So, as you have probably realised, me and H have been alternating blog posts. As it normally happens I am left with the more nothingy days to write about, with the exception of H's last post I guess. Well it has all changed now, does the title of the post give it away? Correct! We went to some caves. But yes, later we went surfing, but I will tell you about that at the end of the blog so you are forced to read through all the other stuff first, mwa ha ha ha... damn scrolling, forgot about that.

Twas the evening of the Monday and I had my Avatar tickets booked at the Imax, the one with largest screen in the world don't-you-know. The screen was pretty massive, although when the film started playing there was a good metre margin of unused screen all around, what a con. Anyhow the film: anyone seen a slightly crap, early 90s cartoon called Fern Gully? Well, James Cameron, in his wisdom, thought he would remake it but throw excessive amounts of cash at the development. The result being a spectacularly attractive film but unrelentlessly shit otherwise. After you have pieced together exactly what is going to happen after the first frame, even the array of impossible plants and creatures hold your attention only for a couple of nano-seconds:

"But Mr Cameron sir, I don't think this horse thing needs an extra pair of legs, it wouldn't be able to run very well." 

"WHAT DID YOU SAY!? People will marvel at my creative genius."

"I'm sorry sir, I forgot about your ability to attract hundreds of millions in funding, look I have given it gills to breath through, isn't that novel?"

So that was Avatar.

Back to Australia, it is now Tuesday morning and we have rented a car, a red one, with air-conditioning thank god. Our plan; to drive down to the Blue Mountains to the Jenolan Caves, which from the descriptions and photos in the guide book look pretty epic. The car is an automatic, the first automatic I have driven. After a couple of phantom gear shifts and circuits of the car park we are off. A couple of turns and we are on a road that we continue to be on for the next 2 hours. A motorway is a motorway, except there is a lot more of that blue sky stuff that I had forgotten about, but after about two hours we take a left on to the Jenolan Caves Road and the countryside immediately opens out to revel vast Tuscany-esque rolling hills. With my sharp eye, I quickly spot a mob (thanks Wikipedia) of emus, which, to Heather's delight, turn out to be cows. The road is now thinner, windier, and snaking through mountainous scenery. After an hour or so a massive cave mouth appears over a lake, with the road going through the cave. It felt wrong, like driving off a cliff edge because a sign told us to, but we did, and it was cool. Emerging out the other side we go through a small touristy bit consisting of a ticket office, some toilets and a hotel/cafe. We park the car and have a quick picnic as it is now lunchtime.

In the ticket office we elect to visit the cave called The Temple of Baal as it is the ticket man's favourite, and the most popular cave (The Lucas Cave) seems to be the most popular because it is very big but doesn't have all the nice pretty formations that The Temple of Baal offers. The Jenolan caves consist of multiple caves of all sizes and shapes but there are 10 show caves that have been fitted out with lighting and safe pathways. Our tour of The Temple of Baal starts in an hour so we have a walk through the self-guided Nettle Cave first. We go up some steep steps and into the Devil's Coach House, the name of a huge cave with a massive opening one side.

The Devil's Coach House

From here we climb some steep metal stairs and enter the Nettle Caves. If I was a caveman this is where I would make a cave city. The caves form a network of rooms decorated with huge stone columns. Because of the massive opening at the Devil's Coach house these caves are lit by daylight. My audio guide is broken so I resort to making up facts about the caves whilst H fills me in on the gaps, but spares me the parts about what I can't eat whilst in the cave. Time for our tour of The Temple of Baal. Our tour guide, whose name I can't remember, reminded me strongly of Murray from Flight of the Conchords, and was very entertaining. We are led through a long underground man-blasted tunnel, and down some dark metal steps in to the first cavern. It is very dark here, and the guide switches on some lights so we can see around. It is pretty small this area, and more people than the 16 we are would have struggled to fit in. As different lights are switched on, new areas of sparkling crystal formations are revealed, some look like macaroni and others like bedsheets.  Over at one side a stalagmite that resembles a bottle is pointed out, and it transpires that this bottle was left under a drip of water to fill up for when the guy fitting the stairs wanted a drink. 50-odd years later and it is covered in crystal.

Crystallised bottle. (The pale thing right of centre.)

 We are led into a bigger cavern and then into an even bigger cavern, but the size is unknown to us at first as the tour guide teases us by switching on lights for specific areas at a time, and then finally puts them all on revealing that where I thought the ceiling was was inaccurate by about 40 metres. The cave formations are surrounded by a web of myths; we see the "Golden Fleece" and a huge angle like crystal statue in front of an "alter".

Crystal formation resembling a cloaked figure.

The cave takes its name from the biblical story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and at the end of the tour we watch the cave come to life being lit up to music and see Baal himself. (Heather edit: "Baal" being a formation which looks like a squat old man with a beard, just in case you were wondering whether Mike was having a religious experience.) Ooo I forgot a bit, the bit where the guide turned all the lights off to show that no daylight got into the cave whatsoever. When waving your hand in front of your face you begin to hallucinate that you can see the outline of your hand. It is pretty incredible thinking that these caves were discovered by candlelight.

The drive back takes a little longer as we loop back a bit to find a particular road sign to photograph. About half 8 in the evening we arrive back into Sydney suitably knackered, grab some food and crash.

What tourists we are.

Wednesday 20th

H heads out to explore the Sydney fish market, coming back with tails of massive lobsters and weird prehistoric looking bugs. (Heather: Moreton Bay Bugs - check 'em out!) I do some of that rubbish work stuff . Today's main attraction, however, is surfing! We left it too late to book a lesson, but instead thought we would hop on the ferry over to Manly beach and rent a board. We did this with remarkable ease and at only $10 an hour thought it was pretty good value. We picked our spot and I looked around to see how people put their surf boards down so I wouldn't look too much like a noob, and put mine down and sat on it, watching people surfing to see how it was done. The previous night we swotted up on technique with YouTube videos ( I have carpet burns on my knees), so now had a sprinkling of know-how. I strapped the board to my ankle and wandered towards the water. A megaphone sounded, and while I was expecting it to say something like: "will the ginger albino man please not attempt to surf", it warned of currents in the area I was going into, so I relocated and tried again. The water was a lovely temperature.

Amateur.

"Wave, I need a wave," I thought. I belly flopped onto the board and began mimicking those around me to the best of my ability.  A wave that a toddler stood through rolled me and I got tangled in the board cord and momentarily thought I had died. Second attempt I made it out further, turned to face the shore and a wave picked me up and carried me all the way back to the start, amazing, but I was still only on my stomach, I forgot about the standing up bit. After a couple of drownings and belly surfs it was H's turn to have a crack. I had drifted about 100m horizontally without noticing and was now in the strong current area so had a bit of a walk back to our camp. The waves didn't seem to vex H so much, maybe because she is more streamlined; about 20 minutes of putting me to shame later she returned. 

Pro.

We warmed up and dried off and H went to get some frozen yogurt but failed. Right, time to have another crack: it was harder going in the second time as I knew the pain was awaiting, but H had made a friend, a really nice surfing Dad friend, whose son was by far the most impressive surfer in the sea that day. He gave some useful pointers, and I could now paddle through a wave without getting rolled. After about 20 mins of failed surfing attempts I turned around and saw Mr Friendly Man swimming out to me. He took me right out to the good waves and I got a private lesson and, believe it or not, managed to surf for about 4 seconds, standing on my feet and everything, awesome. Time to quit whilst I was ahead.

Really friendly guy who I got a free lesson from. Notice the subtle difference in skin tone.

Action Shot. That little boy in the background actually has really long legs, it is in fact many fathoms deep.

Back at Circular Quay I headed off to book a restaurant for the evening and H went back to the flat to shower and get ready to take sunset photographs of the harbour. Whilst I freshened up H went into the Botanical Gardens (great views of the harbour) and took some pretty amazing shots, including one of a Possum that stumbled into her path.

POSSUM! That red slit on its tummy is its pouch, we think.

We met at the restaurant within the Sydney Opera House and treated ourselves to a fancy meal with amazing views for our last night in Sydney.

(Heather edit: Erm...this isn't actually the view from the Opera House restaurant, as you may have guessed from the fact that the Opera House is in the picture.)

Bye bye Sydney.