So after my exams finished on Thursday my family went to the Jenolan Caves! I bought this voucher off Groupon for my Mum for Mother's Day, and my brother bought another one for our Dad so that the whole family could go. The voucher came with breakfast and a self-guided tour of Nettle Cave. My brother and I also bought tickets for a cave tour of Lucas Cave using the buy 1 get 1 free Entertainment Voucher. The place also offered some free bushland/river/lake walks.
After that, we headed to Lake Lyell, then Lithgow where we looked at some lookouts (Hassan's Walls Lookout and Bracey's Lookout) and lastly to the Three Sisters.
Lucas Cave Tour:
Not for everyone. If you like the idea of going to caves, then this would be worth it, but if you're not sure if you'd like it or not, it probably would only be worth it if you bought it at discounted price. Get a 50% off pass off me (I have like 8 that expire in one year) or get an entertainment voucher. If you like the idea of going into natural caves, do an adventure caving tour.
Nettle Cave Self-Guided Tour:
Definitely a highlight. It's free and definitely worth the 45 minutes to go through it. Even if you don't have the acoustiguide it's an amazing experience walking through the Devil's Coach House, and going through those tall steps in Nettle Caves to view the Devil's Coach House from above.
Blue Lake Walk:
Another highlight. Free again and a great leisurely walk through the bushland, next to the amazingly Blue Lake to spot some platypi.
Chisolm's Restaurant:
Worst restaurant my family has ever been to. If you go to Jenolan Caves and are staying overnight, be prepared to fork out about $30 for a mediocre meal. DO NOT order any of the 'of the day' menu items. Actually, it's probably best to bring a microwaveable or instant noodle dinner to eat in your lodge.
Caves House Lodge:
Only just worth it with the voucher. They have a heater, small tv and little kitchenette so it satisfies all the basic needs. Booking a room in Caves House or Jenolan Cottages may be more worth it for the experience, but obviously will cost more. Booking at the budget Gatehouse will be more worth it for money, but I'm not sure if they have heaters for freezing nights. Gift shop is pretty good too.
Lake Lyell:
A good view, but not too exciting.
Hassan's Walls Lookout in Lithgow:
One of the highlights. Definitely an amazing view once out on the long platform and also a great experience to go to that small cave rock that looks out on everything underneath. Don't bother with Bracey's Lookout.
The Three Sisters:
Another highlight. Great experience going down the steep steep steps and looking at everything from above. The Giant Stairway also looks like a heap of fun, but leave a lot of time to do that since it's 800 steep steps one way.
Also, if you book a cave tour, you can get a Jenolan Caves Pass, which entitles you to 50% off any cave tour for as many times as you like within the next year. I've got a fair few of these so if you are planning on hitting up Jenolan Caves in the next year, let me know and I can lend you my passes!
Now I'll go into more detail of everything in chronological order:
Day 1:
$32 per person
1.5 hours, 910 steps, difficulty level: medium
The brochures and information and everything actually says that it's strenuous/intense/hard, but I found it relatively alright. The steps aren't steep and the group goes at a leisurely pace, resting every now and then at different chambers, so it's not that difficult. You do feel a bit out of breath because of the steps, but it's nothing you can't handle.
As for the cave itself, I thought it was amazing. It's great listening to the tour guide talk about all the amazing features of the cave, and seeing all the crazy stalactites and stalagmites. The cave is also extremely large, and it makes you feel like an ant climbing through an ant colony.
I chose Lucas Cave because apparently it's the best cave and it's also got the most photographed Broken Column.
A column is created when a stalactite and a stalagmite meet up, but this Broken Column is broken because at the bottom of the chamber there is a large pool of water. Since water is slightly acidic and slowly erodes the rocks at the bottom, the bottom bit of the column has been lowering in altitude whilst the top part of the column remains still. Since the column is not strong enough to support itself with the lowering floor, the column has broken in the middle.
The Broken Column was in the 'Exhibition Chamber', which is the largest chamber in Lucas Caves and I think possible the Jenolan Caves, with a 2000 squared metre area.
My favourite cave features were the 'shawls', with some formations being called 'The Curtain' or 'The Boarding School Blanket', the latter named because the shawls were so thin:
One of the chambers in Lucas Cave, 'The Cathedral' was used for a church service yonks ago. They even had an organ player at the top and it is said that this chamber has perfect acoustics. In the last ten or so years, they've had several opera and string concerts being played in this chamber and even now the cave has two Church services every year: Easter Sunday and Christmas Day.
The one thing I don't like about this is that I expected it to be kind of natural, but instead they carved out so much of the cave to make way for lights, stairs and ramps that it doesn't seem all that special anymore.
Apparently the Jenolan Caves are the oldest known caves on Earth, and the majority of these caves are river caves.
If they're so old and precious, why destroy it all for tourism to make money and let people come in and destroy it even further?
Apparently touching the limestone rocks in the caves causes the rock to 'die' and go grey/black.
My brother calls BS on this one. The tour guide kept saying "DO NOT- Absolutely DO NOT- touch any of the rocks. You see this patch of grey/black, well that is the dead limestone because everyone has been touching it! There is acid in the oils in our skin that erodes it over time and because this is a heritage, you must not touch it."
It's just so ridiculous because they've actually carved out so many rock formations and pathways and added all these unnatural things for the sake of tourism, but once tourists come in they say don't touch it because the acid in your skin can minutely erode all these rocks that we've chiselled out. I found out later that they have adventure caving, where you get overalls, safety gear, helmets and lights and go through the caves naturally. I think that would have been a much better experience, and I might do that some other time.
Overall, it was definitely a great experience. I loved it, but my brother and mother said they expected more.
Free of charge
45 minutes, 476 steps, level: easy
Once again this is supposed to be strenuous/intense/hard, but it was actually extremely easy.
Definitely the highlight of the trip was the Devils Coach House Cave, which is the entrance to the Nettle Cave. It is absolutely beautiful.
It is definitely an amazing feeling standing there and looking at this huge open rock formation, seeing all the trees and bushland and feeling like you're in another world.
The entrance to Nettle Cave only starts after you walk through The Devils Coach House.
It's a self-guided tour which means you get an acoustiguide and at various marked points along the tour you can just press a number and listen to the information they tell you. Whilst you can only get the acoustiguide if you stay overnight at Jenolan Caves House or have previously purchased another cave tour and therefore received a Jenolan Caves Pass, there is free access to Nettle Cave even if you don't have the acoustiguide. There is a place where you are supposed to scan your barcode pass into the Nettle Cave, but when we went up to it you could just go through anyway.
Frankly, the acoustiguide wasn't very interesting except for number 10, which talked about how the different cave formations occur.
Cave formations are formed from water running through the cave and depositing limestone crystals as the water evaporates away. Stalactites occur from slow dripping water depositing on the roof of the cave, therefore causing large spikes hanging down. Stalagmites occur from fast dripping water depositing on the floor of the cave, therefore causing large spikes climbing upwards. Helictites grow in all sorts of shapes and directions, some curly and some directly horizontal, as a result of water diffusing through the capillaries in the rocks. Stromatolites are rounded formations that are formed in layers and move towards the light.
The stromatolites in Nettle Cave look like huge lobsters. This is because there are two huge openings in the cave, and since these stromatolites move towards the light, it causes them to round out like lobsters.
Free of charge
30 minutes, 700m, level: easy
This Blue Lake Walk was near the Nettle Cave Tour so we went on it after we finished the tour. It was nice and short, while still being pretty amazing. It was just a bushland walk by the side of Blue Lake. As you guessed it, the lake is pretty darn blue. It's the colour of washing your paintbrush of its navy blue paint in a little tub of water. Yes, THAT blue.
It was also pretty cool that there were a few platypi swimming around, and as you keep walking you find out that it's actually a dam.
Unfortunately, that was the only walk we went on because the others took longer and it was getting dark and super cold. If it weren't for that, I would definitely have liked to do the other walks too.
After the walks we had dinner at Chisolm's Restaurant. In short, this restaurant sucks.
My brother and mother ordered the soup of the day, which was a pumpkin and sweet potato soup that came with a roll of bread and a cube of butter (for the bread). After tasting one spoonful though, they both hated it. My mother said it was too watery and so I suggested putting the cube of butter into the soup and adding more salt. She literally just chucked the butter it, mixed it up, sprinkled lots of salt, tasted it, then said, "This is MUCH better. But even now it's BARELY EDIBLE."
Even my dad, who is usually fine with anything you throw at him, was just appalled by the dish, constantly repeating how it was "not up to standard".
Unfortunately, my brother also got the risotto of the day, which was mushroom.
In short, if you want to go to the Jenolan Caves, do not, I repeat, DO NOT order any of the 'of the day' menu items. Even the other stuff that we got for the mains (beef tenderloin for my dad, grilled salmon for my mum and pan-fried duck for me) were alright, but definitely not worth the $30 they were priced at.
If you're thinking of going to the Jenolan Caves, perhaps the best idea would be to precook dinner and just microwave it, or even bring some instant noodles to make.
The groupon voucher advertised it as "Jenolan Caves House", which I thought meant we would be staying in the actual Caves House, a heritage-listed Grand Victorian era hotel. However, in the description it actually says we stay in one of the Mountain Lodge rooms.
To be honest I felt duped because I felt, even with the discounted voucher of $149 for two overnight, it was too expensive for a tiny room in the Mountain Lodge when I thought we were going to be staying in Caves House.
Sure, it had heating and a little kitchenette, but it just wasn't super great.
I did find it funny though on how the room my mum and I were in was D1. What a coincidink.
They also have budget and backpacker style accommodation, as well as self-contained cottages that might be nice, but I'm not too sure what the price is.
The gift shop and the guest lounge were also alright, but the guest lounge didn't have much to offer, especially as it was way too cold even with the fire burning. The so-called library also was not a library, as it had only a few books, most of which were for children.
Day 2:
Breakfast was much better. But it doesn't take a genius to get basic bacon and eggs right. The good thing was that my family had really low expectations for breakfast and we just thought, "If the food sucks we'll just take a lot of their boxed cereals", so at least it was a pleasant surprise.
This was a good stop to go to. Definitely memorable, but not fantastic. Lake Lyell's somewhere near Lithgow and it's a huge lake that's pretty cool and is also a huge dam.
The entrance per car is like $5, but if you tell the guy that you're just going to be about 15 minutes because you wanted to see it as a point of attraction, they let you in for free.
This was a definite highlight, and one of the best memories of the trip. My mum kept saying that this was so much better than the actual caves. It's pretty high up on the mountain so you've got a fair bit of driving to do, but it's definitely worth it. There's a recently installed platform to walk across right up to near the edge:
And the view of everything on the ground is really amazing:
There was also this small cave/rock thing that had a little entrance about 1m high and it was pretty cool. The view from here was also amazing:
The coolest thing though was climbing up on the rock, which was probably only 2-3m tall, but since it was already pretty high up and extremely windy it kept feeling like I was getting pushed off the cliff! A great experience nonetheless.
There was another lookout called Bracey's, but after going to Hassan's Walls Lookout, it's definitely not worth it going to Bracey's.
Except for climbing up another larger rock of course:
Last up we headed to the Three Sisters and walked down the stairs so that we'd get to sit in the middle of one of the sisters. The walk isn't that difficult, all in all it probably takes 15 minutes and the stairs going down are not that many. However, the stairs are pretty steep though, so you feel slightly out of breath by the time you walk back up, but it's not that bad at all.
Once you go down the stairs you get to sit down on this little bench right underneath a sister and you can look up at all the steep steps you have to climb back up.
But even crazier than that is the fact that the stairs continue all the way down to ground level, and the steepness of the steps are maintained. Not surprising that this is called The Giant Stairway. All in all it's about 800 steep steps, but I didn't go past the three sisters point. My brother and dad went down about 2/3 of the way and came back up and they were dripping with sweat even though it was super cold.
I definitely would like to try the Giant Stairway another day, but definitely not after a full day's worth of going through caves and walking around in the freezing cold.
Overall, it was a super fun experience and anyone who's thinking of going to the Jenolan Caves and surrounding areas - it's definitely worth it!
