A garden below ground level

South Australia’s Limestone Coast looks kind of like a block of cartoon cheese: a landscape dotted with porous, sedimentary rock.

And a ton of sinkholes.

More than 50 water-filled sinkholes and upwards of 800 caves can be found in the region, apparently 95 per cent of them within 20km of Mount Gambier.

One of those caves is the Umpherston Sinkhole, named after the aforementioned Scot, who transformed it into a lush, breathtaking garden.

What began as typical underground cave formed by the corrosion of limestone rock by ocean waves, became a hole when the chamber’s roof caved in.

It is not known when exactly this happened, but it’s estimated to be around 5000 years ago.

In 1886, however, Mr Umpherston planted trees, ferns and flowers along the paths that he’d created inside it and opened his garden up to the public to enjoy.

When he died in 1900, the site fell into disrepair and became overgrown.

It remained neglected for more than 70 years.

Then, new life was finally breathed into the once popular public sinkhole when the District Council of Mount Gambier restored it.

New gardens were planted and lighting was installed to make it able to be visited 24 hours a day.

I’d seen pictures of Umpherston Sinkhole, which is also known perhaps more pleasantly as The Sunken Garden, before I visited Mount Gambier, but one of two things happens when you look at photos before seeing something for yourself.

You’re either disappointed when you do lay your eyes on the real thing and are left questioning what sorcery was used in the promotional photography or you realise exactly what the phrase ‘pictures don’t do it justice’ means.

I’d already experienced the latter when we first drove into Mount Gambier and I saw its famous Blue Lake for the first time.

I was astounded.

I had been sure images had been doctored, blue hues deepened, contrast bumped, that kind of thing.

But I heard myself utter in a tone of pleasant surprise, “Heh, so it really is that blue hey?”

It was phenomenal.

And so was The Sunken Garden with its tumbling green vines, sweeping rows of blooming colour and towering jagged limestone frame.

Water trickled down a fountain, while thousands of bees buzzed as they made homes for their hives on the vertical rock walls, and possums poked their heads out — even in the daylight — to watch visitors from their own smaller caves within the giant cave.

I think their appearance was more due to being conditioned to tourists feeding them fruit than an instinctive desire to socialise with the feeders.

Nonetheless, it placated the humans, as we all took turns blocking the paths to ohh and ahh and snap a couple of pics of the big-eared beings before moving on.

Whether you admire the spectacle of The Sunken Garden from the high viewing platforms or walk down into the sinkhole along the terraces and behind curtains of vines, you’ll get a good view.

There’s no part of it that isn’t beautiful.

But to truly appreciate its depth and magnitude, I think you have to be on its floor looking up.

You know that saying, ‘I wanted the Earth to just swallow me up’?

Well, it kind of felt like that’s what it had done.

I felt like a miniature on that garden floor.

And not just any miniature, but a miniature of a smaller scale than other props that had been placed in the same scene around me.

So tiny and insignificant in the universe.

Probably humbling enough to make me think twice about using that saying again.

The pit that opened in my stomach could have rivalled the depth of the sinkhole itself.

But I guess, at least if this part of the Earth was the mouth that swallowed you, it would be a very pretty spot to spend time before it spat you back out.

This garden is a real-life illustration of the ‘descend to transcend’ metaphor.