Butt-Powered Glow Worms 🐛

I decided to have a break this morning and ignore my grand plans to go for a long run before starting the day – I’m on holiday after all. I subbed the run out for a gentle walk along the country road, disturbing the local horses and cows as my presence interrupted their morning naps. I passed a cute farm sign, “R & D Kelly & Girls”, a refreshing change from the stereotypical farming “& Sons” signs.

The morning sun is nice and warm, yet the air is still refreshing, so when I return to the Airbnb I make my usual breakfast and take it to a table in the morning sun. The quiet stillness in the air, taking in the view of freshly cut hay bales, makes the scenery look like a country canvas painting. This is the way days should start, I think.

We’re venturing out into North West Tassie today, our first stop being Mole Creek township for a morning coffee. I’ve been on the mocha bandwagon since Christmas Day and am quickly realising that this is a gateway drug to the real stuff. I ponder how long it’ll take for me to ditch the chocolate and just go straight coffee as I feel the bitter kick of energy invigorate my body for a day of exploring. Coffee kick on board, we drive up to the Marakoopa Cave ticket office, join the queue behind a couple with an unfortunate smell of mouldy cheese emanating from them, and get tickets to one of the extra tours they’re running today due to high demand.

The Parks Tas staff seem genuinely surprised that it’s busy today. It is, after all, the middle of summer holidays. If not busy now, when would it be? I listen to the lady explain the way to the cave, the conditions in the cave, what you can and can’t do, where the toilets are, and what discounts you get on your ticket for the two people in front of us. To save her saying this speech again for us, I recite it back to her. “Oh, you’re on the 10:30 tour, you’ve got time to walk,” she responds, with a somewhat relieved look that I’ve saved her repeating the speech for the tenth time today.

The walk along the creek, with ferns galore protected by the higher treetop canopy, is a great start to the day. The cool shade of the mini rainforest and the relaxing sound of water flowing over the rocky creek bed create a calm, peaceful atmosphere for the ten-minute walk to the cave entrance. We’re early, so we sit in the sun away from the door, where a cold breeze flows out, dropping the surrounding temperature significantly.

Our group of about twenty is taken into the cave by our friendly and extremely rugged-up guide. It’s nine degrees in the cave, but she’s dressed like she’s heading off on an Arctic expedition. Inside, the cave is dimly lit but bright enough to not be scared of the dark or anything. If anything, it could be a tad darker to get a better view of the glow worms attached to the roof above. But that’ll come later.

I’ve done a glow worm cave tour once before in New Zealand. There’s possibly even a post about it somewhere in this back catalogue of blogs. On that tour we rode a boat along an underground river. This one has just a creek and no boats are needed as the guide explains the life cycle of the glow worms above – or, as she calls them, “the maggots that shine a line out of their bums”. There are no show lights in this cave like you see in other countries, or if you’d visited here in the ’90s. It’s all kept dim to help preserve the habitat for these cute little bum-shining maggots.

The stalactites and stalagmites produce stunning displays as we progress deeper into the cave. We’re about 120 metres beneath the surface, so as water over millions of years dissolves the limestone above, it trickles into the cave and, drop by drop, forms beautiful calcium carbonate features. “How often does each drop, drop?” asks one of the group. “Every two minutes and thirteen seconds,” the guide quickly responds. I get the feeling she may have just made that number up, as I’ve seen the stalactite in front of me drip at least twice already and we haven’t been here that long yet. Surely it depends on how much water is above, but anyway – cool fun fact.

Speaking to the one child on the tour, who must be under ten, the guide says, “If you come back here when you’re as old as your grandparents, the cave would look pretty much the same as it does today.” She goes on to explain that stalactites and stalagmites grow by about one centimetre every hundred years. That’s like a millimetre every decade. Talk about playing the long game. There are rules about what you can and can’t do to protect these fragile, slow-growing mineral deposits. Basically: don’t touch, or you might break off thousands of years of work.

We get a few minutes to experience pitch-black darkness as the guide recalls stories of the early white discoverers of the cave and how they would have struggled to navigate only by candlelight. Apparently a couple of teenage boys found it and kept it as their own secret hideaway for several months before adults became aware of the cave. She explains that we only have the post-colonial history of the cave to tell, implying – but glossing over – the tragic reason why we don’t have the Indigenous perspective here in Tasmania.

Before we leave, we experience full darkness again to observe the glow worms in their beauty as the guide explains their life cycle. In short, the maggots shine a line out of their butts for about nine months, catching bugs in silky webs, before going into a cocoon, hatching into a gnat, mating, and dying within two days. What a life.

Stepping out of the cave, the cool breeze on our backs meets the warm Tasmanian heatwave air, quickly warming us up from our cave-dweller temperatures. By the time we walk back along the creek through the rainforest to the car, we’re properly warmed again. I enjoyed this little cave tour, even if the glow worm density here was less than what I saw in New Zealand. With our time underground done, we drive away from the caves, heading towards Cradle Mountain for the next stage of our adventure.Read more