Jarrod would you descend there? Caving–just outside Melbourne!!

I have my doubts about selling this one to you, Jarrod, given the reactions from other people when I mentioned that I was going caving. They ranged from the confused “I just don’t understand why you’d want to do that, we’ve evolved, Megan, we have everything we need here, above ground. Something like caving is just…well, unnecessary…” to the uncomfortable “Ooh, no. I’d get too anxious doing that, I’m a bit claustrophobic” to outright horrified scaremongering “do you have a f&%$ing DEATH WISH?”

Somehow I’m seeing you slotting very comfortably into category 3.

I’ve never been caving in Australia before, but have done it two years ago, in Belize. We were staying at a gorgeous eco lodge and a supremely friendly man came to talk us through the caving options at the National Park there. I was completely seduced by the photos he showed us of the Crystal Caves, especially the Wonderland Cave, some 150m below ground.  But it involved about 3.5 hours caving to get there. And another 3.5 hours to get back out. Perhaps sensing my uncertainty, (or sensing $US 80 slipping away from him?) supremely friendly man was quick to reassure me that they took people aaaaaallllllll the time who had zero experience, oh yes, people of all sizes and physical capabilities. I would be in great hands.

He did have good hands. I signed up and handed over my 80 bucks.

Pale Grey T Shirt = Total Caving Rookie

Rocked up on the day to find that supremely friendly man wasn’t actually going to be with us. He’d been replaced by two guys,  Man of Few Words and Mysterious Silent Chap. They were kind of short on any practical advice, more inclined to watch you grapple to get across a pass with a sheer fifteen metre drop beneath, then turn to the rest of the group and say “see what she did? Don’t do that. You’ll fall and die.” (Direct quote)

Spoiler alert: didn’t fall and die.

Fortunately in our group we had a lovely couple of guys (thank you Hamish Hopkins, Jack Roberts, Dave Carroll, and Jess Rilla) who helped out with much needed ‘there’s a good hand hold here’ advice, support and general ‘you’re not going to die’ words of encouragement. Nonetheless, I spent quite a lot of time catastrophising and stressing about the sort of injuries that might be sustained in a fall, and how you’d get someone out of these caves adhering to spinal precautions (impossible, it would be quadriplegia city), so I more or less sported this stressed expression for eight solid hours:

Examining next pass, mentally fast forwarding to inevitable open fracture of left tibia

But I don’t want to paint too traumatised a picture. It was a fabulous experience and one of those things that you almost relish more afterwards, because you overcame things you thought you were completely incapable of doing. And we saw some amazing stuff!

A jellyfish stalactice (which is probably about the size of the passenger compartment of a VW beetle):

Pretty, but all the pee in the world wouldn’t help you if something this size stung you (Belize, 2012)

Stalactites, stalacmites…

What lies beneath (Belize, 2012)

Whatever you call the weird stalac’s that buck the trend and decide to grow sideways out of the wall…

Don’t impose your ‘strictly vertical’ rules on ME! (Belize, 2012)

And stalactites that resembled….. well, ahem… mother nature is all about balance between the masculine and the feminine…

You don’t see that every day…

So my last experience was hot, exhausting, stressful, beautiful, challenging and exhilerating. I almost had to fracture my own pelvis to fit through one of the final passes, like Mel Gibson might have done in Lethal Weapon had he been pear shaped as opposed to having weak anterior shoulder stabilisers. And we were utterly, utterly filthy when we finished:

Why yes, we will take up the option of the hotel laundry service.

Fast forward two years to present day.  I see a Groupon offering caving at $25 per person just outside Melbourne, and I pounce and buy two tickets. After asking a few friends and receiving the range of responses in the opening paragraph, I put a call out on facebook and my lovely friend, Melbourne comedian Lauren Bok was fastest finger first so she accompanied me as my Caving Plus One. We booked a few weeks in advance so we had ample time to message one another incessantly regarding our fears. Mine as already outlined–injuring myself seriously with a fall; hers–an external disaster such as a freak flooding or an earthquake, trapping us beneath the ground and/or killing us all.

Heady anticipation indeed.

Now the Belize caving photos were all taken on a regular digital camera because that cave is a dry cave. The Britannia caves that we’d be clambering through: not so much. We were advised to only bring a camera if it was completely waterproof because THIS caving involved crawling and sliding through creeks and mud, so anything you brought with you was liable to get soaked. Here I need to put a shout out to my gorgeous nephew Liam Mckay who very generously leant me his GoPro camera for the expedition. Total treasure!!

The caves are up near Yarra Junction, which is roughly 1 hour 15mins outside of Melbourne if you go there directly, and roughly 1 hour and 35mins if you’re talking in the car and so entrenched in conversation that you ignore google maps on your phone thus going much further west than the ‘recommended’ route.

We met the rest of the caving group and our two guides at Yarra Junction at 4:15. From the junction, we had to drive about another fifteen minutes into the wilderness to get to the actual caves. Unsealed roads, darkness falling and mist descending. Seriously, if location scouts are hunting for a spot for Wolf Creek 3, the search endeth here. Had it not been for the Barina rattling within an inch of it’s life, it would have been genuinely creepy.

Probable hunting ground for eccentric billionaire who chases captured humans with a rifle

On arrival at the caves, we got fitted out with hard hats and had a  final few minutes to embrace standing, fully vertical, and being clean and dry. Cue nervous jokes all round from participants and some photos as daylight faded.

Hardhats. Hot.

To a normal person, these are trees. To a panic merchant like myself, they are OMINOUS TREES

And then it was time to descend underground. Our leader demonstrated and we all followed like hesitant, uncoordinated lemmings.

Aaaand, down we go!

You have to get down and dirty from the get go, really. Squeezing through tiny, muddy openings, sliding down rock faces, crawling through little tunnels on all fours. When worried about potentially slipping, I adopt my default strategy/signature move which is to sit on my butt and shuffle carefully. Basically ‘Become The Rock.’ It served me well.

I am ‘at one’ with the granite.

It’s interesting to watch the group dynamics at play. Minutes after starting there are people saying things like “Oh my God, I’m going to kill you, Susan, for suggesting this!” and it’s superficially jokey, but riddled with subtext that if poor Susan so much as recommends a restaurant in the future, she’s soooooooooo going to be shouted down because no one in her group is really letting this go…

What’s great about something like caving is how a group of strangers who just met half an hour ago will all dig in and help each other out. You see the person in front of you struggling because they can’t lever up themselves up, you put your hands out for their muddy foot and give them a booster. (Or, as I experienced, the person behind you may just put their hands bang onto your buttocks and help by shoving you upwards. You don’t get THAT in your ‘evolved, above ground’ day to day life)

Our guides were great, albeit a little overly optimistic about our abilities at times. I should stress, obviously they didn’t make us do anything dangerous or outside our capacities–just that they’d describe the next section with a casual “you’re just going to get your right leg up here and then slide through,” and demonstrate with the ease and speed of a spider monkey, whereas we would huff and strain and sort of flop on the spot like a fish out of water instead of darting through an opening. We failed so spectacularly replicate any demonstration from them that the demo may as well have involved them throwing fairy dust into the air and disappearing.

I’m sorry, we’re squeezing through where now?

We didn’t take many pictures whilst actually caving because we were on the move pretty constantly, and the absence of lighting aside from our little headtorches didn’t really lend itself to lots of photos. I will say, I was on my stomach wriggling so often that I wound up with 177 photos of ‘interior polar fleece pocket.’ No exaggeration.

As with caving in Belize, there were plenty of moments for both Lauren and myself where we were convinced, totally convinced that what we needed to do was physically beyond us, but somehow we surprised ourselves and got there. It was a veritable mental rollercoaster of “I can’t, I can’t, you don’t understand I can’t…oh…yes…high five!…oh…that next bit though, I can’t, I can’t….”

About half way in, after a particularly steep descent, someone voiced the concern we were all quietly nursing, that we’d have to go out the same way we came in–and that meant somehow climbing back UP. It was frankly music to our ears when the guide said that actually, we go out a different exit.

Lauren chimed in with “that’s right, we stroll out, through the gift shop” and everybody laughed. (Laughed and thought “ohhhh, please let that be true!”)

As it turned out the exit wasn’t particularly difficult. I have zero upper body strength but with a stranger shoving at my buttocks and some awkward scrabbling for footholds, I pulled myself up and embraced the joy of standing at my full 167cm height again. It was pitch black and pouring rain and we were EXHAUSTED, soaked and filthy, but we’d had a great afternoon and we had that little exhilarated buzz you get from pushing yourself beyond what you thought you could do.

Then it was a wet and muddy drive in the dark, back to Yarra Junction to change into some dry clothes–in public toilets that somehow managed to be filthier than we were.

So, Jarrod, throwing it over to you. Caving in the Britannia Caves–Jarrod, would you go there?

See that little inch of grey at the top of my thighs? That’s actually the colour of these pants