Elk River in Flood

 Cave diving, Victoria  No Responses »
Jun 172013
 
Elk River in Flood

We were back in Elk River Cave this weekend just gone, with big plans and lots of tasks on the to do list. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas with torrential rains from Thursday. We entered the cave on Saturday morning with a huge pile of gear to find the water level was only slightly raised in the first bit of the streamway – good news. After changing from dry caving gear into dive gear we headed off down the stream towards the first sump…only to find the first roof sniff had become a dive. The dry cavers left us at that point and the diving team of five continued [read more...]

The Shaving Brush in McCavity

 Cave diving, NSW  No Responses »
Jun 032013
 
The Shaving Brush in McCavity

About the cave While I did get a dive in over this weekend just past, a crappy weather forecast led me to leave the camera behind. In reality I should have taken it as the vis and the ocean conditions were fine. But I didn’t, and I find myself with no update for you this morning, so I’ve gone back to the archives to look for an interesting photo that hasn’t had exposure up here yet. I dived in McCavity Cave (the wet bit of Limekiln Cave) up at Wellington back in early 2012, guided by the fantastic Greg Ryan. I talked about it at the time in the post [read more...]

Triggerfish in Tank Cave

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
May 272013
 
Triggerfish in Tank Cave

About the cave Tank Cave, Mt Gambier has kilometres of crystal clear, shallow tunnels perfect for testing things out. You can see the different areas in these two photos from the same dive – small twisting light-walled tunnels vs large dark chambers. All in the same still and clear water, so great fun for photography. About the dive Over the course of the weekend we dived down the gold lines and through J and K section, followed by a long swim to GS tunnel yesterday. All of the dives involved a trip out or a trip home under Lake Ayre, one of my favourite places to take photos. Taking photos [read more...]

Self portraits in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  No Responses »
May 202013
 
Self portraits in Elk River

About the trip Although I didn’t take very many photos on our last weekend trip into Elk River, I wanted to share a couple more of them with you. Last week I talked about getting shots of Sandy coming through sumps 2 and 3 and the difficulty of staying ahead of the silt to get a shot through clear water. On the same trip I was also keen to get a shot in the first downstream sump. Jim Arundale was the first person to pass sump 1. Over a number of attempts he pushed his way through the short underwater distance to the other side. The most pertinent feature of [read more...]

High speed underwater photography in Elk River

 Cave diving, Victoria  3 Responses »
May 132013
 
High speed underwater photography in Elk River

About the site We were back in Elk River streamway this weekend, hoping to survey, tidy up some line and have another look at the end. Elk River currently consists of 6 downstream sumps that we have passed, and a seventh sump that surfaces twice in air bells and continues underwater. It’s over 1.5kms of hard caving to the known end. There are lots of interesting bits – crawling over gravel dragging tanks, sinking in deep mud, squeezing through vertical rift passages and lowering gear through breakdown piles. My favourite bit of the second trip was my push dive at the end into the sixth sump. Unlike the muddy soup [read more...]

Underwater junk in sinkholes

 Cave diving, Mt Gambier  No Responses »
Apr 292013
 
Underwater junk in sinkholes

About the cave These two photos were taken in a small sinkhole south of Mt Gambier. I dropped down on a rope from the paddock above, stopping half way down to survey the entrance lake covered in floating bottles and other debris. Directly under the entrance is a huge cone of stuff…a lot of old fencing wire, bottles and tins, 44 gallon drums and other unidentifiables. The water around all of this was crystal clear, so the challenge was working out how to get dive gear on and get in without spiking myself or my drysuit on anything sharp. About the dive Having navigated my way off the pile and [read more...]

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