Capricorn Caves Rockhampton, Queensland: kept in the dark

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This was published 9 years ago

Capricorn Caves Rockhampton, Queensland: kept in the dark

Deep inside a limestone cave, pitch black apart from a weak beam of light from my head torch, I’ve crawled into many people’s worst nightmare, Andrew Taylor reports

By By Andrew Taylor
Underground adventure: Capricorn Caves has been a tourist attraction since 1884.

Underground adventure: Capricorn Caves has been a tourist attraction since 1884.

Deep inside a limestone cave, pitch black apart from a weak beam of light from my head torch, I've crawled into many people's worst nightmare. Buried alive? Not quite. But it's beginning to make me nervous.

Working out which dusty tunnel leads back to cave guides Nicky and Ro is proving tricky. Her voice bouncing off the rock walls, Nicky urges me to soldier on, but all I encounter are rocky dead-ends or squeeze-points too narrow for my hips.

A problem-solving exercise for school groups on the adventure Nicky calls the Poo and Spew tour, on account of the habits of Capricorn Caves' permanent bat residents, is no less confounding for adults.

Steely nerves and a svelte figure are an advantage on a visit to the vast network of limestone karst caves hidden in rugged bushland near Rockhampton.

But a keen sense of adventure and the odd Salsa move to wiggle hips through tight squeezes like Fat Man's Misery and Skinny Man's Demise are far more useful.

So too is an appreciation of beauty. The Capricorn Caves are adorned with stalactites, stalagmites created drip-by-drip over millions of years, which hollow out the limestone hills of central Queensland.

Steely nerves and a svelte figure are an advantage.

Stalactites as thin as straws and old as time balance precariously next to delicate waves of calcite that hang like curtains and other mineral formations that sparkle like frozen waterfalls.

Several minutes tick by as I shuffle back and forth, feeling the smooth walls for a secret passage as my anxiety rises and claustrophobia closes in.

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Nicky eventually beckons me to turn around where she is propped up on a ledge, beaming like the Cheshire cat at her bewildered Alice in a dirt-streaked boiler suit and oily with sweat and grime.

Caving is not for the fashion-conscious. Hairnets worn under helmets art part of the safety kit because of the number of school groups, Ro says. They make you look like a fishwife but are the best safeguard against nits.

The cave system was discovered by the Olsen family in 1881 and has been a tourist attraction since 1884.

Some of the caverns are accessible by foot, including the astonishing Cathedral Cave, which hosts weddings and concerts. But that is to nibble on a corner of this Swiss cheese while missing its equally impressive core.

Nicky certainly lives up to the phrase "In omnia paratus" or ready for anything tattooed on her forearm as she wriggles through Fat Man's Misery at the beginning of the cave system, barely touching the sides.

"If you can't do that, there's always the Devonshire tea instead," she offers kindly, as my sides are squeezed like a cork in a champagne bottle.

Nicky and Ro coax me through impossibly narrow passageways like Rebirth and Caesarean, which live up to their painful names, and under an enormous jagged rock delicately wedged between the walls of cave. It's called Guillotine and given the moisture that seeps into the cave it seems a miracle it hasn't slipped and decapitated a visitor. Wending our way through the maze of tunnels, we occasionally encounter sunlight and trees roots feeling their way into the mountain, before zigzagging back into darkness. At the end of the tour, the sounds of the wedding taking place in the Cathedral Cave drift through the cave system. We hear the bride and groom say "I do" followed by the celebrant pronouncing them husband and wife. It is a surprisingly romantic denouement to the Poo and Spew Tour.

The writer was a guest of Tourism and Events Queensland.

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