Caves and Earthquakes

Originally published on March 08, 2024

 Good evening, avid Wild Hucklberrys followers. We have been busy traveling around the Blue Mountains region West of Sydney as of late with very little cell service. On Wednesday, we travelled to the Jenolan Caves to get our spelunk on (spell check is telling me that spelunk is not a word). 

As it turns out, Australia (or at least NSW) is quite awful at communicating road closures, which made getting to the caves an adventure in itself. An inquisitive reader may ask why there are so many road closures (and hiking closures and 4x4 trail closures, etc), and to that we say, "I'm glad you asked!" 

The answer is the horrible 2019 wildfires that ripped through the forests right before the Flu, err... Covid hit. Much of the vegetation became un-alived, resulting in fewer root systems, resulting in unstable soil conditions. Pair that with severe rain and flooding in 2020 and 2021 and one has major mudslides and severe washouts. 

Fortunately, we were able to navigate to the caves (several u-turns later), excited to purchase our tickets and begin our tour. Unfortunately, we had to wait two hours for the tour to begin. In the Japanese spirit of Shouganai, we settled in with a couple of hot teas. Server looked at us weird when we asked for iced tea, but one day, Australia and the UK will discover the simple pleasure of placing ice in one's tea on a hot day.

Thanks to the outgoing, friendly nature of Australians, the time did go by quickly. Another waiting group struck up a conversation with us nearly immediately. And by group, we mean a single individual, Raymond, who did 100% (no less) of the talking. We heard about his travels through the US in the 90's, weathering Hurricane Andrew in Miami, his arm surgeries and successive poor recoveries, and how he introduced an Eastern long-necked turtle to the lake outside the very caves we were waiting to tour, puzzling scientists in the area before simply making it the cave's unofficial mascot (they are not native to the area). 

Right, on to the caves. The Jenolan Caves are about 430 million years old, and have all the usual cave features. With the electric lights out, the tour guide asked us to use the "torches" on our phones to get through the dark, steep passageways. That kind of improvising would never happen in the US. Sigh. 

Another noteworthy fact about the cave is that it has been used as a Church/place of worship for hundreds of years. In fact, there are still services on the holidays and weddings held regularly. We're told the acoustics are great, but sadly, Tori refused to demonstrate the acoustics by singing. Maybe next time.

Seeing the beautiful features of calcite deposits and crystals really puts unto perspective the speed at which geologic time passes. An early tourist from the 1910s broke off an active stalactite as a souvenir. It has grown 3mm since. 

One of our fellow cave tourists asked what they did during earthquakes, to which the guide responded they usually do not even realize one had occurred when they are in the cave. Typically, they receive a frantic call on the land lines throughout the cave from the office making sure an earthquake did't cause a collapse. "What earthquake?" This makes sense, considering the cave is extremely fragile, and if earthquakes did cause regular major damage, it wouldn't be worth touring.

This happens to be a nice segue into what occurred as we were typing about the caves. Australia experienced its largest earthquake in over a year: magnitude 4.3. Ethan thought a truck had hit the hotel we were in, and Tori thought it was, well, an earthquake. It was surprisingly violent.  

Well, this has gone on too long now, as this was originally going to be a short post. If we did proper editing, maybe it could be. Time to get some rest.   

The virtually unsupported ladder in the above 

picture was installed in ~1900. It is still used today

Before this certain road was closed, it was the main entrance, and involved driving through the natural tunnel where the cave entrance is.