And finally

I'm tired. I hope that this blog entry makes sense! I can proudly state that I've submitted two papers this week, but am only just keeping my eyes open! I don't have much on tomorrow (except Mike's birthday party), but will be playing the Mahler and Strauss concert on Sunday. I've been getting too excited about the holiday to describe what has been happening recently. Lots! For instance, Kate, Maureen and I had a wonderful evening a few days ago playing the Brahms' piano trio.

Anyway back to the holiday. On the last day, Jonathan drove us back to Sydney via the Borenore Caves. I've driven past these caves on numerous occasions, but never had the time to visit. We drove down a dirt road for a few hundred metres before getting out near the caves. They were stunning! I've never been somewhere in which there is no safety at all. Don't read this mum -- if there was a rock fall then there would have been no way that we could have got out. Following the adventurous Tiffany (who admittedly had the only torch) we crawled through passages, climbed up rocks, pushed our way through small holes (I'm going on a diet before the next trip).

According to a website that I've just found, the area around the Borenore caves "contains a large diversity of karst morphological and sedimentological features, including speleothems, a 14m high scalloped arch, a through cave, and residual pillars." So there!

This site goes on to tell me " The Borenore Caves area is overlain by a Tertiary basalt lava flow, derived from nearby Mount Canobolas." which may, or may not, answer Tiffany's question about why there were black streaks throughout the rocks.

It's really hard to describe the experience of being in such a stunning spot (although at the time I was just hoping that the torch battery wouldn't fail and that I would fit through the next hole that we were heading towards).

After leaving the caves we drove home (with a short stop in Blackheath for lunch). Just down from the mountains we passed our 1000km mark for the holiday - well driven Jonathan! It was fun. Jonathan has some more photos in his photo gallery (including some really crazy-looking photos obtained using high dynamic range imaging).