by Anna
Stephanie and I conquered the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. We did everything there was to do and saw everything there was to see. We cast our fair eyes upon the mighty Three Sisters in Katoomba, the Jenolan Caves, the kangaroos in the Megalong Valley, but most importantly, the Glowworm Tunnel outside Lithgow. While planning the trip our #1 Must See was always the glow worms. We bought a 4-wheel drive car so we could venture the unpaved track to the glowworms. The glowworms were our destiny.
Stopping first at the Lithgow information center, I asked the nice lady if there was anything we needed to know before making our pilgrimage to see out little glowy friends. "Got a 4-wheel drive?" she asks. Of course. "Got a torch (flashlight)?" A little red Mini-Maglite I got in my stocking this year. All systems go. Off to the glowworms.
After a full hour out of the town on a desolate, bumpy, corrugated road with several unmarked forks, we reach a tiny little parking area deep in a fern forest where I believe they filmed Jurassic Park. Signs tell us the tunnel is 1 km away. I grab the MiniMag and we walk down the path. The lil' wormies are housed in an abandoned railway tunnel that hasn't been used in 100+ years. How inviting.
We walk alone through the fern forest and puddles for maybe 10 minutes and arrive to the entrance of the tunnel. You have got to be joking. It's a solid wall of rock with slimy drippy things hanging all over the entrance and a trickly little creek running into it. We muster up all our bravery, press on and enter the tunnel. No worms to be seen, bearing in mind we have no idea what the little guys look like. We walk a little further in. Nothing. My flashlight is on and it's not very strong, just bright enough to see the ground at our feet to keep us out of puddles. We go a little further and a little further and the light from the entrance is almost out of sight. Just then I remember the info center lady said, "Make sure you go all the way through." We now cannot see any sunlight at all. But we can see tiny little blue dots on the walls and ceiling of the tunnel. The glowworms! They look like a Lite Brite. I shine my light on some and they look like little inchworms or caterpillars with a glowy dot on their tail (or head?). They also had some sticky cobweb goo holding them to the wall.
We keep walking; keep walking in the pitch black, dying of heart attacks because we have no idea how far it is to the other end. Steph is holding on the back of my sweatshirt and I let out the occasional yell and whistle to scare away any potential bad guys and monsters. I have no idea how long we walked, maybe 5 or 10 more minutes, until we saw the light at the other end. 5 or 10 minutes is a fantastically long time to walk in the dark, let me tell you.
There was nothing great out the other side, just more fern forest and drippy cliff faces. After out heart rates returned to normal we turned around and walked back through to get back to the car. Being much braver the second time I turned the flashlight off a couple times and it was pretty cool looking. Back to the car by 6:30 and back down that terrible road. Since it was late afternoon, we saw lots of kangaroos eating in the clearings near the road.
Proud of our accomplishment, we left Lithgow, stopping for gas first. We told the lady at the gas station about our adventure and she didn't seem to think it was anything great. She claimed there used to be so many worms you didn't even need a flashlight and that no parts of the tunnel were totally dark. Hogwash. We did the scariest thing ever and that's all anyone needs to know.
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