The Wanderings of a Spiritualist

We recuperated after our Brisbane tour by spending the next week at / Medlow Bath, that little earthly paradise, which is the most restful / spot we have found in our wanderings. It was built originally by Mr. / Mark Foy, a successful draper of Sydney, and he is certainly a man of / taste, for he has adorned it with a collection of prints and of / paintings -- hundreds of each -- which would attract attention in any city, / but which on a mountain top amid the wildest scenery give one the idea / of an Arabian Nights palace. There was a passage some hundreds of yards / long, which one has to traverse on the way to each meal, and there was a / certain series of French prints, representing events of Byzantine / history, which I found it difficult to pass, so that I was often a late / comer. A very fair library is among the other attractions of this / remarkable place.

Before leaving we spent one long day at the famous Jenolan Caves, which / are distant about forty-five miles. As the said miles are very / up-and-down, and as the cave exploration involves several hours of / climbing, it makes a fairly hard day's work. We started all seven in a / motor, as depicted by the wayside photographers, but Baby got sick and / had to be left with Jakeman at the half-way house, where we picked her / up, quite recovered, on our return. It was as well, for the walk would / have been quite beyond her, and yet having once started there is no / return, so we should have ended by carrying her through all the / subterranean labyrinths. The road is a remarkably good one, and / represents a considerable engineering feat. It passes at last through an / enormous archway of rock which marks the entrance to the cave / formations. These caves are hollowed out of what was once a coral reef / in a tropical sea, but is now sixty miles inland with a mountain upon / the top of it -- such changes this old world has seen. If the world were / formed only that man might play his drama upon it, then mankind must be / in the very earliest days of his history, for who would build so / elaborate a stage if the play were to be so short and insignificant?