Out of this world

Mention the Waitomo Caves to Barry Richard, a guide at Australia's Jenolan Caves, and he rolls his eyes. "I'll tell you what I always tell my Kiwi mates," he says. "You've got glow-worms. We've got caves!"

After a few hours wandering through the Jenolan Caves, where Barry has been working off and on for the past 25 years, it's easy to see what he means.

The Waitomo Caves are special, as he readily agrees, because of that beautiful boat ride beneath the starry light of thousands of glow-worms. But the Jenolan Caves are classic caves, with a wonderful display of glittering limestone stalagmites (the ones that go up from the floor), stalactites (drooping from the ceiling) and helictites (which, believe it or not, grow sideways).

The result is a vast fairyland of caverns filled with delicate limestone curtains, glittering stone chandeliers, towering columns, beautiful vaulted ceilings, bizarre statues, magnificent organ pipes, jewelled grottos and crystal-clear rivers.

To Barry, for whom caving is a job, a hobby and a research topic, the Jenolan Caves are "real caves".

He's a big bearded man with soulful eyes which light up when he talks about the caves. "They're not the biggest or the best in the world, by any means, but they are among the most interesting show caves that have been opened to the public."

Known to the Aborigines as Binoomea - or "dark places" - they were discovered by Europeans in 1838 when settlers tracking an escaped convict-turned-bushranger found he had been using a cavern as a hideout.

Since then more than 300 cave systems have been discovered in the area and nine of the most spectacular have been developed as show caves and opened to the public. Today it is one of Australia's biggest tourist attractions, with 250,000 visitors a year.

Getting to the caves is a bit easier than in the bushranger days but it is still quite an adventure. The road from Sydney into the Blue Mountains is straightforward enough, but the final leg is pretty exciting, crossing Australia's Great Dividing Range and dropping sharply down into the valley of the caves, along a steep, winding, narrow route - often only one car wide - with glorious views, beautiful bush and wonderful wildlife.

Not only do you have to be alert to oncoming traffic, you also have to watch out for the animals. On my early morning run I narrowly missed one of the many kangaroos feeding on the verge when it made a late decision to cross the road. But I couldn't avoid a large black and white bird that flew a kamikaze mission straight into the windscreen. I think it was a sort of duck.

Finally, there's the spectacular entrance to Jenolan Caves village, which is, appropriately enough, through a natural cave, the Grand Archway, 137m long, up to 21m high and 55m across at its widest point.

Focal point of the village is Caves House, one of those majestic hotels they used to build in the 1920s - reminiscent of Chateau Tongariro - still with an aristocratic air, offering huge rooms, lofty lounges and nice food, but just a little down-at-heel, as though fallen on difficult times and too proud to admit it.

But we're here for the caves, of course, and our first expedition is into the Imperial Cave, which has its entrance door off the Grand Arch.

This was one of the first show caves to be discovered and it got its name because it was regarded at the time as the grandest of the lot.

The names of the formations pretty much tell the story: the Gem of the West, a milky white chandelier made up of delicate straw stalactites (with hollow centres) and helictites (those are the gravity defying sideways ones); Lot's Wife, a pillar in pink limestone about 2m tall; the Fluted Column, made by a huge rippling stalactite meeting a short, fat stalagmite; Nellie's Grotto; the Crystal Cities, a vast limestone plain covered with glittering walls and towers, for all the world like miniature medieval cities; and the Bridal Veil, a magnificent multi-pronged stalactite in shimmering white.

Underneath the Imperial Cave is the River Cave, so called because it is where the river that carved these tunnels now flows, sedately on the day we visited.

The formations here are equally exotic: Queen Esther's Chamber, the Minarette, the Giant Shawl, the Queen's Canopy, the Canopies, the Grand Column and the Pool of Reflections.

The river is what makes this cave different and its limpid pools reflect the strange formations hanging from the ceiling.

"Put your hand down and touch the water," Barry says as we cross a small bridge. The water is so clear that it's much closer than it looks and you hit the surface long before you expect to. It's obviously an old joke but still worth a chuckle when you get your sleeve wet.

"By the time it's got here it's been filtered through the rock and it's absolutely pure," he says. "It's what we use for drinking at the village and it doesn't need any treatment."

As a special treat Barry then takes us to the Orient Cave which, he says, "is my favourite. It may be the prettiest cave open to the public anywhere."

This cave was discovered relatively recently and for many years was difficult to get into. But in 1954 miners cut a 120m long tunnel to provide easy access from close to Cave House.

Unfortunately in the process they did quite a lot of damage to the formations in the cave's lower chamber. Nevertheless the three main chambers, appropriately named the Persian, the Egyptian and the Indian Chambers, are magnificent.

The formations are on the same lines as in the Imperial Cave - huge shining columns, magnificent multi-pronged stalactites, giant shawls in solid stone - but are even bigger and in a wider range of colours.

"There are," Barry points out, "a lot of helictites here." And so there are, bizarre, gravity-defying crystalline prongs, sticking out sideways, often for several centimetres, in some cases even corkscrewing out at right-angles from ordinary stalactites. "There's even more in the Temple of Baal but we don't have time to go there."

What on earth causes them? "There's lots of theories but we don't really know."

Protecting these beautiful formations takes a lot of care. The tunnel to the Orient Cave is sealed with two air-tight doors to stop the air currents inside from changing.

And in 1968 the Orient Cave was the first in the world to be steam-cleaned to remove all the dust, lint and dirt brought in by visitors. "All the caves are cleaned every few years now," explains Barry. "It's a very delicate job, because a lot of the formations are extremely fragile, so we do it ourselves."

"All the water used in the cleaning and the dirt washed off has to be trapped and then vacuumed up afterwards. It's a very time-consuming and difficult business, and it takes weeks to do just one cave, but" - and he gestures enthusiastically around the magnificent stone drapery hanging in the Persian Chamber - "look at this, it's worth the effort to preserve it."

But it would be even better if they had glow-worms.

* Jim Eagles visited Jenolan Caves as guest of Tourism New South Wales and Air New Zealand.

* The Jenolan Caves are in the Blue Mountains - one of Australia's main tourist areas - which begin about 50km by road from Sydney.

Where to stay

The Jenolan Caves Trust, which runs the caves, has varied accommodation, ranging from the grandeur of Caves House to cottages set in the bush.

In between guiding, Barry Richard also runs Jenolan Cabins at the top of Porcupine Hill overlooking the caves valley. Details are on www.jenolancabins.com.au .

Further information

Information about the caves and the associated accommodation is on Jenolan Caves (see link below).

Other attractions

Details of other attractions in the Blue Mountains can be found at Blue Mountains Tourism (link provided below). Information on New South Wales is at the Sydney Australia website or phone 0800 100 006.