16 Feb: Sink Holes and Caves

Staying an extra day turned out to be a good move because there was a lot more to see in Mount Gambier than what we first thought, and it turned out to be a stinking hot day so having an air conditioned cabin came in handy.

We started the morning by going for a walk to a few of the lookouts around the lakes.

Mount Gambier from half way up the walk to Castle Tower.

The Cabbage Whites were still out in droves.

 

Castle Tower.

The tower again.

The view from Castle Tower across Valley Lake.  Valley Lake was very nice but appeared slightly frumpy when compared to the pristine blueness of the Blue Lake.

When we got tired of looking at lakes we went downtown to look at sink holes, specifically the Engelbrecht Cave right in the middle of town.  

They had to come out before we could go in.  It's a big cave but we were only allowed in a little bit of it.

 

Our Mr Engelbrecht was an entrepreneur and distiller, who originally poured all the waste (slimper) from his distillery into the street.  The slimper was caustic and stank a bit, causing the townsfolk to kick up a stink of their own so, with the urging of the local health inspector, Mr E toddled off and started pouring the waste down a spare sinkhole which happened to be on his land.  He got all entrepreneurial and started charging other people and businesses (such as the local butcher) to put their rubbish down his caves and sinkholes as well.

Spoiler alert: we got to see the other side of the slimper disposal hole.  The slimper stains were still there.

 

Time rolled on and filling up random sinkholes and caves was no longer considered to be an acceptable method of rubbish disposal.  By 1929 the District Council of Mount Gambier owned the land and, considering the cave now full of rubbish, sealed it.   Then they opened it again in 1964 and had another look before deciding that it was still full of rubbish and neither big not interesting and there was nothing to be gained by investigating it further.  Which didn't stop the local teenagers from skipping school on very hot days, crawling into the cave over the mountains of rubbish, and swimming in the water at the back of the cave.  Roll on to 1974, the local Lions Club had removed a whole heap of rubbish and another couple of cave divers took a sticky beak and decided that Engelbrecht's Cave was actually very interesting indeed.  

In fact, people come from all over now to dive in Engelbrecht's cave, starting off in this deceptively small pool and exploring caverns and caves under a rather large portion of Mount Gambier.

 

Before we even set foot in the cave we saw a map of the extent of the caverns under town and let me tell you, I would be very wary about buying a house in some parts of Mount Gambier, lest one morning I wake up at the bottom of new sinkhole with a cave diver knocking at my door.

The remnants of the Butcher's rubbish, with behind it the steep steps used by divers to access the second (and much squeezier) diving pool.

 

Mount Gambier didn't seem too worried about sinkholes.  'They don't happen often!' our tour guide breezed.  'About once every 10 years!'  Which I guess was acceptable odds if you weren't the one that fell in.

We visited another sinkhole in town, this time in a beautiful rose garden park in the city centre.  Blissfully ignoring the whole tunnels underground thing associated with sinkholes, Mount Gambier built a beautiful new Art Gallery/Museum right on the edge of this particular sinkhole.  

 

More sinkholes may have awaited us but we were all sink holed out and had other delights yet to discover.  With bated breath, quivering in anticipation, we went to view the World Class Cinematic Experience that was the Volcano movie.  We spent an hour transfixed as the narrator bounced around over the screen, shirt artlessly flapping open to bare his dirty singlet, crashing through undergrowth in breathless pursuit of volcanic rocks, channeling his inner Bear Grylls/David Attenborough while animated volcanoes blasted cartoon magma behind him. Despite (or possibly because of) his antics we came out of the movie both slightly bemused and far more educated about the lakes and caves of the limestone coast than when we went in. Although I don't think the movie will grace the silver screen at the Cannes Film Festival any time soon.

Feeling the need of refreshment, we wandered downtown and sampled the Blue Lake Lemonade, made by Molony's Cordials and only available in Mount Gambier. 

Do you want your tongue to be blue or green?

 

Then we went home and switched on the air conditioning.  Outside, fat raindrops heralded the arrival of the cool change.  To our knowledge, no-one fell down a sinkhole in Mount Gambier today and let me tell you, that is a very good thing.