Day 2 – Mount Gambier, are you okay?

My body clock is mean. We had 7.45 alarms but I was up and finalising yesterday’s blog at 6 o’clock. But once I ran out of things to be productive doing, we got up and ready to start the day. First stop, breakfast and coffee. 

Once we were sufficiently nourished, we started our hour journey towards Mount Gambier, headed to our first stop – Tantanoola Cave. This cave was discovered in the 1930s by a 16 year old boy named Boyce Lane, who was out collecting rabbits with his ferret on his family’s land; when his ferret failed to return after entering a rabbit hole and he decided to go in after it. This place was truly special. Our lovely tour guide lead us into the cave in relative darkness before gradually lighting the cave lights while teaching us about the creation of the cave. We learnt about the “Chocolate Fountain” centrepiece they have in there, which is a calcite column, which took over 500,000 years to form. She turned on more and more lights which revealed more and more absolutely stunning stalactites and stalagmites as the light expanded the room, while sharing information on the cave. This had to have been my favourite moment of today, as it was just so humbling being surrounded by one of Earth’s masterpieces. It was unfortunate to see that amongst all its beauty, there was so much damage that had been done by human hands in the years following its discovery. I say that figuratively and literally. The natural oils on our hands are acidic, and literally changes the appearance and composition of the calcite crystals, as well as the damage done through the common practice of sawing off the tips of the stalactites and stalagmites to take as souvenirs, literally taking hundreds of years of forming crystals away in a few minutes. Humans only need a relatively short time to destroy something that was left to grow and thrive for over half a million years. It is lucky that after the government bought the property from the private owner, that more safe practises have been put in place, preventing any further damage.

After dragging myself away from this stunning place, we started towards our next stop, the Blue Lake. But before we got there, we got distracted when we saw a sign for the Wind Farm Scenic Drive. I had never seen these in person before, so I was curious about seeing this form of green energy. They’re pretty massive, and it’s pretty impressive seeing them doing the work. 

Now, off to Blue Lake! It started raining just as we pulled up and parked, which was interesting, as is really did morph the colour of the water. When we first saw it, I was pretty unimpressed. Sure it was blue, but nothing notable. But as the sun came out, I finally got it. This lake is in a huge crater made from two dormant volcanoes side by side, with the average depth of 70m. As with everything we’ve seen on the Limestone Coast, it is primarily made of limestone, which means you’re really able to see the brightness of the blue along the edge against the lighter mineral, where it’s most shallow. 

The next destination was Engelbrecht caves, which is in Mount Gambier proper, but with one stop at a sinkhole in the middle of the city, which has been planted and manicured to make it a pretty cool attraction. It seems so so strange to me that people seem so comfortable living in a city that is basically on stilts. There are so many caves, tunnels and sinkholes under there, even under the highway! Perhaps ignorance is bliss. 

Engelbrecht cave is a little different to the ones we’ve seen already this trip. The others have been “wet caves”, which means that the rainwater seeps through the limestone from above, which transports and deposits calcium and minerals into the stalactites and stalagmites and columns that decorate the caverns. Engelbrecht cave is a dry cave, which still has water in it, but instead of seeping through the stone from above, it comes from below from the water table as the water level changes, the process moulds the environment in a different way, but leaves the walls and ceiling with holes that the water has worn away. The cave system is about 1.35km long, with 750m of that only recently being discovered by divers. This cave is divided into 2 sections: East side and West side. You gain access to these from a large sinkhole with stairs down, with the tour starting in the east side. This cave system looks very very different today than it did when it first had its roof collapse over 300,000 years ago. Humans, at it again, used the sinkhole as Mount Gambier’s first dump until the 1950s, when they stopped that and had volunteers work for 6 years attempting to remove the trash. They managed to remove 400 tonnes of it with nothing but buckets and shovels in that time, but unfortunately, there was still over 1000 tonnes left behind. That was when they stopped the removing the trash and constructed the stairs and paths down into the caves and opened it to the public. You can still see the many items of trash left behind, ranging from things like pottery, concrete and whisky canisters, to the whisky distillery and slaughterhouse bio waste that was dumped down a “solution point”, which is a shaft that reaches the surface. It is quite sad to see how much damage has been done to the wonders of the world at our hands. But the main attraction to this cave system is its crystal clear water at the bottom. The clarity of the fresh water makes for an interesting optical illusion when you look at the steps that lead down into the water for the divers. You look at it assuming it’s probably up to your knees, or waist at most, but it’s 170cm deep at the end of the stair case. Looking at a large white rock a bit further in, you are tempted to think that it’s maybe only 2 metres or so deep, but again, you’d be wrong as it’s about 6 metres deep there, and remains that deep for a stretch before opening up again in an open air cavern 120 metres away. I find the idea of cave diving fascinating, and would honestly like to meet someone who does this recreationally, as I have no idea what type of person would be happy and confident enough to do it!

Next we headed back up the stairs to the sinkhole to head through another door and down another staircase into the West Side part of the system. This is the side where divers had recently found and mapped the other 750 metres of the system after squeezing through a narrow chokepoint which is barely one person wide. After that chokepoint is another open cavern with air, which is located under the highway, where divers have reported being able to hear the traffic above! Our guide assured us that the limestone is more that stable with its 20 metres of rock above the 10 metres of air and water below.

Once we had our fill of being under ground, we got back on the road to our last scenic spot of the day: Umpherston Sinkhole, or its First Nations name Balumbul. This is another sink hole (seriously Mount Gambier, are you okay?) that has been beautifully manicured into a garden. This has to have been the most “touristy” location we’ve visited so far. It was extremely crowded, and honestly not as impressive as I had hoped it would be. I’d recommend just stopping at the first viewpoint when visiting, as travelling down the stairs into the throngs of people just didn’t feel worth it to us. The photos I’ve chosen to include of this area have been heavily edited to remove the crowd.

But with that ticked off, that finished up our day! We’re back at the motel now making the most of some downtime to finish up this blog post and find somewhere to head for dinner tonight. I have had a pretty magical day! Tomorrow will be just as packed and I’m sure to be a load of fun!