Jenolan Caves

A wonderful warm and sunny day was the start of a full and enjoyable time for both Colin and me. I must have taken over 200 photos today both before and inside the Jenolan Caves and afterwards when we visited the Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens. I had a wonderful time taking hundreds of photographs - its a wonder I saw anything at all!
Colin also was in full photography mode with his little Kodak point and shoot - no buttons to press or wheels to turn, fully automatic - but the results of his snapping are what I am using today so neither he nor I are complaining!
Neither of us realised just how far away the Jenolan Caves were from where we were staying at Faulconbridge but we enjoyed the run through the Blue Mountains and through the Valley on the other side. The winding road to the caves was really narrow and we were pleasantly surprised that there were no other vehicles to pass us or overtake us. Somehow we knew that when we arrived there would be plenty of tourists - and we were not wrong. When we arrived there were half a dozen large tourist coaches as well as several private cars.
We joined the 11.30 Lucas tour. Each tour has a different name and is of a different degree of difficulty. Our tour was for one and a half hours and had 950 steps to climb (not all UP) so it was a grade two of difficulty!
The guide gave us plenty of information and lots of time to take photos. I did not use a flash and was truly amazed at the quality of the pictures I was getting. I was so looking forward to showing them off.Colin was taking lots of pictures too but was complaining about how dark they looked in his screen so I told him not to worry about taking any more because he might be wasting his time.
I am SO glad that he took as many as he did because I have had a major calamity. The laptop froze when I put the card reader into it and when I removed it and put the card back into the camera all the pictures had been wiped off it.
I am so relieved that I had managed to save all the other photos from previous days to the hard drive on the laptop because they were all still on the card too. I was going to keep them on the card to copy to my main computer when I returned home. Too late for that!
I also had fun with the camera in the Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens - you need plenty of time to go there and plenty of time to explore the place. We arrived at four - an hour and half from the Caves - so only had an hour to look around, The gardens are the highest botanical gardens in Australia and specialise in alpine plants. There was a colourful display of rhododendrons and proteas as well as plenty of unusual flowering plants.It has been a long and interesting day but still there was time to detour into one more lookout! The sun was going down and the colour on the cliff faces is "to die for" as they say! Evans Lookout proved to be an excellent evening lookout, lots of wonderful rugged escarpments catching the late afternoon light. I shall have to rely on Colin's shots because all of mine have gone!
There are always going to be mishaps but it doesn't make any difference if you get angry or disappointed, you cannot change things. so I will put it down to experience and take even more photos in the coming days!
AJ