Caving Locations

An easy drive from Canberra — click a cave for the full story, a map, and driving time from ANU Sport.

NUCC regularly visits a large range of diverse cave systems, featuring attractions from underground rivers to pristine cave formation to deep, vertical pitches. All these can be found within an easy drive from Canberra, with our day trips generally being 1–2h from ANU, and weekend trips being 2–4h from ANU.

There are around a dozen major caving areas within this radius of Canberra, making it definitely the best-placed Australian city to be a caver in (although Hobart comes a close second). NUCC visits most of these dozen areas with greater or lesser frequency, and we occasionally even run trips to lesser known caving areas.

Abercrombie Caves "Abers"

Central-West NSW, via Goulburn and Crookwell

A relaxed weekend spot with a swimming hole, a famous karst arch, and Stable Cave.

~2.5 hr from ANU Sport

Ashford Caves

Northern NSW, near the Queensland border

A far-flung Northern NSW area NUCC's own site has barely documented yet.

~9–10 hr (estimate) from ANU Sport

Buchan Caves

East Gippsland, Victoria

Small, well-decorated (and sometimes very muddy) caves near a pub with an excellent chicken parmi.

~4.5 hr from ANU Sport

Bungonia Caves

Bungonia National Park, near Goulburn NSW

One of NUCC's favourite haunts — dry, vertical caves good for both beginners and advanced rope-work.

~1.5 hr from ANU Sport

Cliefden Caves

Belubula River, Central-West NSW

Fantastic caves currently facing access issues and threatened by a proposed dam.

Cooleman Plains

Kosciuszko National Park

Alpine grass plains with three limestone gorges, open only outside the snow season.

~3.5 hr from ANU Sport

Jenolan Caves

Central Tablelands NSW

Famous tourist caves alongside permit-only wild caves, approached through Goulburn and Oberon.

~3–3.5 hr from ANU Sport

Mount Fairy Caves

Private property north of Bungendore, NSW

NUCC's closest caving area of any real size — wombat-hole-sized passages and old lime mine relics.

~50 min from ANU Sport

Viator Hill and Glenlyon Caves "Texas Caves"

Glenlyon Dam, south-east Queensland

South-east Queensland's only major limestone caves — partly drowned by a dam in the 1970s.

~9–10 hr (estimate) from ANU Sport

Tuglow Caves

Kanangra-Boyd National Park, NSW

A varied cave famous for its underground 'canyonesque' waterfall round trip.

~4 hr from ANU Sport

Wee Jasper Caves "Wee J"

Wee Jasper, NSW, west of Canberra

Popular, easily-accessible caves great for beginners learning to abseil and prusik.

~1.5 hr from ANU Sport

Wombeyan Caves

Southern Highlands, NSW

Fantastic marble cave formations, well set up as a popular tourist cave destination.

~2.5 hr from ANU Sport

Wyanbene Caves and the Big Hole

Deua National Park, NSW

A well-decorated active stream cave, plus a 100m abseil/prusik into the Big Hole.

~2–2.5 hr from ANU Sport

Yarrangobilly Caves "Yagby"

Kosciuszko National Park, south-west of Canberra

Extensive alpine caving, including mainland Australia's deepest and coldest cave.

~3 hr from ANU Sport

Other Caving Areas

Of course, the list above is not exhaustive… NUCC also occasionally visits other New South Wales caving areas, generally fairly rarely — maybe two of them each year. These include Bendethera, Rosebrook, Narrangullen, Talmo, Marble Arch, Borenore, Wellington, Timor, Colong, Church Creek, Jones Creek and Macleay (there are more karst areas in NSW, but not every one is listed here).

Canyoning Around Canberra

NUCC is the National University Caving Club, not the National University Canyoning Club — caving is the core interest, but the club does recreational canyoning too. Canyons visited around the region include Bungonia Main, Jerrara Creek, Long Gully, Spring Creek, Fordham, Waterfall Creek, Tuross Cascades, Watta, Macquarie Pass, Macquarie Cascades, Minnamurra and Summer Creek, plus around a dozen canyons near Kanangra Walls and the occasional trip out to the Blue Mountains (about a 4.5h drive from Canberra, per NUCC's own canyoning page).

These two areas are grab-bag categories on NUCC's own site rather than single destinations, so — matching the original site's own structure — they stay as a short summary here rather than getting individual pages.