Managing the Caves of the South-east
The Settlement Period
The first Aboriginal people found the caves of the region provided a comfortable residence, with ready access to water, and certainly in a region with abundant food. The caves also provided a site where chert could be mined to make tools and weapons, and soft walls which could be decorated for purposes which we do not fully understand. In turn, the caves held intact over many years the very precious evidence of their culture which has helped us to understand more of our forerunners and their lifestyle.
Then white fellas arrived, and Stephen Henty opened up the region by initially settling at Mt. Gambier Town Cave in about 1840. The Arthur family followed (1842), then Evelyn Sturt was smart enough to realise that Henty, thinking he was still in Victoria, had not registered his claim to the land (1844). Accordingly, he applied and so was able to take over Henty's land area. When Governor George Grey arrived in 1844 on his exploratory journey through the region, several families were already in residence there and also at or near other cenotes. Appropriately, the town cave remained the focal point of the city, and in general, has been managed to serve that purpose ever since. "Black Jack" Byng's hotel was established on the adjacent site of the present-day Jens Hotel.
The park around the cave, occupying the central position in the city, has had considerable care lavished upon it over the years, with the wonderful fountain presented by Captain Robert Gardiner (1984), successive ornamental plantings culminating in the rose garden (1909), and the ornamental pergola (1933). Umpherstone's Cave also received a great deal of attention, firstly from James Umpherstone who beautified it for the benefit of the townspeople, and then in recent years from the social club of the Woods and Forests Department.
By contrast, Englebrecht's Cave (originally Vansittart Cave) was explored by Dr. Wehl and his friends, but otherwise neglected. Then Englebrecht purchased the site, including Dr. Wehl's flour mill, and converted the mill to a distillery. The cave was used as a dumping spot for the waste of the distillery and other rubbish - perhaps one of the few caves to be named after its major vandal! Then in 1979, the Lions Club and Lifeline Organisation took the initiative to rehabilitate the site, and created the attractive and interesting cave park which it is today.
Law and government arrived in the shape of the police (1844), Dr Wehl's appointment as magistrate (1850) and Laurence Egan's appointment as crown lands bailiff (1860). In effect, the government of the day was assuming that it would manage the South-east from Adelaide, and that this small group of functionaries would be the local agents of central government. Even as local government became established, its powers were extremely limited, and not uncommonly over-ridden by the state.
Virtual Anarchy at Naracoorte
Naracoorte Caves were first discovered in about 1845, and have since enjoyed one of the most complex and exciting histories of any Australian cave. At first there was only nominal and remote management in the hands of the crown lands bailiff.
The real leap forward for Naracoorte Caves came with the 1856 arrival of Father Julian Woods (later adding his mother's name and thus being known as Tenison-Woods) as parish priest at Penola. Julian was blessed with insatiable curiosity and from 1857 onwards, commonly visited and investigated the caves of the region. His writing in the Register (an Adelaide newspaper) included a description of a desiccated body of an Aboriginal lying in Blanche Cave and this attracted the attention of a wandering showman named Thomas Craig.
This led to the strange episode of the "Petrified Aboriginal". In Sept 1861, Craig stole the body (which was desiccated, not petrified), and set out to walk the main road back to Port MacDonnell. By chance, the road led him to and through Tarpeena, which was the home of Lands Bailiff Laurence Egan. He was apprehended by Egan, who then demanded that the police should take possession of the body. Craig was then brought before magistrate Wehl, who decreed that the body should be returned to the cave. Craig then sued Wehl in the Adelaide court, on the basis that Wehl had wrongly deprived him of what was legally his property. There was no legislative protection of the Aboriginal relics of any kind and Craig argued that the body could not be considered to be sand or gravel - the two commodities over which Egan had control.
The court hearing, reported in great detail in the press, was a somewhat humorous affair, with the defending counsel making many jokes at Craig's expense. But the court found in Craig's favour, but demonstrated their lack of respect for poor Craig by only awarding a token farthing in damages.
Craig returned to Naracoorte, again removed the body, and took it to Sydney where he placed it on exhibition. It was seen and examined closely by J.F. Mann, a surveyor who had delineated the Jenolan Caves Reserve, and had a strong interest in the body. He reported that a bullet was visible under the skin of the corpse, confirming the story that the Aboriginal had been shot by whites and hence was of recent origin. A contemporary press story also stated that the man was in fact the father of 'Tiger', a member of the famous Aboriginal cricket team which toured Britain in 1867-68. The relic was later exhibited in London then sold at auction, and there is no further record of its whereabouts.
There are many versions of this story, some of them owing more to the novels of Rider Haggard than to the events as reported in the press of the day and the evidence presented at the Wehl trial. The above account is an attempt to summarise the story as revealed by the original sources.
This story also reveals the extent to which any management of the caves was indeed tenuous, and vested solely in Egan, who lived at a very considerable distance and had extremely limited powers. This is also conveyed by the various accounts from Woods and others of the various crude shacks built for shelter during visits to the caves and the litter of empty bottles and other debris around and in the caves.
Woods described the caves in some detail in his 'Geological Observations in South Australia, Principally in the district South-east of Adelaide' (London 1862). This is a fascinating book in which one can see Woods struggling to reconcile the views of the great British geologist, Sir Charles Lyell with his own very acute observations. In the light of contemporary understandings, Woods was closer to the truth (in the soft limestones of the South-east) than Lyell. As a result, the Naracoorte Caves became well known, particularly in Europe, and attracted even larger numbers of visitors. However, there was still no real management, but the local hotels and guides clearly prospered.
From at least the early 1860s until at least 1918, commercial entrepreneurs ran tours to the caves, using purpose built vehicles and providing abundant refreshments. Mark Read, Charles Beauchamp, Charles Davis and others continued in this role, each for some 50 years. It provided a remarkably well developed and long lasting example of private sector access to an Australian cave, but provided virtually no protective management.
The caves also provided a venue for special events. There was a long procession of vice-regal visits, commencing with Governor MacDonnell in 1858 who had named the Blanche Cave after his wife. Then from 1862 onwards, the cave provided a venue for annual New Year's Eve celebrations.
The Guano Industry
The first well-developed mining of bat guano also took place at Naracoorte. Formal applications to extract guano from the Bat cave were made to the surveyor-general as early as 1867, but refused because of the lack of on-site management. In 1871, new regulations were proclaimed allowing the taking of 'stone, salt and manure' from crown lands, and local clerks of court were authorised to issue licences. Then, in 1875, when licensed mining was well under way, the crown lands bailiff (by now Singleton) seized the material which had been taken from the caves. In a wonderfully graphic bit of journalism, one journalist reported that:
The government, after having licensed a number of men to dig the guano, and allowing them to collect a few tons together, came down upon them like a Brahmin kite on a dead Malay, and confiscated the lot.
This episode again demonstrated the unsatisfactory management of the caves, and caused immense local protest, focussed upon both the administration of guano extraction and the continuing damage to the caves. Probably largely because of this concern, a large tract of land, including the caves, were placed under the control of the Forest Board. They issued a new licence for extraction of the guano, but this operation proved to be unsuccessful from a financial perspective. With the formation of a new Woods and Forests Department in 1882, responsibility for the guano extraction was devolved to the district council, who again arranged a series of new licences. Finally, with the appointment of an on-site caretaker, a new era of administration emerged.
The Reddan Years
The new caretaker was a genial Irishman named William Reddan, who had trained in Ireland as a gardener and horticulturalist. He soon instituted effective management of the guano extraction, and then turned his attention to his (at that time) central responsibility of planting pines, and planted at least 200,000 pines of various species.
But he was also expected to find new caves which might more effectively compete with the success of Jenolan as a tourism attraction. In 1896, he was successful, and named his new discovery in honour of the Queen whose Jubilee was being celebrated at that time. He was authorised to employ a group of men to assist in opening the cave to the public, one of whom was James Mason, who continued working for Reddan as a guide to the caves. Mason also became an enthusiastic and committed explorer, and his initials appear in many of the caves of the region. In 1908 he discovered Alexandra Cave, and explored it in company with Reddan and his daughter Agnes.
By this time, Reddan had been widely recognised as a caves manager of outstanding quality and as a leading local citizen. He and Agnes had founded a local theatre company and the district horticultural society. He had used his horticultural expertise to develop garden beds, rockeries and pergolas around the caves, and some visitors commented that the gardens were even more an attraction than the caves. Then, together with his photographer friend W.A. Francis, he had been responsible for planting the gardens which beautified the centre of the township. Thus, he had become one of the first 'modern' cave managers, with a great deal of authority, and a real vision for both the reserve which he controlled and its relationship to the district.
The opening of Alexandra Cave was a truly important affair. There was a small opening ceremony performed in April by the Conservator of Forests in order to catch the Easter trade, but then on 12th May, a truly grand opening was performed by the governor, Admiral Sir Day Hart Bosanquet, K.C.B., C.V.O. with considerable pomp and ceremony and over 2,000 people in attendance.
Following Reddan
In 1917, responsibility for management of the caves was transferred to the Tourist Bureau and the caves reserve was designated as a 'National Pleasure Resort'. Reddan retired in 1919, but the momentum for good management which he had established persisted for some years. In particular, Robert Leitch (1920-1948) kept up the gardens, renewed all the fences and pergolas and added a number of ornamental trees.
But in due course, the quality of management declined and only commenced to recover when Ern Maddock was appointed to supervise all reserves under the control of the Bureau. Shortly afterwards (1969) the fossil deposits in Victoria cave were discovered by Grant Gartrell and Rod Wells.
In 1972, the resort was transferred to the National Park Service as the Naracoorte Caves Conservation Park, and with the vision of Bruce Allen and now Brian Clark, Naracoorte has moved to the forefront of cave management once again.