The Marakoopa Cave is one of two famous limestone caves below the Western Bluff within the Karst National Park at Mole Creek, Tasmania. The other famous cave is the nearby King Solomon’s Cave. There are over 300 caves and sinkholes, in the Karst National Park as well as gorges and underground rivers and springs and this is what the Mole Creek area has become renown for.
The highlights of the Marapooka Cave are the two underground streams that flow through the cave system keeping the atmosphere cool and damp. Other highlights are bright glow-worms, a rim pool, stalactites and stalacnites, caverns, flowstone features, reflection pools and shawls.
The cave has two guided tours for the visitor, which last about 45 minutes each. Despite walking down many stairs in the Cathedral Gardens and Glow Worm cave this area is considered a rare above ground cave. Here one can see the giant cavern known as the Cathedral Cavern and this is the caves highlight. Within this cavern is an area known as the Gardens, which features stunning colours and delicate formations of the limestone. The other tour is the Underground Rivers and Glow Worm tour where the lower chambers have crystals that sparkle like diamonds. This cave has the largest number of Glow Worms in Australia plus many speleotherms such as the rimstone pools. There are also reflective pools embedded with stalactites. The atmosphere has a cool embrace and soothing music wafts through the air as river waters break the silence of the dark and lonely river passages.
The Marapooka cave animals such as the Glow Worms live completely in the dark as they have adapted well to the cave environment of a damp atmosphere and completely dark surrounds.
The name Marakoopa comes from the original Tasmanian Aboriginals and it means handsome, as the caves were deemed handsome to the early Aboriginals.