Going underground

If you want to be tech­ni­cal, explor­ing caves is called ​‘spele­ol­o­gy’. Throw in some ​‘palaeon­tol­ogy’ – fer­ret­ing around for fos­sils – and you have your­self and your fam­i­ly a fun-filled week­end. No real­ly. And don’t wor­ry, you won’t have to know words like ​‘spele­ol­o­gy’ to get in the door.

The Nara­coorte Caves, locat­ed in South Australia’s South East, is the state’s only UNESCO World Her­itage List­ed site.

Explore the range of fos­sil-filled caves and gain an insight into the cli­mate, veg­e­ta­tion, envi­ron­ment and Aus­tralian megafau­na dat­ing back over 500,000 years. Yes, this is an exhib­it that was half-a-mil­lion years in the mak­ing. You can see evi­dence here of the dinosaur age, a time when Diprotodons roamed the back­yards of South Australia.

Tours to suit the whole family

There’s a whole suite of cave tours. You can get down and dirty by crawl­ing through tun­nels or take the more leisure­ly approach and walk through lit caves and ogle at the sta­lac­tites and sta­lag­mites. If dis­cov­er­ing more about the site’s cur­rent inhab­i­tants is more your style, how about the Bat Obser­va­tion Cen­tre? It’s the only place in the world where you can view endan­gered bats via infrared cam­era (holy night vision tech­nol­o­gy, Batman…).

Vis­i­tors also enjoy the Won­am­bi Fos­sil Cen­tre, which has plen­ty for the kids to see and do, and the Caves Café, fea­tur­ing a range of local, sea­son­al SA pro­duce. What’s not to love?

Oh, and for those wor­ried about the South Aus­tralian sum­mer heat… nev­er fear, the caves sit at a cool 17 degrees Cel­sius all year round. With great accom­mo­da­tion options in the South East, it’s the per­fect week­end adven­ture for any time of the year.