On the eastern slopes of the Blue Mountains about 175 kilometres from Sydney are the famous Jenolan Caves, which are quite extensive and remarkably beautiful.
The discoverer of the caves in 1841 was a convict who took refuge in them from the gendarmes who were chasing him. However, for another quarter of a century the caves remained unexplored and virtually unvisited. Only in the at the end of the 19th century, the caves had a devoted admirer who brought their beauty to the world - one Jeremy Wilson was so enamoured of the natural formation that he settled inside for 35 years to devote his full time to the study of this miracle.
The fame of the beauty of these places quickly spread throughout Australia, and the caves saw a massive and uncontrollable influx of tourists. Some of them never returned from the underworld, others were keen to take back with them a memento of stalactite fragments. It became obvious that the situation had to change, and in 1866, the caves were put under state protection and a lot of money was allocated to study them. In 1884, the caves were named Jenolan Caves after the mountain of the nearby mountain. And the word "Jenolan" in the local Aboriginal language means "high."
The first scientific research found that Jenolan caves are formed by two rivers, the Fish River and the Cox River, which over hundreds of thousands of years had gnawed into the limestone sediments, leaving behind many underground channels. The caves stretch for tens of kilometres. Among them, a distinction is made between dark and light ones. The light-coloured ones are those where the sun's rays penetrate through gaps and openings. These are the Great Arch, where Wilson lived, Carlotta's Arch, named after Wilson's lover, and the Devil's Carriage Shed. The latter, according to eyewitnesses, is like the dwelling of a fairy-tale monster - it's a huge hall about 100 metres high, lined with blocks of limestone. The dark caves have never had any sunlight, they're natural cavities. Among the most famous are the Vaulted Cave, River Cave, Imperial Cave. The total length of the caves is still not exactly known, although many of the underground passages have already been well explored by speleologists. More than 250 thousand people annually visit this amazing underground kingdom.
