Kangaroo Island Underworld Karatta, South Australia, Australia
By Pirate Rock on 15-Feb-11. Waypoint GC2NX11

Since this Earthcache is not viable for the foreseeable future, it has been archived.Should the situation change here, the CO may request for it to be Unarchived.

With a heavy heart, I've decided to discontinue these caches. While meeting fellow cachers has been delightful, the online experience, particularly with moderators, has fallen short. The lack of understanding and appreciation for the time, effort, and cost poured into creating these caches, coupled with declining activity, has unfortunately made it unsustainably challenging.It's been a joy sharing these hides with the community, and I hope you've enjoyed the adventures. **For the record - the Kelly Hills Caves have reopened**Farewell, and happy caching!

Speaking to local Ranger, this has been completely destroyed and closed down indefinitely. Maybe this should be archived..

Checked out today, Still closed.

https://www.parks.sa.gov.au/parks/kelly-hill-conservation-park

Access to Kel­ly Hill Con­ser­va­tion Park (includ­ing Kel­ly Hill Caves) is only avail­able via guid­ed tours. The park remains closed out­side of the spe­cif­ic tour times and is planned to reopen in late Octo­ber 2023.

If preference is to disable the cache permanently please advise.

Planned re-opening is April 2023.

https://www.parks.sa.gov.au/parks/kelly-hill-conservation-park

Offline until further notice. Owner maintenance complete.

Area off limits as per Parks SA. Will re-enable once cave re-opens.

https://www.parks.sa.gov.au/parks/kelly-hill-conservation-park

Completed this earthcache with Wollaston and SeasonedBird. We completed the task requested and SeasonedBird has kindly provided the answers on our behalf. Thanks for arranging.

Sent the answers and now logging the cache after waiting an response

The Kelly’s Cave tours are currently on hold as most of the infrastructure has been lost in the recent fires.

Parks has assured us the site will be redeveloped and tours will recommence.

We have answered the earth cache questions on the basis the site will reopen and can continue to be kept on the game board for future visitors to discover and enjoy.

We managed to contact the Parks Office and were able to obtain the answers to the questions that are not published and are only discovered during a tour or visit to the caves.

I am happy to supply the answers to the questions to save Parks staff from receiving calls until the site is reopened.

Found with geopartner Wollaston and Liz&Bruce.

TFTC Pirate Rock.

# 3572

Logging a find after visiting as close as possible to GZ without actually getting there due to temporary closure. We have researched the required information putting in way more time than any other normal earth cache and thus think we have earned a smiley. Answered submitted by Mrs Geo aka SeasonedBird. On the hunting trail again with SeasonedBird, Liz & Bruce. Another great day for caching. TFTC Pirate Rock
Find #5944 at 10:10.

Answers submitted. We love a limestone cave we hope these caves are able to reopen soon. TFTC Pirate Rock

Day 5 of our 6 night break on the Island. Todays target was the south western area. Message sent to the owner and will see if we get a response as it seems they have not been on the site since 2017. Thank you for the placement of the Kangaroo Island Underworld cache Pirate Rock find number 8476 on 13 September 2021 at 7:53 pm

Answers recorded by Olga.

Thanks to cave guide Gemma for the answers to the questions. Gemma seemed pretty pleased to give the answers, and had been asked a few times by geocachers. It's nice to someone so keen about her work.

This cave is closed and has been closed since January in talking to Parks today there is still no re opening date so maybe this can be disabled or Archived till opening again

The Cave tour is closed / this should be disabled

Did the cave tour with our kids and thought we'd get a smiley while we were at it. Beautiful caves to look at and the kids loved the story of the horse. They are sure she's still galloping around the caves somewhere. Tftc

Nomads travelling in their caravan around Australia. We have been on the road since July 2011 and discovered caching in August 2013. We travel with a bunch of travel bugs belonging to our sons and grand children. Where ever possible, we will maintain your cache as we travel.

We are here visiting, house and farm sitting for three months. There are only 86 caches on the island. Hope we get smilie faces on all of them.

Today we toured Kelly Hill Caves. Our guide Don was very informative with our small group of four. I explained t him about earthcaches, but I think he had not heard of them prior. There were two answers he was not sure of. After the tour, at the parks office, he gave me a folder to wade through. You know, one of those huge arch lever folders full of plastic sleeves...

Then, something jumped out at me! Aha! A printed sheet of geo-stuff all about this earthcache. This mad it easy for me to confirm some information, and answer another. Then the lady ranger told me a very interesting story about Kelly the Horse....

Answers to be sent to Cache Owner. Photos will be loaded up tonight. Thanks Pirate Rock for an interesting Earchcache.

We set out to find a few Earth Caches on our trip over East this year.
We found plenty of wonderful Earth Caches in Tassie and managed to find a few more on the way back to WA as we meandered westwards through South Australia and across the Nullarbor.
This cave was beautiful, with the interesting stalagmites and stalactites creating a wonderful underground environment.
Though the steps were steep, it was well worth the effort.
The history here is intriguing.
Thanks for sharing this wonderful natural phenomena in the Cave System.
TFTEC

There were only four of us in the tour, so we all enjoyed a detailed explanation from our guide and an opportunity to take lots of photos.

Breathtaking and unexpected fun! Well worth it.

We set out this morning from Kingscote to visit Flinders Chase and to visit the Kelly Hill Cave along the way... with this Earth Cache being a bonus! Had a fascinating tour and spoke to our guide afterwards... who knew all about the questions she was being asked but not all that much about geocaching. So after a pleasant chat I left with what I needed to know and our guide better informed about caching i.e. not all caches are stuck up trees, the cache here is a special type of cache without a log book and yes, you still have to sign the log book for most caches.

Thanks **Pirate Rock** for creating this Earth cache.

Answers have been submitted.

Find by pnutbeagle and The Marathon on a 3 month holidaying in Australia. Answers to the questions were sent in by The Marathon Man for our team

Sorry for the late log

We are now home in Canada after Great time all over Australia holidaying, so are getting caught up in our Earthcache finds

Great Earthcache

A favourite

Find by pnutbeagle and The Marathon on a 3 month holidaying in Australia. Answers to the questions were sent in by The Marathon Man for our team

Sorry for the late log

We are now home in Canada after Great time all over Australia holidaying, so are getting caught up in our Earthcache finds

Great Earthcache

Found a baby black snake in the Men's Toilet

A favourite

This was day three of a two week trip to Adelaide, starting with Kangaroo Island. We headed towards the west end of the island today.

This was our first stop of the day to see the cave. The entry fee was not cheap, but worth it. The guide did not know about Geocaching, so I had to pull the answers out of him. Answers have been sent. TFTC.

TFTC Thank you for hiding this cache. You have shown us a new place and have helped make geocaching an enjoyable activity.

Completed this cache as part of the Show Cave Tour after completing the Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail.

The caves are excellent and really worth visiting.

Answers sent to CO.

T4TC.

During our great roadtrip through Australia we spent our last two full days on Kangaroo Island and found a lot of amazing caches along our route. This was one of them.

Greetings from Switzerland,
The Navikatzen

An interesting tour. The commentry is much better than my last visit.

This year, for the second time of my life, I travelled on holiday to Australia. The last tour has been in 1995, but this time something was a little different. For the first time I didn’t travel in a group, this was my first tour, were I was totally alone. I had booked the flights to Brisbane and from Adelaide and for the three weeks in between I rented a very small campervan, in which I could sleep and was able to do a little cooking. For me, this was enough.

In three weeks I was able to drive more than 5000 kilometres and could find around 90 caches, including all of the Australian caches from 2000. To finish the Jasmer Challenge was the other thing I wanted to do. There was only one month open and this was October 2000. With two different caches from this month in the country I could finish the challenge and in the end I visited them both. The best thing is: I didn’t need a cache of the USA to complete my Jasmer.

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I went to this Earthcache and had a tour with only me and the guide. I told him that I am a geocacher and after that I had to explain what being a geocacher means. He never heard of this hobby. (I think he was around 70.) It was a nice contrast to staying in the heat outside and after the tour; I made a little walk in the woods.

Pacmess

#3098

Did the Cave Tour today and it was terrific! I don't find the dry caves nearly as interesting as the wet ones, bit this one seemed to have an amazing amount of crystal! Just spectacular! we had a three year old geochild and 5 month old geobaby with us who definitely slowed us down on the steps, but were otherwise okay. Geobaby is a massive snorer and he fell asleep in the carrier in the caves. The cave acted like an echo chamber which was itself hilarious, but when the guide turned the lights off, all we could hear was geobaby snoring! Very memorable! TFTC

Tftc

The underworld to cacheing... TFTC

Cool caves with an interesting history. The guided tour was great. Not sure I'd be keen to explore by candlelight like they did in the good ol' days!
Answers messaged to CO.
TFTC, Pirate Rock.

A great cave experience. A very young cave. Lovely to see

??

Found while on holidays with my Shatzy visiting Kangaroo Island and staying near by.
Visited the caves for the second time, it still facinates me. all the raw beauty. Answered questions,asked the tour guide for advice to assist and sent two requests to cache owner. However I think he/she may be still looking for Kelly the horse.

TFTC
Cheers and Happy Hunting
Southern Cross Caching

Submitted answers. Had a cool tour

We’ve visited the cave during our last tour of the island. Very interesting place - a bush walk through the area (up to original hole and round the place) is highly advisable!

Very interesting place - a bush walk through the area (up to original hole and round the place) is highly advisable!

Holding log until I retrieve one of the answers from our camera. Great little earthcache. Loved it.

Took a cave tour and had a nice guide who took us through the various rooms. Managed to get the answers to these questions between the information boards outside, and various talks our guide gave. Interesting to hear the differences between Kelly Hill Caves and other cave sites around SA such as Naracoorte. Great to have this doubled up as a geocache, thanks for setting this one up.

Enjoyed the tour. I really like the little extra hike to the original hole.

This was an adventurous day from start to finish.

I woke up shortly after 4am to get on the road at a decent hour to make the 6am ferry. I knew that getting up and driving at that hour would bring with it some challenges, like kangaroo and other wildlife. Thankfully, there was no wildlife between me and the ferry.

Upon arrival to the island, I made my way west, the started working eastward. This cache fit somewhere in between. We purchased our ticket and then were on our way. I made sure to pick the brain of our tour guide and she offered up the answers fairly easily...what a great site!

Thanks for bringing me here and the smiley.

Thanks for this fine cache. It was fun to explore the cave and hear the story
Greettings from Denmark

Fantastic!

We really enjoyed doing the tour of these caves. The Guide seemed to be very involved in his profession as he spoke of investigations they are doing of the area. Very fascinating. Thank you for this earth cache.

Thanks for the experience.

So happy the kids enjoyed it

During a short holiday on KI I did a bit of caching and this was one of them. I've been here before but it was the first for my daughter. She was really impressed and took about 1000 photos.
TFTC
Marino Rocks

Found together with Schlauchen during our 3 weeks vacation in Australia.

Log to follow in November when we're back home.

TFTC and greetings from Italy.

#3791 12:43
~~~
Logged with my Samsung Galaxy S5 using c:geo

Found it together with ravestorm on vacation in Australia!

Log to follow (probably only in November when we're back home)

Tftc
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Logged on my Huawei Ascend Mate 7 phone using c:geo
30. Oktober 2016 12:43

Had five wonderful days on Kangaroo Island with the Sal part of brisal. I was reminded several times that we were on 'holiday' and not a caching. So if we happened to go to a place sightseeing and there happened to beat a cache I could get it whilst Sal took some photos. Likewise if we happened to be passing a cache if it was a quick grab that was okay too. Lucky for me we happened to be at or passing about 35 caches during our stay. Had a couple of DNFs and a few we just couldn't get to for one reason or another. Left a handful of my PTs scattered around the island. My thanks to all the owners who have placed caches over here. [:o)]
Day 2: Again not too many today as had a full schedule but as it was Earthcache Day managed to get three Earthcaches and a few trads nearby. This was despite the weather having gale force winds and pelting rain most of the day. Good thing about this cache is there is no wind, rain or biting cold once you get down into the cave. Bad thing is I tend to bang my head when the ceiling gets a bit low. This was no exception. Note to self...wear hard hat in caves whether it is advised or not! Despite a sore head and losing a bit of claret had a great time. Adam the guide was very informative and provided all the answers required. Guess they are sick of the questions being asked and just include them in the tour now. If we had time and I was a little slimmer I would have liked to do the adventure tour too. Thanks for bringing us here Pirate Rock. Answers have been sent and permission to log gained.

During our visit to Kangaroo Island we also visited this cache.
It was a great tour of the cave!

Thanks for the cache!

Die drei Landeier

Greetings from Germany

Great fun down here. Thanks.

Found on our trip to KI.

TFTC

Day 5 of a 6 day stay on the island with the intentions of finding all the caches on the island, we succeeded finding all of them with no DNFs the stay was fantastic even though we were in a heatwave while staying here, luckily we had an air conditioned accommodation, while here we saw lots of Kangaroos, Wallabies, Goannas, Seals and lots of different species of birds, according to Mrs 3LGs fitbit we walked around 60 kilometres during the 6 days here, Today was the day where we walked about 18 Ks to collect 6 caches, some that haven't seen any loving for a while as they required a lot of walking, today we weren't leaving any behind, its around 38 degrees today so we bought a second hand back pack from a op shop to carry the water as we went through plenty today, these caves are magic and i love the story behind the snake skin in the check in area, answers submitted. TFTEC

We were visiting family in Middleton and they kindly took us to Kangaroo Island for a holiday. The Kelly Hill Caves were a must and we took the tour with Don being our guide. Great fun we had! He had a dry sense of humour and made great fun of The Pom!

Thank you for placing this earthcache, we enjoyed our special visit and it was great fun as well as very informative. A favourite point for the experience

EC# 143 of 2358 caches
pilot03 – greetings! Travelling from Europe, to Hong Kong & Australia

This EC sent us to an interesting tour in this phantastic cave. We've done a lot of photos and when we are back in Germany we will post a few of them. Thanks for showing this place say Sphingidae

Found together with Fwsbg during out visit to Kangaroo Island.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten round to log my finds in way over a year. Hence, in order to keep track, I now have to do only short logs. Otherwise I'll never have a chance to be up to date again...

TFTC

Azisa

#828

On our tour through South Australia, Azisa and I also visited the beautiful Kangaroo Island. We spent three days here and had a lot of fun, seeing all the Kangaroos, Ecidnas, Seals and the beautiful landscape.
On our first day here, we wanted to see the western part of the island and so we visited this great cave.
We were lucky: when we arrived, a bus full of tourists left and we were the only two participants for the tour. The guide was great, we could ask whatever we liked, he showed us many very interesting facts we didn´t know about caves. My favourite part was the bacon
Thank you for this EC and greetings from Germany!

(Sorry, wrong date at first...)

#5555

What a cool underworld!
Had a funny guide which explained it very well even for us foreigners .

TFTC

Great cave and funny guide

Visited together with vreaksaw67 during our visit on Kangaroo Island

The answers were sent from vreaksaw67!

TFTEC

Visited together with iPat32. Thanks for the interesting Earth Cache and the quick answer to our E-Mail TFTC

On our todays tour we visited this site.
We took the opportunity to go for the earthcache nearby.
Thanks for this nice cache !

On holiday in Australia.
17:06

G'day,

One place you really want to visit when you come to Australia is K.I. and its underworld. Stunning!

Cheers,
Korotiotio

Yebo pirate rock
Just got the permission from the co to log, that was quick!
We had glorious days on kangaroo island but time is always short so the caves wee on our time table but we missed the tour by minutes
Oh well, we took the advice of the co and questioned to the really nice guides

Great place for Walsh and hikes!
Tftearthcache

This was our second trip to Australia and it was as amazing as last year!
We stayed in the grampians for a few days and then went back to the coast and to Kangaroo Island.
Even if we already saw so many caves. this one was also special!
Thanks for showing!
TFTC, Lina16

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A very nice cave, indeed. I liked this kind of tour. A very small group, a very friendly guide and some really interesting informations that help to solve this Earthcache.

Thank you for this nice Earthcache idea.

tftc, ZERO74

Logging this find after a very quick response from the cache owner [always a bonus on earthcaches!]
Loved this tour of the caves even though I have a bit of a phobia about being underground.
The highlight of the tour was our tour guide who we found so amusing. Apparently he came 9 and a half years ago to work for 3 months and is still there. He was so knowledgeable but was so laid back it was weird.
Thanks.

Thanks to the friendly and co-operative tour staff we soon had the questions answered. Great tour. TFTC

What a fantastic place this is. The history is very interesting. Our guide was super excited about caves, having grown up in Naracoorte. Logged with permission. Tftc

Did the tour today and found it very interesting. Totally different from the Tropical Cave we have visited in the NT a while ago. Never saw hexalites before, did not even know they did exist. A great tour, well worth doing. TFTC Pirate Rock.

tftc i dont know how to upload photos any help would be great

tftc

A great tour of the cave with a local ranger - we were the only ones for his first of the day!
He had heard about geocaching, but didn't know the answers, but found out for us.
We had great discussions about the island, the cave, Kelly and anything else that popped to mind.
Took heaps of photos with no flash - the new LED lights have a great colour to them that really brings out the natural colour of the formations.
A very worthwhile tour of this cave.
Thanks for the prompt reply to our answers.
Thanks, Robmc.

# 6703. Visited the Caves today and on the first tour of the day Robmc and I were the only ones. We asked our guide to consider the answers to our questions and during the tour they were revealed. This is another of Kangaroo Islands wonderful geological attractions and certainly worth visiting. Poor Kelly, who will ever really know what happened to her. Thanks for permission to log this one.

Thanks Pirate Rock

Great cache location and excellent tour. Geo wife and I enjoyed the cave.

[green]Spend two night on the beautiful Kangarro Island and found some really interesting places!
The nature here is still amazing!

Thanks for this Cache

#10106

EDE

A return visit to the caves for us, with family in tow, and it was good to be able to complete an earthcache at the same time - you always learn something new on these tours, and it was fun seeing our nieces discover the caves as well.
Answers emailed - many thanks for the cache.

We did enjoy doing this Earth Cache as our Tour Guide was most co-operative as regards answering the questions. We had 2 Science teachers on our tour which did make the tour more interesting and informative. We did appreciate your comprehensive notes.The cave was a spectacular sight to see and many photos were taken to show our family.
TFTC Pirate Rock and bringing us to see this wonderful cave

Great cave. Great tour. So sad that we hadn't time to do the advanture tour.

Great tour, definitely worth it. TFTC!

Great tour. The geokids loved it. Interesting caves. Email with answers to follow. Tftc.

There was 2 groups - I went with group 1 which were mainly New Zealanders. We had an ixcillint time. There are some shady characters in the island's underworld so watch your step..........

Answers sent..........

Thanks to Pirate Rock and clear skies from TeamAstro.

After spending a night at a wonderful campsite with wild koalas, wallabies, goose and probably roos as well (if it looks like a too and is about 1,60-1,80m tall, it shouldn't be a wallaby, ey?), I drove the 12km to Kelly Hill Caves and attended the first tour of the day, along with a couple from Canada. The tour was really great and upon arrival on top, we saw the next group of about a dozen people.

I can recommend coming early: it's very cool to attend a semi-private tour and it's probably a lot easier to ask earthcache-related questions.

Logged with COs permission.

TFTC

EN: You really have to see these caves. We hat a private tour, as no one else was with us. My wife, my son and me only. Very nice skulptures. If you have some fantasy you will see plenty. I wonder if I saw Kelly at the very end of the cave looking through the rocks. A shadow moved.

DE: eine alte Tropfsteinhöhle. Schöne Skulpturen wachsen von der Decke und vom Boden. Mit etwas Fantasie lassen sich eine Ballerina und Seepferdchen erkennen. Die Höhle IST nach dem Pferd Kelly benannt, das einst mit dem Reiter hineinstürzte. Es ward dann nie wieder gefunden. Ich glaube ich habe in der hintersten Ecke einen Schatten gesehen. War das vielleicht Kelly?

Found as part of flippers KI tour of 2013.
Email to come when we get sorted at home.
★★★★★★
TFTC
Gayle & Mark
★★★★★★
17 November 2013 4652

6417 km through Australia also brought us to beautifull Kangaroo Island and to this interesting cave. Thanks for placing an earthcache here, we enjoyed listening to the guide, watching the stalagtite formations (the one that looks like a ballerina's leg) and the moment of total darkness

During our Australia holiday we have found this cache.

Greetings from Switzerland
Wöty and AdrenaLina

#1837

What an amazing natural structure, very impressive!
TFTC Dä Tuppes
# 1046

I had no time for the tour, others on the ride made the time but chose to take the short cut to Vivonne Bay, as I still had some 50km to ride and a couple of caches to visit before getting to Vivonne Bay.

This site has special memories for me as it was the location of my first placed cache.

Thanks for bringing me here Pirate Rock.

We spent beautiful days on KI and finished our holiday with a visit of this interesting cave. It was fascinating and the story of the horse brought some mystery

We have visited other caves before but they are such magic places that we could not resist this one either. We were not disappointed because this cave is possibly the best set up that we have seen. The lighting throughout the cave is really well done and a credit to the local enthusiasts. We finished off with the loop walk past the original entrance and were impressed with the "derring do" of the early cave explorers. We gave this a vote for the effort put into establishing this cache and for the overall experience. Logged with the owner's approval. TFTC.

Logging with permission of owner!

We spent 4 nights on Kangaroo Island which was no where near enough time to explore the beauties that this wonderful island paradise has to offer! I live in South Australia and have never made the journey across on the ferry, and after my time here it left me wondering why I had not made the journey sooner!

We got to Kelly Caves late in the afternoon and thankfully made the last tour group into the caves at 4:14pm. It was a lot of fun for us and my two young boys thought the whole experiance was wonderful. As the tour guide turned the lights on for each segment, my eldest son decided he could see the bones of the poor missing horse in each nook and cranny! I love how the park keepers have turned these caves into a safe viewing platform for people like me who would be to terrified to venture into the dark abyss of one of those extreme caching experiences.

The tour guide we had was very passionate about the caves and made the whole experiance very joyful and entertaining. After finishing the tour we went and had a small walk to the caves original entrance and was not surprised to see that many animals had met their doom falling down those holes, thank goodness it is all now fenced off and safe.

Thankyou Pirate Rock for this earth cache and the information that you provided, this was a lovely experiance for our whole family during our stay on Kangaroo Island.

#11 on Kangaroo Island trip. Make sure you save this one before you head out and don't get trapped with no phone coverage like we did! Luckily kids had good memories. TFTC!

Visited with Reynella cub scouts

I love caves, definitely recommend that people visit this location.

On the day we were there, we were given a private tour of the caves (thanks to no one else being there at the same time as us).

Had lunch at the location, perfect spot to sit and eat while admiring the wildlife.

Tour guides were really friendly and helpful and didn’t mind us asking all the geocaching questions (so don’t be afraid to ask – education is what they are there for) [8]

*****Logged with permission (delayed due to me hiding the answers from myself). Thankfully I found them.*****