ABC Wednesday, C for Caves in Tasmania, Australia

In 1894 William Woodhouse discovered the cave entrance when he noticed vapours rising from a hole in the ground, but he thought it too dangerous to explore. In 1906 the cave entrance was relocated by Bill while he was hunting possums by lamplight. A few days later Bill and a couple of farmers lowered themselves by ropes down the entrance of the cave. And their lamps revealed for the first time the magnificent stalactite and stalagmite formations.

In1908 the local  Ulverstone  Tourist Association recognised the importance of the Gunns Plains Cave for tourism.


The first parties to visit the cave, entered it with candles and acetylene gaslamps. Later in 1928 an installation of an electricity generating plant was completed, which was a lot easier for seeing the rock formations. Our guide said: " Imagine that you went into the cave with only a candle and the draught blew the candle out, and you stood there in total darkness fumbling for matches, knowing that you couldn't move because it was so dangerous." At some places the cave is so deep that they really had to watch each step they did. Even now it is not easy to walk there, but thanks to the guide, who led us safely through the cave, we enjoyed doing this tour.  We didn't have to bundle up. There were footpaths and steps every where. Sometimes we had to duck for lowhanging rocks, but the guide warned us in time.

A beautiful sight were the glittering glow -worms. They sparkled like jewels on black velvet. We all sang:"Twinkle twinkle little star"....The children in our company were delighted and thought the tour highly interesting and enjoyable.

 We thank Denise Nesbitt, who created ABC, and we must thank Roger too for the weekly job to find  ten bloggers for each of the ABC Team members  to visit and to read their posts. For more interesting ABC posts click on the logo in the sidebar . This week we are looking for words    beginning with C, in our new round.