Somewhere Else

Here are some interesting photos from our archives. The Albion Hotel in the town of Forbes, New South Wales used to have a rather unusual Hall of Fame. It celebrated famous (or should that be infamous) bushrangers, especially Ben Hall who “worked” in this area in the early 1860s.

Around that time there were so many problems with bushrangers – like the Holdup at Escort Rock which we described yesterday – that tunnels were built beneath Forbes for safe transfer of gold between banks, assay offices and gold coaches. The Bushrangers Hall of Fame was located in one of these underground tunnels and contained an interesting collection of bushranging memorabilia.

So why are we writing all this in the past tense? Because we visited the hotel in 2008, and it burned down in 2009.

Last weekend we mentioned the underground delights of Narni in Italy. But you don’t have to travel all the way to Italy to go subterranean.

On our recent visit to Darwin we explored the World War II Oil Storage Tunnels, beneath the cliffs near the Wharf Precinct. These amazing tunnels were constructed during the war, but finished too late to be of any military use in the conflict. They were reopened as a tourist attraction in 1992 to commemorate the 50th anniversary bombing of Darwin in 1942.

Yesterday we described the amazing underground tunnels and rooms located beneath the streets of the Umbrian hill town of Narni. This underground complex served different purposes at different times.

During the Inquisition, suspected heretics were imprisoned here for torture and trial. Some rooms have displays of gruesome torture equipment (above), while others still have ancient graffiti that was scratched into the walls by the prisoners of the Inquisition:

There must be something sightly subterranean about us; during our travels we always manage to visit a few underground tourist attractions. Of course there are some advantages to being underground – it doesn’t matter if the weather is cold or rainy outside. But we don’t really need a reason or excuse; we just happen to enjoy being under the ground.

One of our favourite subterranean sites is Narni Underground. Narni (above) is a medieval Umbrian hill town about 80km from Rome, with several odd claims to fame. CS Lewis adopted the Latin version of the town’s name as the setting for his Narnia Chronicles. And the town is considered to be at the geographical centre of Italy.

But the best thing to see when you’re there is the extensive Narni Underground (Narni Sotterranea in Italian). The oldest parts of this complex date back to Roman times. Today it is accessible as an extensive maze of underground tunnels, churches and prisons – all hidden underneath the town. Enthusiastic guides lead groups of visitors through the tunnels, explaining the original uses of the various rooms. There is even an underground chapel carved out of the stone:

Today we’ve been exploring some of the well known (and not so well known) attractions of the South Australian town of Mount Gambier. The town’s most iconic feature is the famous Blue Lake shown above. This amazing crater lake is just a kilometre from the city centre. It’s in the crater of an extinct volcano.

The Blue Lake isn’t actually blue all year round. Its colour changes markedly at different times of the year, but today it was distinctly blue – when the sun was shining anyway.

Another local feature that you can look down into is the Cave Garden shown below. This amazing cave is right in the centre of town, just behind the old town hall. And in case you’re wondering, it isn’t a volcanic crater – it was caused by the slow natural erosion of limestone.

What is it about caves? They’re scary things, yet we can’t resist going in them.

Novelists like to focus on the dark side of caves. Tom Sawyer gets lost in a cave; the nasty Morlocks in HG Wells’ sci classic “The Time Machine” live in caves; Bilbo Baggins meets Gollum in a cave; and Alice has quite a few adventures underground.

Despite that bad press, everyone seems to love caves. The Margaret River region south of Perth is famous for wine, but it also has some great caves. CaveWorks is a good place to start if you’re a novice Morlock. This eco centre has displays explaining how caves are formed and about things that you can see in caves, like stalagmites and stalactites. From there you can go on a tour through Lake Cave (above).

You can read more about caves and other underground tourist attractions of Western Australia in our article “Tunnel Vision”. It’s in the Sept 2009 issue of Caravan World magazine.

You could say that we are a bit antisocial. We like to travel and sight-see without having too many others around us. Independent travellers, that’s us. But there are occasions when we are glad to see fellow tourists. The catacombs in Paris are a good example.

As you walk through the underground tunnels, you come to the doorway above. The sign says “Stop! This is the Kingdom of the Dead”. And inside there are six million skeletons, which were moved into the catacombs from Parisian cemeteries in the late 18th century. It’s a gloomy and slightly unnerving place – and one where you are glad to see a few other sightseers as you wander around.

Although we don’t think about it much, virtually all cities have sewers. They are generally hidden and we only notice them if something goes wrong. But in Paris the sewers are actually a macabre tourist attraction.

The sewers of Paris have been a popular with tourists since the 19th Century. You can visit a section of Les Égouts de Paris to see the sewers for yourself. There is a museum, with displays showing how the sewers were built and maintained. Amazingly, this is still a working sewer, with effluent running along concrete channels.

These sewers were used as the setting for part of Victor Hugo’s massive novel Les Miserables, and hence for the musical derived from it. The hero Jean Valjean walks through the sewers carrying his injured enemy to safety. That sounds like a noble deed, but a visit to Les Égouts shows that it was a brave one too.

The Umbrian town of Orvieto in Italy is one of those places where you have to look below the surface (literally) to find the most interesting tourist sites. Built high on a hill for defensive reasons, the town is very pleasant to wander around. There are narrow winding streets, an impressive cathedral and some interesting towers.

But the best parts of Orvieto are hidden underground. Over the centuries, the inhabitants have dug an amazing variety of underground tunnels and caverns – and lots of wells. Three of these wells are easily accessible to visitors.

The most intricate is the 16th century Pozzo di San Patrizio (St Patrick’s Well), just near the upper station for the funicular railway. This well is like an enormous double helix. You walk down the stairs on one helix to the bottom of the well, and then back up the other helix to the surface. It’s an amazing engineering achievement.

There is another well beneath the cafe at the Cava della Pozzo and a third one in the underground tunnels that you can explore with a guide on the Orvieto Underground tour (see photo below).