Naracoorte Caves, South Australia – Watch out for the carnivorous Drop Bears!
Next day I was lucky that I had a sleep in, as the first of the day’s cave tours didn’t start till about 9am or past o’clock. Was just as well to get some extra Z’s after last night’s terrible sleep. And outside was looking a bit dreary and gloomy with thick fog blanketing town.
Took out the Lawnmower from he’s overnight room, and off down to the national park again. This time I knew where everything was so, it didn’t take as long to get there.
It was good to get off the bike as it was a chilly morning, and into the caves as their constant warm-ish humid temperatures were more like what I was used to back home. So as some of the people on the tour were finding it a little humid, I was in haven.
At the entrance of the info centre they have some sculptures of what the real size of some megafauna species were like. The best known are wombats. Here, the megafauna wombats, were the size of a Golf Mini instead of the size of an esky! .
Intricate array of caves. I booked in to do a tour of 3 caves, which pretty much took the whole day. It was pleasant and thankfully it didn’t rain, which meant that my gear outside the caves stayed dry, and so did I. There’s plenty more to see in the national park but I was pressed for time and $ so I thought 3 caves was enough to get the flavouring of the place.
This was one of the active dig sites that they have in one of the caves. As researchers get enough grant money, they will dig up a certain thickness layer of deposited silts to analyse. As they progressively get more and more grants, they are able to keep digging deeper into the cave layers to see where it hits solid rock. It’s quite a few metres deep and they’re still going!
One of the urban myths that people peddling in Australia to the innocent tourist is – ‘drop bears’. Just like this one.
However, I can assure you, that no, there are none of these ‘drop bears’ around; today. This was however true in when megafauna roamed Pangea because there was a giant flesh-eating koala about! Actually it was more like a ‘marsupial lion’ than a bear, but regardless which one it may have been. I wouldn’t wanted to have come face to face with one. *Gulp* The thing that blows my mind, is that this megafauna was around when humans started walking on this earth. And in the same continent – at the same time! This meant that the first nation’s people, the Aborigines, would have seen and had experience with these beasties. Wow.
After most the day at the caves national park, walking tours, picnicking lunch and more walking around in self-tours, I was tired and it was a lovely day out. Worth every cent! So back to Naracoorte and the same grandma-diner for more cake. This time I was however relieved that the miners had cleared town, gone to I don’t care, so I knew I would have a much better night. At least I now knew the method to lock myself in securely 🙂
Touring Valvoline 