Our final day in Australia started much the same as many others have by packing up the room and loading up the car although today we seemed to do it all a little bit slower as we have plenty of time. A direct drive to the airport would be about 3 hours but as ever we had a number of things to see and do on the way. Our first stop was at our final cave Ngilgi Cave, this is a semi-guided cave meaning that you are taken down as a group and the cave is explained to you then you are left to your own devices to explore for as long or as little as you want which we both really liked as it meant that you didn’t have to rush anything. This cave is very different again to the other three, you visit a number of chambers and each is a little different to the last, also it has a more rugged feel about it as in many places you are climbing down stairs that have been cut into the rock and quite low tunnels where you definitely have to bend over to get through or risk coming out with a lot of bumps on your head! The Europeans discovered the cave in the 1890s and the first tourists were taken down in 1899. The Edwardians had to make quite a journey to even reach the cave let alone explore it, the early tourists had to climb down a rope ladder and spent between 6 – 10 hours underground exploring the caves by lantern. Apparently this was all done by the men in three piece suits and the women in full dresses with petticoat and corsets! You still climb down the same entrance that was used by these early tourists but thankfully they have put stairs in now rather than making you climb the road ladder, once you have reached the first level you have a choice of directions, to the left is the Cathedral chamber a massive cavern that apparently has wonderful acoustics, in the early 1900s a famous opera singer gave a performance in ‘the cathedral’ and they lowered a piano down to accompany her – we weren’t told if it was a grand piano but to be honest which ever type it was it would have been a major achievement! We walked down to the bottom marvelling at the formations which have taken millions of years to create, they say that in this cave the formations grow 1 cm every 100 years which just about blows your mind when you see the size of some of them. We climbed back up the stairs and decided against the ‘tunnel of doom’ which they have put in for kids both big and small, basically you have to crawl through on your hands and knees but we did go round to the right where there are a series of caves linked by differing size walkways, most were ok but a few were very narrow and quite low giving a real sense of adventure. There were a couple of smaller caves on the way to the main cave on this side which is 37 metres below the surface and contains virtually every type of crystal we have seen this trip, it has been dry for over 100 years so isn’t currently growing but as they discussed yesterday they are not quite sure why they dry out so it may well become wet again. We spent about an hour walking around on our own then made our way back up to the surface to continue our journey to the airport. We stopped at the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, yesterday we went to the tallest lighthouse in Australia, today we went to the shortest but in fairness it is on quite a slope so is quite high and is visible for 35km out to sea although they only run the light during the night. This is actually a heritage park as they have kept the stone buildings the original lighthouse keepers lived in. Again there were three lighthouse keepers and their families who all had identical houses, they worked 4 hours on and 8 hours off and were basically subsistence farmers as in the last lighthouse. Unlike the keepers at Cape Leeuwin, no ships could land anywhere near here so they had to make the days journey to collect supplies and as the men couldn’t leave the light this task was normally carried out by the women, in addition, they had the same winding mechanism to turn the light as the last lighthouse but as it is so short they had to winch the weight to the top every hour! We also found out today that they didn’t get paid holiday but if they decided to take a holiday they had to completely move out of their houses, take all their belongings so that the replacement lighthouse keeper could move his family in, so most didn’t take holiday but they only tended to stay as lighthouse keepers for about 5 years although one did last 22 years! Chris actually made it to the top of this one which was great as he could see the light up close. We came back down and continued our journey, for as much as possible we drove along the coast and came across a bay where there were hundreds of kite surfers so many that I am surprised they didn’t crash into each other, we stopped in Fremantle to change out of our shorts and t-shirts as we think the UK will be a bit cooler, then continued our drive to the airport. We arrived at the car hire about 7pm and by the time we had unloaded the car, handed back the keys and got to the terminal the check in was open so it was just a case of going through security and finding a spot in the lounge to sit until the flight leaves at 10:20pm local time, we will be back in the UK some time in the next 26 hours!
