Capricorn Caves...and bats...

About 27kms from Rocky is a town called The Caves and past the town of The Caves are the Capricorn Caves,

www.capricorncaves.com.au

 the only wheelchair accessible caves in Australia..(well one of them is wheelchair accessable)

I was really excited to see some BATS in the caves...they have ghost bats and bent wing bats which are so tiny and adorable...

As you can see i was really excited to see some bats...
should I wear the mask into the caves? hahaha

Me posing in front of bat plants...in my bat shirt...waiting for bat tour...

 We head off in our small group into the caves, with awesome fig trees, roots and vines coming from 20+ metres above...Our tour guide explains how many different bats are in the area and then....
"but its too cold at this time of year, they have all moved down deep into the caves for warmth, you wont see a single one today" !!!!! Oh well...Will have to do more caving down the track...lucky I didnt buy the mask!

mmm...whats this nice surface we are walking on? So smooth...
 It was Guano (compacted bat poo!) Note..do not slip over..
They had such a good supply of it here that they mined it for a few years...tonnes of the stuff was mined!

'The Harp' formation made up of stalegmites, staletites and columns.

Going down...

down...

We then made our way to "The Cathedral" 15m underground.

It is a proper church set up and people, 'crazy bat people' get married there...and has such good acoustics that they have even have opera there!

They even turn off all the lights (and I mean all the lights) it was pitch black! and play a CD

Going up... noone else in the tour wanted to go to the top of the choir steps..
but, when you think about it...its not really 10m high if you are 15m below ground..its like jumping in a 5m hole...hahahaha
still felt pretty high though, on rickety old wooden steps!

Finally talked George into coming up for a photo

 Heading down a bit more...

George looking up into a skylight to the sunshine above

 Then the tour guide says...follow the strip lights through 'the zig zag' back to the cave entrance!..I will meet you all there...
So, off we go!....

"Hey its pretty tight round here..."

and here....

really tight here!...

And in my constant search in the dark for bats (i had been shining our camera flash into all the dark bits we didnt go into hopeing there might be just one who didnt go into the deep..) We were in the longest skinny part of the 'zig zag' and I realised that the crack we were crawling along was really really high..so I shined my camera up as far as it would go......

I SHOULDNT HAVE.....

George was ahead of me, I was the last of our group....I came hurtling out of that crack quicker than Yusain Bolt! pushed George to get out quicker, he wanted to go back and take photos but I just pushed him out and said NO...
What was in the crack with me???... Giant Cave Spiders...Ok they were several metres above my head...but they run fast...real fast! But not as fast as ME!

Those of you who know me...I did run but.. I didnt cry, I didnt think they were crawling all over me, doing some sort of ninja to make sure...and most importantly I did not have nightmares about them. I think that I am getting better  :-)

And then we had two very bouncy, noisy, high rope ladders to cross to get out...

All in all, we had a really good time, even though there were no bats and there were giant cave spiders...

And just because we have too much time on our hands and I thought it was funny!...