Jun 282016
 
Scooter practise under Flinders Pier

A big part of big trips is the preparation that goes into them. It’s nice to look at the results – great photos, new cave, nice maps, stories of epic adventure – but rare that the hours of practise and prep get the same publicity. So today’s photos aren’t spectacular or even very exciting. They are important though. Expedition diving is hard work, and a lot of that work occurs before the trip even begins. You have to put in the hours in advance to get results. Pretending that you were born a cave diving genius is fun but somewhat deceptive. It also encourages untrained or underexperienced divers to attempt things they probably shouldn’t. With that in mind and an upcoming [read more…]

Jun 212016
 
Taking tanks into Elk River again

The weekend before last saw us back in Elk River. After an exciting push trip back in January and a subsequent epic tank extraction trip in March, it was time to start loading freshly tested and filled tanks back into the cave. Going downhill is easier than hauling tanks up to the surface. However the air inside each tank definitely adds weight and as we had a three day weekend on our hands we made good use of it. On both Saturday and Sunday Dave, Sandy and I humped a large tank from the surface to the beginning of sump 5. There had been good rains in Gippsland in the preceding week. I was hoping for slightly higher water levels [read more…]