Naracoorte Caves

About a 4 hr drive to the south of Adelaide is a fantastic little group of limestone caves that would make anyone wonder. Cam & I went on a camping weekend in style with the "Ant," a tent, and a blow up mattress that we just bought. Ahhh, reminds me of nights in Connecticut with Maryellen & Alex. There was this fountain on the way in the town of Keith, built to commemorate all the springs in the area.


Cam & I had a contest to see who's image from the caves was the best. In looking through our images to put up this blog, I concede the contest (but he will have to read the blog to know that, which I am hoping he won't do & therefore I won't have to pay the beer). This shot was the reflection pool.

Just to review for those who haven't been in a cave recently, as water seeps through the limestone, it picks up minerals and drips from the ceiling can form stalactites that hang down or stalagmites that build from the floor up.


You've probably seen stalagmites & stalactites yourself, but are you familiar with straws? Straws are hollow & very thin, hence why they appear in this photo almost as icicles.


The caves are a part of the World Heritage list for their extensive fossil collection. Over 100 species for a huge chunk of time (thousands of years) fell through 8 holes into the caves. Some of those were kangaroos and koalas that still are in Australia today. Others were megafauna (large animals) that are now extinct. What you see me checking out is the cave floor just below one of those openings. Flinders University people & others have been excavating this cave since its discovery in the 1960s, and have millions of bones to still record.

Finally the last tour we went on was at night to see the bats. Its difficult to tell in this shot, but we saw hundreds leaving a cave to gather insects just after dusk. See the black dots in the upper part of the cave opening? Also check out the other visitor in the lower left. We didn't even know the possum was there until downloading the photos!