Jenolan Caves

Deep in the Blue Mountains is a place where the magic is underground. It is a cave. But not just one. Literally hundreds of them. Embedded in limestone, connnected to each other by narrow passages and an underground river, they form the system known as Jenolan Caves. They are among the oldest caves in the world -- more than 340 million years old.

The first surprise that you get on arrival is that the main road goes right into a giant cavern, and through it! It is a natural tunnel called Grand Arch. After you've passed it you see a few pretty buildings, the big one is Jenolan Caves House, a hotel built in 1898 in Tudor style. This is where I slept for the night.

Tourism at the caves has started soon after they were discovered in the 1800s. Today there are more than 10 different guided tours you can book, each going into different sections of the caves. I arrived in the evening and decided to do one tour at night and one more tour the next morning.

What shall I say? The caves are amazing. To me, places like these are like cathedrals. Cold, still, old, mystical and awe-inspiring. Structures of stalactites, stalagmites, columns, straws, flowstone, and my favourite: those beautiful "shawls" that look like drapery hanging down -- or sometimes like bacon. They are only 5 mm thin (the width of a drop of water) and translucent. The material is calcite, dissolved from the rocks by rain water and deposited at the ceilings, walls and cave floors in layers upon layers, millenia after millenia. Pure calcite is white; the pink-orange-brown colours are caused by iron oxide.

Unfortunately the caves have suffered destruction from tourism. Especially the early visitors would with no hesitation break off whatever structures they could reach to take home a souvenir. The damage they have done, especially knowing how slow these crystals grow and how rare they are, is unbelievable. And all this despite the fact that the caves were officially "protected area" since 1866. In the interest of making the caves easily and safely accessible for visitors, they have poured tons after tons of concrete in, chiseled rock away to cut deep pathways, and of course installed electric lights. Today, 250,000 visitors come every year.

This giant cave opening is of a cave called "The Devil's Coach House". Compare the size of the path and the street lamp to get an idea how big it is. The ceiling must be 30 metres high.

It was an unforgettable trip. Now I'm back home, tomorrow I'll relax and let the impressions sink in.

Blue Mountains

My first trip with my new car took me into the area west (inland) of Sydney known as the Blue Mountains. It wasn't my first trip there, but my first trip alone and with as much time as I wanted. This weekend is a long weekend in NSW; today (25 April) is Anzac Day, the day where Australia and New Zealand commemorate their war heroes from the battle of Gallipoli (Turkey) in World War I. Reminds me a bit of defending Germany at the Hindukush. Anyway, because it's a Sunday the government gave us the Monday off, bless them!

So I hopped in my car and went westwards, rejoicing to get out of the city and into the peaceful quiet nature! Only -- a few hundred thousand Sydneysiders had the same idea. The road all the way to Katoomba was jammed and Katoomba itself was swarming with hordes of people -- mostly the loud and insensitive ones.

I mean -- look at these amazing views! The endless canopy of trees in front of you. The tranquility once you get away from the street. Those soft slopes, vertical cliffs, magic creeks and waterfalls. A network of well-maintained hiking tracks that connects all these points. And then you meet people on the way back -- obviously city folk that have arrived just 10 minutes ago -- making loud and stupid chatter and asking you -- I'm not kidding -- whether there was anything else to see. It's hopeless...

Anyway, the Blue Mountains are not what you would probably expect. They are at 1000 metres altitude, so it is a good climb up coming on the road from Sydney -- but you don't get to see any "mountains". Once you get to Katoomba you reach the edge from where it goes down, not up. The landscape is a kind of high plateau that has been partially eroded, like a canyon land.

Can you see the face in this rock?

A car, finally!

I feel like a new human being; finally I'm mobile again! I bought this 1996 Hyundai Accent (X3). It was cheap and I hope to sell it again in 3 months with not too much trouble or disprofit.

Yay - now I can finally go to wherever I want to go on weekends! Today: just the beach.

A new guitar

I finally bought myself a guitar again. This time I didn't find a good used one, so I ended up buying a new one, a Washburn, spending more money than I originally wanted. I also got a mount for the wall to have it in quick reach. The mount is really cool, I kind of like it better than the guitar!

So now I can play and practise again. Something for the winter nights. It's shocking: these days it gets dark already at 5:30 p.m. I come home from work in the last glimpse of daylight, or if I'm a bit later, in full darkness already. And we have just mid-April. How will it be in June?

Bagpipe fiddle rock

On Saturday I was on a really good concert. It was a CD launch party of the band Highlander. They play celtic rock in its Scottish variant -- a fusion of modern rock music and traditional scottish-celtic music. They are very good: play the YouTube video to get an impression!



They really rocked the house! I bought the new released CD and also got all the band member's autographs. The concert was not in Sydney but at a sailing club at Lake Macquarie (Australia's biggest saltwater lake) 1.5 hours drive north from here (the band is from Newcastle). It was thanks to Peter and Toni that I learned about the event, thanks to Lucy, a new friend who kindly lent me her car that I could go there, and thanks to Wolfi and Petra, two other friends from Rosco (German Aussies) whom I met at the gig that I had a bed for the night. What would I do without my friends?

Return plans

My company has asked me if I wanted to extend my contract to the end of the year, or at least until October. I told them I needed to think about it, which I did, and now I informed them of my decision. And that is to decline the offer because I want to go back to my home country in August, for private reasons that have nothing to do with my work.

I think that's the right decision. I'm sure I'll find a new challenge in Germany.

Easter

What you see in the photo is a little Australian curiosity, the Easter Bilby. You may know that the Osterhase is known in English as the Easter Bunny, so it's a rabbit (Kaninchen). Now unfortunately rabbits have at some point become a serious pest in Australia. From this background some Aussies felt that a native Australian marsupial, the bilby, in German Kaninchennasenbeutler, should be given the Easter Bunny's job as the friendly chocolate egg bringer.

This is already my second Easter in Australia. Last year at this time I was camping somewhere at the southern NSW coast. This year I spent the long Easter weekend (Friday and Monday are public holidays) at Rosco Club. My friends Pete and Ange gave me a lift in their car, and my friends Peter and Toni gave me their home to live in. The weather is a mix of couds, rain and sunshine. Easter is the landmark of autumn here and you can feel the cold coming. The heating season begins now.

There's a lot of people at the club this weekend, and Pete and I played live music for them on Saturday afternoon, with two guitars and amps and microphones. They also made a fish&chips dinner for 80 people on Friday, organized lawn games, sports matches, an Easter Egg Hunt, etc. They're good people here.