Journey to the centre of the earth

We get up mega early and travel down south to the Margaret River district of Western Australia, which is about a three hour drive from where we are staying.

When we eventually get to roughly where we want to be we stop for breakfast at a little surf shack, I say surf shack because that?s exactly what it is, a little pitstop for surf bums and hippies. It has a little post office in it, various miscellaneous groceries, what can loosely be described as a café. It has unmatching chairs and shelfs made out of nothing more that old juice crates and planks of wood. Beatnic types are coming and going in their bare feet and even the chick behind the counter is talking about how clean the waves were this morning. My type of music is playing and I feel right at home with these laid back cool cats just hanging.

I get some breakfast and the lady serves me tea in a flower power tea pot, and the ageing hippy with the grey hair, pony tail, no shoes, and clothes probably made of hemp tells me that he stayed in Edinburgh originally he says that slowly but surely he is working his way home. Well done mate, you?ve made it as far as Australia.

I meet Bentley the dog, a cool kind of surf hippie dog, all he is missing is a neck bandana and a pair of oakleys, he is friendly because he wants my bacon but not moments earlier I have seen him bark furiously at a passer by that he didn?t like the look off. He ambles about his shack just chillin and getting cuddles off the people in the shop. There is surfboards just laying around outside and a rickety porch with a badly painted vw bus on the wall. This place is cool.

We take a wrong turn to where we are going and end up at this stunning look out point watching the surf break. There is half a dozen surf bums floating out there on their long boards, waiting for the next swell, it is truly stunning and you can see for miles across the ocean and the sandy beaches.

When we hit caves road, I turn off the sat nav and let dad navigate using his little paper map and give me directions which I ignore.

We move on to our intended destination, but have to travel through wine growing country, every single side road is a winery and the vines are just everywhere along this beautiful tree lined road.

We stop at one particular place to take a photo as either the owner has done really well for themselves or they have a big ego as there is a huge pond with fountains in the middle, out of the fountains a massive platform extends with a gold flying person statue on the top. They also have a fake tree with a massive red apple hanging on it, obviously some sort of modern art.

We finally head further down caves road for our intended journey to the centre of the earth as the whole region is littered with caves. The clues in the road name and we intend to visit Mammoth cave (its big), Lake Cave (it has a lake in it) and Jewel Cave (will explain that later).

We venture down into the bowels of the earth, the road actually goes directly above the cave but as we are so far below the surface you cant even so much as hear a rumble. It is truly stunning and would have once been occupied by various indigenous people based on the material that they had found down there, it was very very impressive.

We move onto the next lake cave and once again it is stunning, it has also these straw type stalactites hanging from the ceiling and the guide tells us that although there are strong enough to hang from the ceiling we are NOT to touch them as they will break and I think that this is fair enough considering it would have taken thousands of years for them to grow drip by drip.

We follow the guide around the tunnel and on the way out a fat chinese man about my age reaches up off the path to touch one of the ceiling icicles, sure enough, crack, oops, splash. He saunters on like nothing has happened and that he just hasn?t completely destroyed 10 thousand or so years of natural beauty. Before I know it the words MUPPET is out my mouth but he keeps walking. I tell the guide what has happened and he says that in some cases dependant on the damage they reserve the right to fine people considerable amounts of money for effectively defacing a national heritage site. However, the chinese guy by this time is three quarters of the way up the three hundred stairs back to the surface like a fat whippet, sweat dripping off him.

I just lost the plot.

I catch up with the fat cave breaker and give him a piece of my mind, I send him back down the stairs to talk to the guide. He doesn?t have a choice in this matter, he can walk down or bounce down the two hundred stairs, I really don?t care.

We see him on the tour for the next cave and he keeps his hands in his pockets.

The next cave is the jewel cave and I cannot describe to you what this is like, the photo doesn?t remotely do any justice but it is a vast network of caverns bigger than churches with the stalactites and stalagmites forming weird and wonderful shapes that look like waterfalls, faces, dragons, wizards. The best word that could describe this would be majestic and it quite honestly the most awe inspiring place that I have ever visited. This should we one of the wonders of the world.

We travel back home, but the nav takes us along Sues Road, which just seems to stretch for miles and miles straight as a poker, we don?t see another car for about 60km and even then it?s a truck going the opposite way. We see a massive eagle sitting at the side of the road which seems unconcerned as it probably doesn?t see many cars. The side roads look like bush roads and we stay on the main tarmac and hope we don?t break down.

When we finally get back we have covered close to 600 km today, I have driven the whole way and we stop at friar tucks which is the closest place to eat, he have dinner and have agreed that dad will drive the final mile or so as Im knackered by this time. He puts his fancy digital SLR camera in his rucksack in the boot of the car but must have forgot to zip it up.

After dinner we get out of the car and he opens the boot, I take everything out the boot, jumpers, water, rucksack and im laden with stuff. Dad checks the letter box and puts the pile of census letters (the fourth set as we have a census stalker) on top of the pile I am carrying. He has nothing apart for the car keys and the house keys and he opens the door. I hear crack for the second time today and his camera has slid out of the bag and hit the ground.

He goes angrily that I should be more careful with his stuff. I think I?m going to lose the plot for the second time today as clearly I should be more careful with his camera in his bag that he isn?t carrying and hasn?t bothered to zip up. Maybe he expects me to have used my jedi mind trick after driving 600 kilometers.

We retire for the evening, not on speaking terms.