Sisters Cavern is located on private property in a huge valley that runs down the east side of Takaka Hill. In the upper reaches numerous big caves are known including one of New Zealand’s largest called Middle Earth. The cave we were aiming to survey was much lower down and was likely found when the area was cleared for grazing and quarrying.
We made the steep drive through the farm and down the quarry face to a flat clearing. Although no longer worked the quarry is famous for being the source of marble used to build the original parliament building. Plenty of rusty machinery remains from this era.
After the nastiest bush-bash through thick barberry we found the entrance, as we made our way into the cavern and down to the lower levels Oz and Debbie started surveying the cave – the main purpose of our trip. I took a few photos of the near pristine calcite straws before climbing back up to the cavern to document all the historic graffiti.
Today writing on the cave walls would be considered gross vandalism, but in days gone by it was common practice. The oldest date I could clearly make out was 1924 but there was one that looked to be 1913.
It didn’t take much investigating to figure out what some of the early explorers had been in there for (stealing stalactites). In addition to the numerous snapped stalactites there was a large drill bit – probably “borrowed” from the quarry. At the very bottom of the cavern a few of the larger stals had chip marks – showing clear signs that someone had put a lot of effort into smashing them off.
After a morning underground it was nice to get back into the warm sun at the entrance. Alot of these small less significant caves often get passed by in favour of the larger going caves – it was nice to see Sisters Cavern get surveyed and added to the list of mapped caves.
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