This morning we went to Capricorn Caves. It is the only privately owned cave system in Australia open to the public. It is a dry cave system and houses Australia's only carnivorous bat.

Before the tour started we all got to touch a blue tongue lizard, an eastern bearded dragon and a snake skin.
Interestingly we learnt about the 'hairy mary’. It is like a centipede but very hairy and it liquefies its prey’s organs then sucks them out through its veins.















The Cathedral Cave was nice but when our guide played "Amazing Grace" through a speaker it sounded incredible. The acoustics have been assessed and are almost as good as Sydney Opera House. It is let down only by one man-made hole that was created to mine bat poo from the cave. The lighting was changed during the song and then turned off leaving only candles on. All light sources were then turned off and it was pitch black. The Olsen family that first found and bought these caves would have to find their way out in this darkness when their candle would go out. This seems an incredible achievement after the darkness we experienced. The roots in the picture are over 10m high and penetrate the ground in the cave. The guide informs us it is from a fig tree above ground that is only about 1.5m tall.

We got to look into “the laundry shoot” which people go down in adventure caving. It is a crazy hole but would give it a go without the kids. There are also tunnels named 'rebirth" and if people don't go through that, they use the "caesarian" tunnel.
We continued through the cave system and the exit path was fun. It was a tight zig-zag path not much wider than a person followed by two suspension bridges which were Zach’s favourite.




















Driving to our next camp we checked out Claireview Beach which was meant to be a free camp but things have since changed and is no longer allowed. It was a really nice place to stop though overlooking the southern islands of the Great Barrier Reef at low tide.

So we drove on to Carmila Beach which is also a free camp and I am glad we did because it was better than the last stop. We found a great spot right on the beach Liam and Zach spent the afternoon having a ball with the girl next door.







































It was low tide and it is pretty special to see tides go out as far as this did.





There were sand dollars and also the most hermit crabs I have ever seen and some are the smallest too. Zach made a ‘playground’ for a bunch of them in the bucket with Olivia. I even witnessed a bunch of hermit crabs literally pulling another out of its upturned shell. It appeared it was more of a ‘rob you while your down’ scenario than ‘we will help you’ so I flipped it back over and it quickly ran away.

We have decided to stay an extra night because it is so nice here.