Day 71

12 April 2013

Our campground at Conto is in a national park and just around the corner is Lake Cave. There are limestone caves all along this area and as this one was close to our camp so decided we would give this one a go. We had looked at Jenolan Caves on our trip so we weren't really sure whether to expect more or less from this cave; however the cost of entry at $22 was about a quarter of the price of Jenolan. We really only decided to check this out as it has been boring rainy weather here and we would have done anything to get out of the caravan!

At the cave centre there is a small museum too that you can have a look through before going on a guided tour. There was 300 stairs to get down to this cave, way down - easy, back up - heavy breathing all around! The information the guide provided about the cave was very similar to the Jenolan cave tours. The cave was interesting as there was a lake through it and the reflections on the water from the cave walls was pretty spectacular.

This cave is also home to "the table" which was formed when the cave floor gave way and left two pillars holding up a piece of the floor. It is totally suspended there, nothing holding it up from underneath. Pretty cool.

This cave was great and if I hadn't have been to Jenolan first I would have thought it was amazing but the caves at Jenolan are filled with all different types of formations which were much more spectacular than this one. Still recommend for the money though. A unique thing here is that you can do some of the caves by yourself, and some are full on crawling, scaling walls etc to access them, they just provide you a headlamp. If we had of known this before we probably would have done this instead for something bit different but after being to lake cave we were all caved out.

The rest of the afternoon was spent having a quick drive through Margaret River and back to camp to pack up and head off to a farm stay 5km out of Margaret River. We really needed to do this as we needed power because the weather was just too crap!

Big Valley is a working sheep farm and the owners of the property are really friendly and helpful! There are animals everywhere, dogs, goats, sheep, birds and the facilities are rustic but very clean. The young lady who jumped on her dirt bike to show us to our site also gave us a few touristy things around here to do and suggested a brewery that has $10 pizzas and live music on Friday nights.

Don't mind if we do! This brewery was beautiful, nice building and xavier Rudd style live music and the pizzas....so good! Bacon, cherry tomato, rocket and Parmesan cheese...so good! Pint of beer on the side and we toasted Josh and Lauren Middleton's wedding day!

Carly & Joel

 

Posted with Blogsy