Kelly Hill Caves | Murray Foote

Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 6 July 2024.

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We are in Kelly Hills Caves, near the south-west corner of Kangaroo Island.

Small stalactites.

(‘Tites hang down; ‘mites reach up).

I should have mentioned in the last post that one of our reasons to visit Cape Willoughby Lighthouse was to purchase Kangaroo Island Tour Passes. You can’t do this online. These give you 12 months access to the National Park (we needed 6 days as we were staying inside it) and include access to a self guided tour at Cape Borda lighthouse and guided tours at Cape Willoughby Lighthouse, Seal Bay, and Kelly Hills Caves.

About two million years ago, the sea level was about 125 metres lower and what is now Kelly Hills formed as dunes from windblown shell fragments from the exposed sea bed. Over time this hardened into limestone sitting on the much harder bedrock, leading to waterflows between the two layers. underground rovers and ceiling collapses led to the fomration of the current caves.

Stalactites reflect the age of the cave because they grow at about one centimetre per year. What we saw was a small part of the total system, which likely stretches for several kilometres.

After a while, we experienced an audio-visual show, with at times much more interesting lighting than the initial static display.

The story goes that in 1885 a stockman Fred Kelsey was looking for lost sheep when he and his horse fell into a sinkhole. He found his way out but the horse was injured and when he returned he couldn’t find the sinkhole or the horse. The horse was called Kate Kelly and hence the name of the caves.

The caves were rediscovered in 1925 and tours commenced in 1926, by candlelight, and going much further than currently.

I have seen a reference to a long tour including crawling through small spaces but I suspect it is not current and was discontinued after the fires.

Many fossils have been found in the cave, probably of animals who fell into sinkholes, though not the missing horse. These included a skeleton of the Kangaroo Island dwarf emu, now extinct but seen by the first European visitors.

There was also a skull of a procoptodon, or short-faced kangaroo, which was about two metres tall, similar to the current red kangaroo but about two-and-a-half times heavier. It had forward facing eyes (so stereoscopic vision), long arms, single toes on the feet with broader feet for balance, and probably walked rather than hopped. I didn’t manage to see or photograph one when wandering around Kangaroo Island and this is possibly because they have been extinct for at least 18,000 years and maybe 45,000 years. They would have co-existed with Aboriginals for tens of thousands of years and their extinction would have been due to some combination of climate change and human predation.