the car which I had to park in the far-distant car park above Jenolan, and I hear a dragonfly’s papery flutter in my ear. I drive us back to Katoomba where we know we are to meet with our final hurdle… The words every traveller, commuter or tourist fears and dreads…
‘Rail Replacement Bus Service’.
Hazel spots a van at the back of the building where the cars live and goes off to investigate – she comes back grinning – she asked the way and we have been offered a lift!
It turns out to be an enormous truck, three people in the front, three in the back and a massive trailer on the back. Dave is driving, with his son Dylan in the front seat. Hazel gets to chat to him as we go along. Dave was originally going to take us to Katoomba station, but it dawns on him when we get a little closer that he has to pick up his daughter anyway so agrees to take us to Penrith, which is much closer to Sydney and a far shorter bus ride – hooray!
We pick up his daughter, Rhianna, who asks lots and lots of questions and who has been to a party. She is next to me in the back. She is five.
She seems quite sweet as we set off… She is confident, bubbly and rather fun. She also has a packet of dinosaurs, a paper hat and a goody bag…
By the time we get to Penrith, I have been beaten with balloons, poked, prodded, hugged, accidentally kicked, had stickers stuck on my face, a hat put on, bubbles blown up my nose, a paper squeaker blown in my ear, a toy whistle hidden behind my bum and my glasses stolen…
I have been mauled by a small, blonde five-year-old.
Sigh.
Still, it was worth it for the lift! They seem like a lovely family and Dave was a complete star for taking us so far… We don’t have too far to go on the bus and then we hopped on a train to Sydney Central, which took us back nearly home again, where we got a taxi – what a faff!
Still, home and splat was good – we’d nibbled and grazed on the way back from Katoomba so we just gave up on dinner and went to bed… Such a busy day!

J