You could have sworn we were in Darwin today and not south-eastern Victoria with the temperatures in the mid to high 30’s and humidity around 60%. It didn’t take much walking to work up a sweat. Lucky Jenny is not here as she would be one unhappy camper.
So what to do in these conditions, go underground of course. I headed to Buchan Caves which is between Bairnsdale and Orbost. Even though the humidity was similar the temperature was 17C for the couple of hours I was underground in the Royal Cave and Fairy Cave. But did it hit you when you got out.
As far as caves go, these were impressive for their features with good stalagmites, stalactites, flowstones, shawls and columns. They even had some helictites that defied reason in their direction of travel.
One thing that did make it unique for tourist caves was the amount of squeezing and stooping through manmade tunnels and tunnels made of chicken wire. This allowed you to be up close and personal with the features without being able to touch them. I would recommend doing these caves provided you are not claustrophobic.
Rather than drag the van around for a couple of days, camp is now set up at the Orbost Caravan Park on the banks of the Snowy River. The weather hadn’t abated with mid 30’s still at 6:00pm but a change was to come around 9:00pm.
On the radar you could see it sweep across Victoria dropping heavy rain and large hail stones. The winds hit here first bringing with it dust. Eventually there was rain but the heavy stuff seems to have missed us for now.
Update on the geocaching: I managed another 3 maps for the Victoria Country Road Atlas Challenge and another 1 shire for the Victorian LGA Polygon Challenge. Only 3 more maps left and still plenty of shires.
Tomorrow I will be heading to the far eastern Victorian border (well as close as I can get).
