2016 seems like it’s only just begun and 2017 is already sneaking up on us. With the end of the year in sight, my 2017 calendars are now on sale. Calendars come in both cave diving and ocean flavours with lots of space to note your important dates for the year. The caves side features a number of beautiful shots from the Timorese caves with a good mix of local and exotic. On the ocean front this year’s calendar is dominated by big animals in blue waters – whales, sharks, mantas and more.

The photo pages are A4 (approx 12″ x 8″) with the dates grid on the page below. The calendars are ringbound with a punchhole for hanging. Even better, prices have dropped! Calendars are now just $25 AUD for a calendar and $5 postage in Australia or $15 postage overseas. I’m also offering in person delivery at the CDAA AGM weekend in Mt Gambier for those who pre-order. In case you want a wedding album or else Nemus Photography is the right fit for you, is stunning and original.

Payments can be made via PayPal to liz@lizrogersphotography.com or by EFT.

The caves calendar features the following images:

And the ocean calendar looks a little like this:

I spent last week off the grid, merrily moving tanks from one location to another and back again. By the end of five days on site we had relocated over a tonne of dive gear from the east coast to the Nullarbor, from the vehicles to the water, and from the water’s edge to over 4kms inside the cave. The cave of course, is Cocklebiddy.

The quick trip had a goal – to return to Toad Hall with my Dad, nearly 34 years after he was the first diver to surface inside it. It was a family trip with Mum, Dad and I joined by Steve and Ryan and a film crew. You can see our documentary early next year on Red Bull TV. It’s part of the series called EXPLORERS – ADVENTURES OF THE CENTURY. Until our episode arrives, you can discover other explorers and their adventures in the latest season which is available online here: http://www.redbull.tv/…/AP-1JXZDZE8N2111/explorers-adventur… The windsurfing ep in the last season was shot in Tassie by our film crew from The Construction Site and is well worth watching.

I’ve been hearing stories about Cocklebiddy since I was a kid. To finally get to see the big railway tunnel of the second sump with both my parents on scooters beside me was pretty cool. It also gave me a new appreciation for exactly how much gear was dragged over each rockpile by the original explorers.

We had a mixed team of rebreathers and open circuit with individual bailout and team spares. Between six divers we took a ridiculous number of scooters, mostly DiveX. The two Pirahna P2s on the trip performed admirably – top speed on a P2 makes short work of the 200m long entrance lake! When said entrance lake has very cold freshwater for the top two metres, a rapid exit is the best thing to happen at the end of a long dive.

The second sump is a beautiful place. With the constraints of filming I wasn’t able to set up the photoshoot I would have very much loved to do. Rather than being flat, square and boring like I had imagined, the second sump is some of the most scenic tunnel I have had the privilege of diving. It varied between huge fallen blocks and sunken road formations, between craggy ceiling features and gently rolling floors. All of this set off by brilliant white walls, great vis, and miles and miles of cave unrolling before me. A return photographic trip is definitely in the works.

Our Elk River supply trips are now down to a fine art. Each push trip requires two or three resupply trips – removing the empty tanks from the previous exploration, taking in full tanks, plus caching other gear as required. We are now using a lot of carbon fibres tanks for the longest swim through sump 7. The carbon fibres are much, much lighter than equivalent steel or aluminium tanks and can hold higher pressures.

The drawback of the carbon fibre tanks is their buoyancy characteristics in the water.We have placed kilos of lead weights at the diving gear up spot. Each 9L tank takes 6kgs of lead to sink it. We are definitely not carrying this lead backwards and forwards. But there are four small sumps on the way home that the carbon fibre tanks need to pass through.

My preferred technique for passing sumps with a very buoyant caving pack is to descend and get myself under the lip of the rock ceiling. From there, flipping upsidedown and bracing against the ceiling allows for a good tug on the caving pack. With the pack safely wedged under the lip it’s a matter of doing the upsidedown spider crawl across the roof.

On the far side of the sump the pack will rocket to the surface as soon as it is free of the roof. The accompanying diver can then surface, remove mask, clip the pack tether and keep on trucking down the cave.

These photos were taken on our way in last Saturday. The water clarity was remarkably good and I was able to get some underwater shots on the small camera. The manual settings on the Lumix allow for a fixed shutter speed of 1/25 and with an ISO of 800 this is enough for the Scurions to light up the picture. It may not have the quality of the dSLR, but the Lumix is a lot easier to transport through the cave!

We had an interesting weekend in Elk River with the longest trip underground to date. After multiple set up trips to replace empty tanks with full ones we headed in to use them. The trip was complicated by large floods that swept through Buchan two weeks ago. I wasn’t sure what effect the raised water level might have had on the cave, or the gear cached throughout. The first victim of high water levels was the first aid kit, laid out on a beach before sump 4. We found most of the items from the kit floating in the water just before sump 4 and were able to rescue them all. The bag itself had made further progress and was wrapped around a rock a few hundred metres later.

One tarpaulin and some of the foam matting at the camping spot had also succumbed to the water. The tarp was hooked up on a rock on its way to sump 5. By this point I was a little concerned about our tanks at the beginning of sump 5. On arrival it became apparent that most of the tanks had been washed into the streamway below. Luckily they hadn’t travelled very far with the steels sinking immediately and the carbon fibre tanks bobbing around at the start of the sump. The foam wrapping stored with the tanks was also floating in the entrance pool.

More importantly, the fins that had been perched high up the rift were gone. We sent Sandy on a treasure hunt recovery dive into sumps 5 and 6. She surfaced half an hour later with four fins and the kettle. Good haul! Meanwhile Steve, Dave and I rigged the large tanks for diving. I assisted with the gearing up process and waved the others goodbye around 5pm. By 6pm I was back at camp and an hour after that I was warm and dry. Wrapped up in thermals and a sleeping bag, I fully intended to read the 200 pages of book I had photographed on my Lumix. After ten or so pages I passed out and woke up three hours later. Caves are quiet, dark and peaceful – a great place to catch up on your sleep.

As I napped in the dark, the other guys had proceeded through sumps 5, 6, 7 and then 8. They carried the push tanks down to the start of sump 9. When Steve last pushed sump 9, he surfaced to see both a dry lead and possible continuing underwater passage of sump 10. This time around Dave stayed in the water while Steve and Sandy investigated the dry lead. Unfortunately both options ultimately clogged with mud. The water flow in the area suggests there may be a better underwater option further back in sump 9. The collapsed and muddy end of the dry lead currently holds the prize for furthest reach of the known cave.

The push team returned to cave early the next morning. After a few hours asleep, some hot food and an unpleasant struggle back into wet wetsuits, we clipped on the caving bags and started the long haul to the surface. We surfaced onto the starlit potholes around 6pm Sunday, 32 hours after our descent on Saturday morning.

The joy of Timor is the big tunnels. And the white walls, and the clear water. The karst landscapes creates a lot of dolines and only a few go to water – the countryside makes you work for underwater success. So when one of the beautiful blue surface pools finally does drop into massive going tunnel the elation is incredible.

In this series of photos Dave and Sandy had carefully manoeuvred their way into an entrance pool they discovered last year. This time the water was still clear when they got in. Sandy was able to find her way through the small hole at the bottom of the pool and into the big blue passage beyond. This particular entrance pool is on the other side of a large dry rockpile, with another large blue underwater tunnel at the other end. Sandy left the half empty reel after reaching her air limits, and we returned the following day with extreme optimism.

I joined (hijacked) Dave and Sandy’s follow-up exploration dive to take some photos. Being able to take photos of underwater exploration in progress is incredibly rare. With new caves in Australia mostly ridiculously hard to access, taking the camera into the unknown is usually a step too far. Even if the camera does make it to the end of the line, finding enough time and clear water to take photos of the action is tricky. Cave divers tend to get excited as new cave unrolls in front of them and become reluctant to hang around for modelling.

The first photo here is of Dave picking up the reel from where it was left the day before. You can see the blue water behind him with the silt rolling in as our bubbles hit the roof. In the second photo Dave moved to the left of a large underwater rockpile and I swam over the top to get this shot of him reeling out. The closeup of the roof here shows the incredible porosity of the limestone. I needed clear water for a one time chance at a photo, but Dave needed clear water for a one time chance at finding the way on. After the last photo here it became apparent that we would be working our way around the underwater rockpile for a while. Squeezing ahead with the camera was silly – it both significantly reduced the chance of us breaking through, and left me off the line in poor conditions.

In addition to the silt created by tying the line off on the rock to the left and the silt exploding from the ceiling overhead, you can see the fuzzy water of a disturbed halocline. Challenging conditions for both exploration and photography. The need to find new cave took precedence. Dave headed past me and I grabbed the line, wrapped up the camera and moved into his silt cloud, photography complete.

One of the features of Timor is the very soft limestone that I talked about last week. As well as exploding cave ceilings, this also leads to large breakdown piles in the cave tunnels. Which means that the big blue passages are periodically interrupted by collapses both underwater and above. As you can see from these shots, air chambers provide a whole new playground for cave photography.

Taking split shots in the ocean means waiting for very calm days or finding sheltered spots. Underground, in a place completely enclosed by rock, there’s no need to worry about the weather rippling the surface. When the divers are still the water surface is completely flat. With a rock to stand on and not too much silt in the water, great split shots are not far away.

For the first shot here I used back button focus to force the focus point above the water. I chose a focus point nice and close to the camera, which also brings the underwater section of the image mostly into focus. The on camera strobes were one underwater and one above to spread the lighting around and be sure to trigger the off camera strobes. The two strobes on the diver have both fired and are giving that nice blue glow to the background. I like this first shot for the simplicity – blue water, white rocks, wetsuited diver hanging out with half an eyeball on the camera.

On the second shot I lifted the camera and tilted down, catching the refracted image of the floor below in the water’s surface. This means the light from the off camera strobes is visible both below and above the surface line and the hotspot of the strobe itself is hidden. The body of the diver is also lost, reducing the weirdness of two mismatched halves meeting. And my other buddies are waiting patiently in the background, giving some depth to the size of this chamber.

Splits are good fun when you have a bit of time to spare. Having some air space means easier communication with the models and more chance to get things right. It makes up for having to take twice as many shots for fear of droplets on the dome. Fix the focus, sort the lighting and away you go.

We are back in Timor this week, expanding the limits of the caves we have previously discovered and exploring new caves and new areas. Luckily for me, pushing new areas in known caves means swimming through previously discovered areas first. This makes photography possible – I know what the cave discovered last year looks like, and what’s going to happen when we get in there. I can plan my lighting and instruct my dive buddies for the best shots in otherwise challenging conditions. This Timor trip is the first one where the photography has really come together to show off the beauty of this new area.

The limestone in Timor is soft and crumbly. It’s easy to see ancient and fossilised sea creatures in the walls underwater. There are scallops, barrel sponges, giant clams, mussels and more all pressed between layers of white silt. The wall scenery is fascinating but it also means that the rock is not well pressed together. Each time exhaust bubbles hit the roof we receive a fountain of silt in return. So while the water is crystal clear when I first enter the tunnel, it rapidly deteriorates to zero vis. There’s no in between stage of “ok” vis. It’s either stunning clarity, or can’t-read-my-gauge silt out.

From a photographic point of view this means very limited time for photos. It also means I have to be planned and careful about where I swim. Swimming straight down the middle of the tunnel is the end of photography in that section as the bubble trail behind me brings the ceiling down. Instead, I pick a side and swim along close to the wall. Once I’ve got a bit of distance on my models, a quick look over the shoulder confirms the composition and I swing into the centre of the tunnel. I have to keep moving forward to stay out of my own bubble-created silt cloud, so it’s important to start the photo run behind where I want to end up. Moving backwards is not an option!

Normally taking photos of silt clouds in a cave means someone has made a mistake. Rather than floating along serenely, they’ve kicked up the bottom or run some gear into a mud cone. In Timor the silt is unavoidable and taking photos with it has been great fun. The contrast between the brilliant water clarity and the rocks raining down from the ceiling makes for interesting images. And while I play with photos, the ongoing challenge of finding some more cave to play with is keeping everyone entertained.

To see all of my Timor-related posts, check out this link.

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 long-range scooter dive later this year, Mum, Dad and I have been spending time driving scooters up and down in fairly boring locations. So far we have checked out the delights of Little Blue sinkhole, a nondescript bit of sand off Cape Woolamai and Flinders Pier at scooter speed. Along the way I have refined my scooter attachment options, played with scooter trim and weighting, and determined my preferred trigger finger.

Flinders Pier is better known for beautiful weedy seadragons and nice macro life. From mid-water and at speed I spotted four or five surprised seadragons as well as a banjo shark and a massive stingray. Smaller life eluded me….macro spotting probably requires a slower speed. The pier gets pretty shallow at low tide. We weren’t sure how close to the beach we would be able to scooter, so the laps went from about halfway down the pier to the end and back again. This gave us an obvious turnaround spot (the platform halfway along) and allowed for an easy distance calculation on Google earth. With a return trip giving a 300m run, we chugged out laps and waited for the batteries to die.

While I had already done a bit of short range scooter time, the longer runs make problems more obvious. After the first kilometre my lower back was not happy with a towing position that had seemed great to start with. This was an improvement on a month ago but obviously isn’t going to cut it for the trip. My thermal comfort decreased significantly after an hour of cold water rushing past me. On the other hand, the arm and shoulder position was great and my trim in the water much more comfortably head down. I reckon there’s at least one more Sunday afternoon of cutting laps underwater in my future as it all starts to come together.