Spelunking on the Seashore

Early on the last day of our road tour we headed South to Lake Cave for some spelunking.

A gentle slope leads to a spectacular cave entrance which contains it's own small forest of Karri you can see in the outside pic. Some of the trees are over 400 years old. Leading under the Eastern edge of the Doline floor, a series of steeply sloping fissures lead down into the dark cave.

The cavern floor is covered in water to a depth of about 1m, and the flow of water from East to West has been calculated at 23,040 litres per hour. Unfortunately the drought in this region is causing the 'lake' to dry up, and this is starting to severely disturb the fragile environment of the cave.

We 'broke the rules' (unknowingly) by bringing our mini tripod into the cave; you can see the great difference between having the flash blaring vs putting on the timer for a kinder exposure. The group was having one of these quiet - listening in the dark experiences - when I snapped this shot of Greg; he's sitting in front of some 'shawl' formations. Not impressed...

Starting to drive North towards Perth, we followed the coast into Dunsborough and Busselton. We'd been to Busselton last year already, on a hurried trip to catch the sunset from the town's historic jetty. This year we had a little more time to stroll the white sand beaches, and contemplate how in the world we ended up in Perth. We didn't think to hard though.

The heritage jetty extends almost two kilometres out over Geographe Bay, and is the longest timber jetty (pier) in the Southern Hemisphere. It's 140 years old, and has been ravaged by both fire and cyclones, yet still remains a popular spot to fish, swim, scuba dive and snorkel. We've never checked it out, but apparently there is a great underwater observatory at the end of the jetty, where you can take in all the colourful fish as well.