You may know that Struan Farm is located in New Zealand's Waitomo District, home to the major international tourist destination "Waitomo Caves." The district is generally known for its underground limestone landscape. "Wai" means water, while a "tomo" is a sinkhole.
Tomos and caves can be found throughout the area. As a child John went off caving for hours. (Note: these were the days when parents didn't worry all that much about their children being outside exploring, or micromanage their activities. Kids went off, played, and came home for meals.) John had a rope ladder, and remembers going into large caves on parts of the old farm across the road. But he also remembers going into a smaller cave on our existing property, just down the Old Road. Recently sister-in-law Julie went off with torch in hand with grandson Charlie off to explore it. They came back reporting seeing "hundreds" of native wetas.
As you might expect I'm relatively unenthusiastic about crawling around caves. Dirt, spiders, wetas, tight spaces, the possibility of getting lost in the dark--not so sure about all that. But I decided that I should go check out the cave with John so that I know where it is and what's there.
Well guess what? It's really cool, to quote one of our granddaughters. There are indeed wetas, glowworms and stalac-tites and -mites. It's not large, and is relatively dry. There are multiple branches that can easily be crawled into. The wetas are cave wetas, read more about wetas here.
These photos were taken with John's phone. I'll be going back soon with my camera to spend some time taking better images, especially of those wetas! So if you can't find me, I'll be down the Old Road, venturing underground. I'll be home in time for dinner.
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