Visiting Gunns Plains Caves in North West Tasmania

Gunns Plains Caves are hidden beneath the farmland of North West Tasmania, about 30 km south of Ulverstone. We visited them while exploring around Mountain Valley, and as we drove across the open countryside towards the caves, we couldn’t work out where a cave system could possibly be hiding. There wasn’t a rocky escarpment or even a substantial hill in sight.

The answer is underground. A steep flight of 54 steps takes you beneath the farmland into a limestone cave filled with calcite shawls, flowstones and glow worms, with an underground river still flowing through it. The guided tour follows about 275 metres of the cave and takes roughly an hour..

How to get to Gunns Plains Caves

If you’re coming from the coast, Gunns Plains Caves are about a 30-kilometre drive south of Ulverstone along winding country roads. We approached from the south after visiting Leven Canyon, just 12 km away.

Despite the cave’s complete concealment beneath the surrounding farmland, it is well signposted, and we found the car park without any trouble.

Gunns Plains Caves Tour

To explore Gunns Plains Caves, we took a guided tour with a jolly cave guide, Geoff Deer. The tours run every day almost hourly between 10am and 3.30 pm (check current schedule). But if you arrive after the start time, check at the reception – the tour may not have left yet. We arrived at the caves at about 12:15 pm and were just in time to join the 12 pm tour.

As with most caves, the tour starts with a descent to the floor of the cave. Of course, with an underground cave, the descent is a little more epic than usual. Down 54 steep metal steps, we all went into the cool darkness of the cave.

Once we reached level ground, Geoff led us through a 275-meter-long labyrinth of passageways decorated with stunning calcite shawls, straws, and flowstones. Shawls are some of the most striking formations you can see in a cave, and Gunns Plains Caves are known for their elaborate shawls.

Shawls are created by water trickling down a rockface and depositing a narrow strip of calcite, which eventually results in a thin sheet hanging down from the cave’s roof. As the water trickles down, it doesn’t always follow the same path, and as the trickle changes direction, over time, it creates interesting folds in the shawl formations. The colour bands in the shawls are caused by minerals like iron oxide.

One of the most remarkable features in the cave is a natural pattern of rock deposits that looks so much like a painting of a bear that it’s hard to believe that you are not looking at an early human cave painting.

Of course, it would’ve been quite strange for prehistoric Australians to draw an image of a black bear they’d never seen, but the idea of nature drawing animal shapes on a cave wall is just as bizarre.

The underground river that carved out Gunns Plains Caves still flows through the cave and provides life-giving humidity to the cave’s environment. This humidity makes Gunns Plains Caves an appealing habitat for glow worms that can be found on the roof of Brodie’s tunnel. The colony is not big, but the tiny insects still provide enough shine to light up the tunnel’s roof like a starry sky.

The river itself is home to the Tasmanian giant freshwater crayfish, fish and eel. Geoff also told us stories about exploring the furthest reaches of the cave, the areas accessible only to caving enthusiasts, and discovering at least 36 platypus burrows on the Sandy banks of the river. The pitch-black seclusion of the river seems to be a popular habitat for these gorgeous monotremes.

There is a photo of one of these platypus pinned to the reception window. Of course, you are unlikely to spot a platypus on a cave tour, but if you are really keen to see them in the wild, head to the Tasmanian Arboretum in Eugenana (41 km away) – it is by far the best place to see platypus in Tasmania.

Around Gunns Plains Caves

The landscape of the Gunns Plains is mostly farmland with rolling green hills and winding country roads. But the plains are surrounded by large tracts of forest that hide all kinds of hidden gems

Preston Falls

Only 9 km away from the caves, Preston Falls is a gorgeous 25-meter waterfall surrounded by the lush blackwood forest. It’s only about a 5-minute walk from the road. The trail leads over a small bridge across Preston Creek and brings you to the lookout at the top of the falls.

Unlike many of the waterfall-top lookouts that offer only a glimpse of the falls below, Preston Falls Lookout is set slightly to the side of the falls and gives you a beautiful view of the veil of the falls streaming down from the edge of the cliff to the forested valley below.

Leven Canyon

Twenty-nine kilometres south of Gunns Plains Caves, Leven Canyon is a true hidden gem. The walking trail to the two lookouts at Leven Canyon is one of Tasmania’s Great Short Walks. And while the walk is indeed quite short, the lookouts from the edge of the canyon are jaw-dropping.

You can visit each of the lookouts on its own by 20 and 40-minute return trails. Or you could combine the two trails into one walk by taking the Forest Stairs. If you prefer to walk the stairs downhill, start the walk at Cruikshanks lookout. You can find more details and photos in my guide to Leven Canyon Walk.

Wings Wildlife Park

Just up the road from the caves in the well-known Wings Wildlife Park that offers up-close and personal encounters with many Australian native species, including Tasmanian devils, wombats and koalas. We didn’t enter the park itself, since we prefer to see animals in the wild (see below), but we had a delicious lunch at the park’s cafe – one of, if not the only, cafes in the area.

Mountain Valley Wilderness Holidays

Mountain Valley Wilderness Holidays is a wonderful little-known reserve 34km south of Gunns Plains Caves, where you stay in cozy log cabins, and wild Tasmanian devils and Spotted-tailed quolls come out of the forest to your cabin at night. The cabins are nestled in the 61-ha Private Nature Reserve, tucked away from the rest of the world in a gorgeous valley with the Leven River flowing through it.

We stayed at Mountain Valley log cabins for two nights and had some extraordinary wildlife-watching experiences there. You can read all about it in my review of Mountain Valley Wilderness Holidays.

More Nature & Wildlife Destinations in Tasmania

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