Remember that post about caves that I promised in July?

The Lleeuwin-Naturaliste Peninsula in South-West Australia is famous for a few reasons. The surf is renowned, the wine region is acclaimed, and the sand blown onto bedrock by a wild surf and winds has created one of the world's best Karst systems, riddled with fascinating caves. (Karst is landscape made of limestone riddled with caves - water dissolves limestone, this water + limestone produces the beautiful formations found in limestone caves).

Most locals and tourists are familiar with the current four tourist caves - Jewel Cave, Lake Cave, Mammoth Cave and Ngilgi Cave (which is still known by it's former name - Yallingup Cave - to many). Recently DEC has opened two "Adventure Caves" (no lighting) - Giants and Calgardup cave, but there are many other caves here and many more were open to the general public in the early 1900's. Some were developed early on, but never actually ended up open to the public.

Cavers know where they are, and now there are restoration programs, and restricted access and such, but unfortunately in the years between much vandalism has occurred. I wonder how it feels to be one of these fools who in a split second stumble destroyed something that took thousands of years to form.

So, on to the caves! Just a note, the majority of the info here has come from the WASG website and all but the photos of Yallingup Cave (which I took a few weeks ago) are from that website too. Go take a look at it! It has a bunch more info and more stunning photos (as well as some of shocking cave vandalism).

( Many photos ahead )

All these photos (and others) with more info can be found here.

Remember that post about caves that I promised in July?

The Lleeuwin-Naturaliste Peninsula in South-West Australia is famous for a few reasons. The surf is renowned, the wine region is acclaimed, and the sand blown onto bedrock by a wild surf and winds has created one of the world's best Karst systems, riddled with fascinating caves. (Karst is landscape made of limestone riddled with caves - water dissolves limestone, this water + limestone produces the beautiful formations found in limestone caves).

Most locals and tourists are familiar with the current four tourist caves - Jewel Cave, Lake Cave, Mammoth Cave and Ngilgi Cave (which is still known by it's former name - Yallingup Cave - to many). Recently DEC has opened two "Adventure Caves" (no lighting) - Giants and Calgardup cave, but there are many other caves here and many more were open to the general public in the early 1900's. Some were developed early on, but never actually ended up open to the public.

Cavers know where they are, and now there are restoration programs, and restricted access and such, but unfortunately in the years between much vandalism has occurred. I wonder how it feels to be one of these fools who in a split second stumble destroyed something that took thousands of years to form.

So, on to the caves! Just a note, the majority of the info here has come from the WASG website and all but the photos of Yallingup Cave (which I took a few weeks ago) are from that website too. Go take a look at it! It has a bunch more info and more stunning photos (as well as some of shocking cave vandalism).

( Many photos ahead )

All these photos (and others) with more info can be found here.