2026-05-14
The weather has been a bit damp this week, so, figuring that this was going to continue, we decided to go caving today, so last night I booked tickets for the Wombeyan Caves (Jenolan Caves are still closed and will be probably until next year).
This morning I checked the weather forecast, and it said gusts up to 25kph, so after breakfast (bacon and eggs on toast), I decided to put the awning away and found the reason it hadn't been flapping overnight when the breeze picked up, is because there was a considerable amount of water pooled on it. I left it half out but lowered on an angle while we popped down to the shops to get Lea some oat milk, but had to finish putting it away completely before we left. I didn't want to come back to find a damaged awning.
Having done all that, we set off south along Abercrombie Rd (the main road to Goulburn from here) for about an hour, before turning on to Wombeyan Caves Rd, this middle 6km or so is dirt, but in fairly reasonable condition (not Tasmanian level smooth dirt road, but the potholes were mostly only in the middle and avoidable, and the corrugations minimal). We arrived at about 11:45 or so, and our guided tour was at 1pm. We considered doing the other cave we booked (unguided) first, but the helpful guide outside the office suggested we could save walking up the hill twice by doing the unguided cave after the guided one. So instead we had sandwiches I'd prepared earlier, and then wandered around the grounds looking at the wildlife. Of which despite the horde of school children there on an excursion, there was still enough to look at.
About 12:30 we wandered up to the meeting point for the first cave tour. Stopping along the way to avoid some school children. We met the other couple on our tour (a tour with only four guests - luxury!) and a little while later, our guide John Mango turned up. We waited around a bit for the school group to exit the cave and then off we went. John's been a guide here for 37 years, which seems like a very long time to be wandering the same caves, but he still had a good banter and we all enjoyed our tour. Below are a selection of images from this cave, and the unguided cave we did on our own afterwards.
After that, we were pretty much walked out, so we returned to the car and drove back to Oberon, keeping a keen eye out for roos on the side of the road. We arrived in town about 5pm, and opted to go to the local pizza place for dinner. It was tasty, but not up to my standards, but I also didn't have to cook it, and because we ate in, there's no washing up to do either.