Beneath the Southern Cross, Part Two

The next day, Tuesday, rained non-stop but, again, we were fresh, we were up for the adventure. Our as of yet untapped stamina allowed us to enjoy ourselves on the cold rainy day. We drove our 6-berth camper van through the rolling hills of the wine country, ducked into a chocolate factory and a nuts and cereal shop. Margaret River is the largest town in this area so we window-shopped Margaret River, going in to more shops than we probably would have had we not been seeking breaks from the downpour. My mother was content inside the metal framed camper listening to the rain all afternoon.

The next day turned out to be one of the best on our trip. It didn’t rain which was a great start. We spent the morning at Canal Rocks and the afternoon at Ngigli Caves. Canal Rocks is a section of the coast where rocks jut straight out of the
sand at the edge of the ocean.

This phenomenon exists for some geological reason that scientists tried to explain to me via signs along the path. I didn't understand their explanation while I was reading it and so it probably isn't right for me to just make stuff up. Suffice it to say, we had a blast climbing on them.The waves crashed up against them and then retreated leaving behind a clear sheen of water that revealed heaps of crabs of all sizes and colors scrambling around on the rocks. We found a blow hole where the water had eroded the rock so if you waited patiently, every-once-in-a-while, one of the biggest waves would throw itself down this canal in between two rock walls to the end where there was a hollowed out rock with a hole on the top. The water would disappear under the rock and spray up the hole misting all who dared stand close enough to see. Good fun!

After lunch, we went to the Caves. I’ve never seen stalagmites and stalactites before. I know I will forget this again but while it is still in my memory, I can tell you that the stalagmites are the columns that come up from the ground and the stalactites are the thinner icicle looking features that hang from the ceiling. In this cave they were made of calcium carbonate mixed with rain water that seeps in from above. Everything was in an active growing state (growing with alacrity at a pace of 1 centimeter every 100 years) so we were asked not to touch anything so as not to leave acid from our fingers behind which would kill the fragile and immense structures.

There were no ropes blocking our reach from the features in the cave--just a set of stairs leading us and million of other visitors all throughout the different caverns. The guides just asked us respectfully not to touch. I can’t imagine the U.S. being so trusting or the visitors in the U.S. being so trustworthy.

Anyway, back to the cave. We all were awed by the bizarre hanging crystals. My favorites were called helactites. They were the only structures that didn’t hang down or build up. Helactites are curly, like pigs' tails or shaped like starfish. They grow from the ceiling or out the side of a stalactite and curl into spirals or stretch out in all directions like stars. A sign said that, for the longest time, scientists had no idea how they grew that way. (That, I understood!) They are considering chaos theory as a cause for these gravity-defying anomalies. Here we are in a cave where thousands of crystals have been growing for millions of years. They either grow up or they grow down, except, of course, when they don’t.

View out the family room window of the house we stayed in in Yallingup.

We spent our last of 3 nights in Yallingup and realized that, had we known more before we planned this trip, we might have spent the whole 2 weeks down there. We’d learned about a whole forest of enormous Karri trees that we wished we had planned the time to drive down to and other coastlines further south we wished we could have visited. It is said a million times over that Australia is a vast country and that it takes long stretches of time to drive from one place to another. This trip is the first time since we’ve been here that we’ve really felt inhibited by the vastness. But we’d made our plans so we followed through. It is a school holiday, don’t you know, and everywhere will be packed with people, we were warned. “Too bad you have to travel during school holidays when it will be so crowded with other tourists,” they all said. But I can tell you that Aussies don’t have a clue about crowds. I’m not sure how they define crowds but all we came across were a few scattered friendly faces having as relaxed a time as us and, frankly, if it weren’t for them, I’d have been a bit nervous we were all alone in the world.