Cocklebiddy Cave

Cocklebiddy Cave is one of the hundreds of caves that dot the Nullarbor Limestone “Karst” Plain. This is the largest area of limestone in the world. Cocklebiddy is a sinkhole created when the cave roof collapsed to reveal massive underground caverns and more than 6 kilometres of underwater passage which have been dived by cave divers.

When we travelled this route 25+ years ago we were able to walk about 300 m down into the cave to the waters edge. Unfortunately today we couldn’t do that because of rockfalls and the instability of the rocks around the entrance. We could still walk down part way and look down into the cavern. It took us an hour to travel the 8 kilometres across salt bush plains into the cave site. There is no sign of the cave until you are almost on it. This is definitely not a regularly visited site with no signs on the Highway to even show its there (pleased we have live GPS off-road maps in front of us showing many unsigned places of interest).

90 Mile Straight (145.6 kilometres) stretches between Caiguna and Balladonia. And now it was my (Judith’s) turn to drive. This should be easy. No corners, little traffic, good road, good music, Philip snoring in the passengers seat. What else could I want. This straight is regarded as the longest stretch of straight road in Australia, and one of the longest in the world.

We stopped for the day just east of Norseman with the intention of doing a short tourist drive around the Dundas Coach Road Heritage Trail in the morning before driving on to Kalgoorlie. It started off well, we stopped at the first point of interest and then followed the road for about 500 metres before coming to a Road Closed sign due to the rains they had a week ago. Oh well on the bucket list for next time.

Now we are settled into Kalgoorlie for a few days to explore this area. First thing Philip found was a Market/Swap meet on tomorrow morning 200 metres up the road. Guess we will be perusing the stalls there.